Okay, before we deep dive into this topic I have to say this is a rather lengthy post, so bear with me and hope you will be benefited.

First the question is “Do you want a smartphone ?” or “Do you need a smartphone ?” I would say YES. Absolutely. You hear folks saying “I just need a phone for talking,I don’t want to pay for the data connection”, “I just need a little small phone with just buttons” or “Its okay I don’t need to check my email on the phone, I have a desktop at home and a laptop at work so I really don’t need to check email every second”. Oh well, that’s all good, in that case you don’t need a smartphone, but then again you can live without a mobile phone too. Yes, there are fixed lines everywhere; even on the interstates. This is 2010 , hokay, not 1990 or 1970. Mobile Phone is becoming a necessity for most of the folks in the world. Of course you still can drop the coins to make phone calls. But if you want to save time (money), you better have a mobile phone. Smartphones are even better, Why? Leave the school kids here for a second and talk about the rest. If you are an employee/ professional or owner of a small business (doctor,professor, engineer, lawyer, clerk, nurse…… or a financial analyst working for Goldman (sorry Mohan garu couldn’t resist ). You probably need to access your email, get directions on the GPS and plan your schedule. Right? you can do all of these with a smartphone. If you are a housewife with school going kids you probably need a amartphone for saving kid’s schedule and for emailing the teacher. If you are a college going student , sure you need to check your email, Google the web, browse the net, play games and read your subject material too. And if you are OBAMA 🙂 , hmm you need a smartphone to send emails.If you are a professional searching for job, you too need a smartphone. So back to the point, most of us (if not all of us) need a mobile phone, a smartphone would be even better. I have another compelling reason to believe that you need a smartphone. You can listen to TORI on your smartphone . Yes. you can listen to the songs anytime from that little phone.

The second part is about the cost of the plan for buying and maintaining a smartphone. Most phones are in the rage of $ 99.00 to $ 299.00. Which is a one time investment. Buying any smartphone would be fine. You cannot go wrong with current offerings like iPhone, Android phones , Windows mobile, Palm Pre and BB. The handset is a personal preference, I wouldn’t worry about it since most of them are almost equal in terms of features. Pick what you think is the best. The real cost lies in the monthly plan. If you are paying $ 99.00/month for a cellphone carrier on a two year contract, you should know that you are actually giving $ 2400.00 to that carrier. So do the math and find how much are you getting in return. Make sure your plant lets you to make calls, email, use the GPS, browse the web, listen to streaming music, take photos and shoot videos. While I cannot recommend one carrier over other , there are few things I noticed unique to each of these carriers. Verizon has an impeccable network but expensive plans. ATT lets you roll over minutes, but coverage is bad in couple of places and the data plan is expensive. SPRINT gives more bang for the buck, you can make calls to any cellphone on any network (to Verizon , ATT and T Mo) but has a spotty coverage. T Mobile is cheap saves money and you can even give the used phone back to a cousin/ friend in India (doubt it) after a two year term, but the coverage is bad. To help us with the cell phone plans folks at Billshrink.com put together the below sheet.

For those who has a plan or willing to buy a plan, I hope that you get to save some money using this chart. It is a month old (as of Feb 2010) and prices may be bit off, but they are in the range. What plan you have?, which phones you use ? comment away !!!!

click here to see it in the full size