These days it is difficult to find someone without a cell phone, even the kids in schools. it is just plain out of the question to be out of touch, and with the younger generation, even considered rude. For the business person, it allows them to be available to their customers almost 24x7, which can be both a blessing and a curse. The biggest problem faced by most today is what phone to choose and which cellular service provider to use. Like anything else, you first need to determine what you are going to use the cell phone for. You use it for talking, obviously, right? Right and also wrong. Today's cell phones are electronic marvels in a small package, and the fact that you can talk on it is just the tip of the iceberg with many of them. Many cell phones are also MP3 players. The fact that the cell phone can handle MP3 files, in my mind, only serves a single purpose, and that is the fact that you can download songs to it and use the songs as ringtones. So when your son calls from college, the phone would ring with the song "Money" because that is undoubtedly what he is calling about. When your whacky neighbor calls and wants to talk with you about the latest scheme he has uncovered, your phone could play the theme song from "Looney Tunes". In this way, you can tell who is calling just from the ringtone you have assigned to them, and you don't even need to look at your phone. But as far as using the cell phone as an MP3 player so you can listen to tunes all day long, I cannot recommend getting a phone with that feature, or at least paying more for it if that feature is not already included. Using your phone all day long to listen to MP3 tunes that you have downloaded to it is going to take a toll on your battery life, and the fidelity of the music is not going to be the greatest. If you have a job where listening to tunes all day would work out, you are much further ahead to get a separate MP3 player or even an Ipod for that purpose instead of using your cell phone for it. The quality of the music will be better, and you won't be draining the battery on your cell phone all day long. As far as which cellular provider to use, one of the main criteria is to find out which carriers does a good job of providing cellular service in your area or the area where you would be using the phone the most. If you are in a major metro area, you can probably choose any of the "big four" national carriers; i.e., Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Cingular. If you are in a "less than metro" area, you need to find out which carrier provides the most reliable cellular service in that area. Watch for the specials from the carriers and choose a plan with the features and number of minutes that suits your lifestyle and how you would plan to use your cell phone. Is one of them better than anything, assuming that multiple of them have good coverage in your service area? Yes and no. In my experience, Sprint and T-Mobile provide the highest levels of customer service when you have a problem, and are also more than willing to credit you back minutes when you drop a call. If you are not really "techno savvy" and would probably use customer service with your cellular carrier a lot, then Sprint or T-Mobile are good bets. Cingular would be my next choice in terms of customer service. They are not as good as Sprint and T-Mobile but their service has been improving and Cingular would not be a bad choice. From a customer service perspective, Verizon has consistently been at the bottom of the barrel. Some have said that Verizon customer service would actually have to IMPROVE to be rated as high as "bad". This is unfortunate since Verizon has wide coverage nationwide, but the reputation for extremely poor customer service is something that Verizon seems unable, and even UNWILLING to rectify. Bottom line: choose your cell phone and your cellular service provider based on how you plan to use your phone, not based on the extra features that you probably would not use after the novelty wears off!
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