Cell phone purchase
 

I want to buy a new phone and I'm switching to a carrier that borrows AT&T's network, pre-paid. I have a Samsung/Android phone.

I prefer a smaller company/corporation versus Walmart. I want to go to a local business to buy the phone and get set up. Are those small businesses a good place for this or is going to something such as a Cricket Wireless store the better choice?

I've used republic wireless for years now and have been quite happy with them.

If you want prepaid on AT&T's network the best deal I know of right now is AT&T prepaid.

My wife and mother are on their $25 a month plan. Unlimited Talk / Text + 8 GB of data. Unused data rolls over for a month. Works in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The only catch is that you have to prepay the year so it is $300 upfront + tax. That varies by state but it was $302 total for us. My wife just started a 2nd year and the doubled they data to 16 GB a month for renewing.

Before we switched to AT&T prepaid we were on Cricket for 4-5 years. No issues but it is $30 a month for only 2 GB of data. It also doesn't work in Mexico or Canada and you can't hotspot without paying $10 a month extra.

I’ve been happy with Pixel phones. They utilize both Sprint and T-mobile on Google Fi. They can work with any network. You can get a used one for ~$100.

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Open-source rotary cellphone
ROB BESCHIZZA 5:13 AM TUE FEB 18, 2020

I've had Pixels back to the Nexus days - my first one was a Nexus S. They work well and Google supports them for 3 years which unfortunately is the best you can get in the Android world. Today I have a Pixel 1 which unfortunately has reached end-of-life.

A warning for people shopping cheap Pixels - The Pixel 2 and 2 XL will get their last security update December 2020

Right now the best value in cell phones is the Apple iPhone SE2. Apple supports their phones for 5 years so $400 / 5 = $80 per year. The Pixel 4a is a great phone for $350 but only gets 3 years of support so $350 / 3 = $117 per year. It also isn't waterproof which is a deal breaker for me.

I never cared for support (updates). It just means some of your apps break until they eventually fix them. Some of them never get fixed. I've got a $350 4k drone that will never work with iOS because the app isn't being developed for newer versions, which broke the older version of the app.

OS updates go both ways. Sometimes companies stop supporting a product and don't update the app for the new OS. Sometimes the app developer stops supporting old versions of an OS.

However, that isn't my primary concern with updates. I'm much more interested in security updates. I don't want to wake up one day with my bank accounts drained because I'm continued to use an old phone without updated security patches. Security updates are the equivalent of anti-virus software on a computer.

My primary issue with Google is that they support chromebooks for 7 years but phones for only 3.

Eh, we make a big deal out of security updates, but people don't get "hacked" because they were running an old version of software, but because they responded to phishing, or some other human level attack.

Republic Wireless Not so fast
 

FYI
Although I have switch to Republic wireless for the past 2-3 years. Coverage and data plans are not always up to the everyday use. hard data limit. Republic original selling points was different business model and ability to use Wi-Fi and switching to Wi-Fi instead of LTE data when you have access(reality is that rarely went as advertised). Currently Republic uses T-Mobile network they offer some saving on prepaid 6month/yearly(blocks) instead month to month.
Everything with Republic is online . Republic also require that you use their sanction cellphone. If you had a similar phone but not sanction is a no go.

I have been considering Mint Mobile which is online only as well. You have to get a initial setup plan of 3 months. The pricing is almost identical to Republic with just nice bonus of getting more data.

For sure AT&T is horrible