Communications

Samsung Galaxy Centura Prepaid Phone

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Bargain smartphone

Tracfone (a prepaid wireless phone provider) used to be strictly low-tech, throw-away, prepaid burner phone territory, but they’ve recently introduced an Android smart phone to their line-up. It currently costs about $80, and you get triple minutes for the life of the phone. It operates Wifi when it’s available, and then you get a meg of data for every minute you buy on one of their cards. I end up using about 20 minutes a month strictly on data, but I could probably shave that down if I limited some of the apps I run to Wifi only. (30 minutes cost $10 at Tracfone.com)

The phone (Samsung Galaxy Centura) isn’t top of the line, by any means, and runs Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but I haven’t found an app I couldn’t load (though browsing the Web on it can be a little daunting, and when I tried to run Fruit Ninja, the program lagged to the point that it was sort of unplayable).

It’s got an adequate rear-facing 3meg camera, and supports Bluetooth, and you get a little more than 2.5 gig of non-upgradable storage. I suppose that if I were downgrading from a more expensive smartphone, I might be a little frustrated with it, and not just because the screen size is much smaller than other phones I’ve seen. But when you consider a more conventional smartphone with data plan would probably cost you upwards of $50 a month, minimum, this is a real bargain.

Tracfone availability map.

-- Dave Faris 06/9/14

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