Rumor Mill

Okay. If you are planning to buy a new smartphone with one of the four major carriers you WILL be required to have some sort of data plan. With Verizon it will be $29.99 for "Unlimited Data" (If you push beyond 10GB they may throttle you down to Rev.0 speeds however). With AT&T it will be either $15 for 200MB or $25 for 2GB. With T-Mobile ii will be $10 for 200MB or $30 for Unlimited (I'm not sure what their policy is on excessive data) or with Sprint you will be forced into an Everything Data Plan or Simply Everything on any smartphone. In effect Sprint forces you to combine Unlimited text and Data with any smartphone purchase. Everything Data 450 is $69.99 PLUS the $10 Premium Data charge so compare that to Verizon's Unlimited Text and Talk package which is $59.99 Plus an extra $29.99 for Unlimited Data and we're at the same $80 give or take a penny or two.

NOW let's discuss the option of activating an older smartphone. AT&T and Sprint will not allow you to activate an older smartphone without a data plan. Verizon WILL allow you to activate any smartphone which is not a Blackberry AND was being sold BEFORE November 14, 2008. Basically, the Palm Centro, Palm Treos, HTC XV6900, XV6800, XV6700, XV660 so on and so forth. T-Mobile MAY allow you to activate a Blackberry Pearl with no data plan. I am really not certain if that is still allowed with them but it was in the past. If you want a new smartphone at the cheapest price, I would say T-Mobile is the way to go. Frankly, I think it is way too much effort to end up bursting through the 200MB and paying overages. But hey it's your wallet.