Don't Waste Your Money, Get a Free Cell Phone

By Gary P. Thompson

If you're looking for a new phone, you've probably been taken aback by the cost of all the new smart phones out there.

Fret not, most cell phone service providers give out very decent cell phones for free.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Virgin and Boost all give out very good free phones. You won't be the person with the latest version of the iPhone, but you'll have a great phone that goes well beyond just a telephone. Not to mention you'll save yourself several hundred dollars.

Free from Verizon, you can get the LG VX5500 which has a VGA camera, speakerphone, Bluetooth, mobile instant messaging, mobile web browsing, VZ Navigator, and more. It boasts 300 minutes talk time and up to 440 hours standby time on a single charge.

T-Mobile offers up the Nokia 5253; which includes a 1.3MP camera which lets you take high-quality pictures from your phone for enlarging or printing, a music player, stereo bluetooth wireless technology for connecting your phone to your computer. You can also send pic messages and short video clips.

AT&T has two great free phone offers. The Samsung A737 with a 1.3 MP camera, video capture and playback, music support, HTML browsing, mobile TV support, downloadable games and graphics, web mail features and XpressMail for accessing work email and holds up to 2Gs of memory.

AT&T also offers the Sony Ericsson W350 -- it's got a 1.3megapixel camera with 4x zoom, web browser, polyphonic, MIDI and MP3 support, XM Radio, Mobile Banking, America's Best Mobile Pix, Yellowpages.com, AOL, Yahoo!, Windows Live Messenger IM support, and FM Radio.

Virgin offers the LG VX5500 include VGA camera, speakerphone, Bluetooth, mobile instant messaging, mobile web browsing, VZ Navigator, and more. The LG VX5500 offers 300 minutes talk time and up to 440 hours standby time.

There you have it; you can have a pretty sharp smart phone for free from all the major carriers. You won't have the app store or the coolest iPhone gizmo, but if you drop your cell phone in a puddle, you won't be out of $400 and have to buy a newer phone.