Why I love my Wind Phone

Article = none, personal experience

Make and model : Huawei U1250 vs Samsung m610

The Samsung phone , which I got from Bell 3 years ago and just termiated , has the ability to take pictures, play music, and of course , make phone calls. This is common to both phones.

Price

The Samsung cost 325$ (full price) or 100$ and a 3 year contract. The Huawei was the cheapest lowest bottom of the line Wind had and cost me 70$ + tax , no contract. (Wind has no contracts)

Play Music
The Samsung has an annoying "universal" jack on the side that will accept the power cable for recharging , the data cable for loading up tunes from your computer ,and the head phone for playing music. The jack broke within the first 2 months, and took them 4 months of trial and error to eventually fix. During which I had to pay bell their monthly fee despite not having my phone. They pointed to the distributer (wirelesswave) and said it was their problem.

After which , I had to be careful to use the jack only for power because thanks to their four month delay I was now out of warrenty and it would cost me a fortune to fix it a second time. Barring spending 120$ for a blue tooth head set that could play music , my music phone suddenly no longer played music. I bought a cheap40$ mp3 player and 20$ ear plugs and counted myself lucky.

The Huawei has a standard jack on the top , the kind on your stereo , your mp3 player, any random electronic device. I was able to take my store bought earplugs and plug them in and they worked just fine. I was also able to take the 1 gig memory chip from the old Samsung and put it in the Huawei and it even read the songs that were on it.

The jack for connecting to the computer was the standard "small" usb cable , and it came with such a cable (I now have 3 identical such cables, they all work , so I know it's some kind of standard) and it automaticaly installed (under WinXP) and I was able to delete the old tunes and put in new ones with little fuss.

No Connection

The Bell phone (Samsung) would try to connect when I was in a dead zone , like the hospital, and it was totally useless without such a connection. It wouldn't tell you the time of day , play music , nothing. Basically if Bell cut you off your phone died.

The Wind phone (Huawei) after I phoned up wasn't active for the first hour. During which it would happily play tunes from the memory card and tell me the (admittedly wrong) time. So if I cancel my Wind account , my phones mp3 abilites are unaffected.

Internet

Bell refuses to block the internet. No way , no how , no helping you sabatage the settings so it won't actually connect , and you buy the 7$ / month internet plan (which is useless on the phone) or it's 50$ / megabyte. And if you're near the end of contract and ask to remove the internet feature because you're going to just pull the battery and dump the thing ? They tack on 11 months to your contract if you change any features. So don't bother.

Wind happily blocked the internet from their end. No charge.

Texting

Both wind and Bell blocked texting from their phones. Bell tried to do a sales job on you , but in the end if you insisted they would block it anyways.

I attribute this more to one of our previous prime ministers getting hot and bothered under the collar and saying nasties about texting to all phone providers , than I do to the policies of any particular company.

Monthly Charges
Bell wanted 30$ / month for voice 400 minutes, +7$ / month for internet that was totally useless that they basically extorted from me under threat of 50$ /megabyte data charges if I didn't put that feature on, and 11 month contract renewal if I tried to take it off.

Wind wants 35$ / month unlimited voice. There's a deal for half off before the end of june , but I'm not really counting breif specials since both companies have them. Paid in advance and if I get into trouble they'll just shut the phone off during the periods I can't afford it, rather than racking up the charges.

Contract
Bell demandes a three year contract , and buried way deep in it is a clause that says they can change their mind any time they like and you are stuck with it. You don't get to say "thats not what I signed up for !". This comes into importance when they try to save you from leaving and going off to some other company by promising you outragous things. I worked in a call center and I had such calls all the time. The "Save" department never left any notes about such deals , and so the customer was generally stuck in another 3 year contract with no real savings or bonus at all.

(Rogers has a similar contract clause, by the way)

Wind has no contracts.


Conclusion :

Wind Mobile wins hands down . Why ? Policy. They don't try and gouge you every time you turn around. Bell does. Monthly prices are similar (Bell lowered them drastically to come close to wind) but the aggrivation factor makes all the difference in the world.