I have been enjoying my summer back in Singapore and now I am back in Stanford. Given that the new freshmen were trying to get their phones and all up and running, I thought I'd talk about how phones are like here. I am on an AT & T plan. I am not sure if it is necessarily better than other networks, but generally many Stanford students use AT & T because they have the best reception on campus (by a mile).
There isn't very much of a difference between Singapore and the US in terms of phones. There are 2 options you could go, one being prepaid and the other being a plan. It's really up to you which one you want to go for. For the prepaid option, you pay a $1 flat fee for the first call of that day and all subsequent calls for that day are free. However, every time you send or receive a text message 20 cents is deducted from you.
For phone plans, again there are 2 options, you either go for the individual plan or the family plan. The amount of minutes you get and all are similar, but the family plan requires that you form a 'family' with a few other people (which most international students do), and you split the cost among yourself. This works out to about $30/month for a family of 5 (the max number allowed in a family) vs the same plan under an individual plan for $40, assuming you go for the typical basic kind (just calling and texting).
By and large I'd recommend the family plan as opposed to going solo if you do intend to get a plan, primarily because it saves you some $. However some people are not keen on that option because if someone in the 'family' exceeds the number of talktime it reduces the number that other members in the group are entitled to. Also there is the issue of payment, whoever is the 'head' of the family will have to pay for the whole family every month.
I am on the family plan and paying $30/month. AT & T does not charge me (I think this is a phone plan thing) for calling other AT&T customers at certain hours, and since almost everyone at Stanford uses AT & T I pretty much have free calls. As a result, even though I am entitled to 700 minutes of talktime / month, I use up less than 30.
Some people also intend to come over to the US to get their phones on the assumption that they are newer, better, etc. Again I say that it depends on personal preference. Getting most decent smartphones (e.g. 3G) in the US will require that you sign on to a 2 year compulsory data plan, which starts from $10/month and is on top of your basic bill. For iPhones, the data plan is $15-$25/month additional. While this may not sound like a lot, I know I won't be thrilled if I had to pay $50 for my phone bill every month. Also some phones in the US may not be able to work in Singapore - you got to check the frequency of the phone, but I haven't heard about any Singaporean phones not being able to work in the US. 1 reason is cos some phones in the US are tied to certain mobile carriers.
If you are thinking about getting free phones in the US that might come with signing up for a plan, note that these free phones are free for a reason; I hear that most of them may still be from the black and yellow backlight era.
If you have a preference for certain types of phones, some of them may be more prevalent in some areas than others. For e.g, Nokia seems to be more popular in Singapore than in the US. iPhones are very very prevalent here. Etc. Don't know if that changes anything.
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