T-Mobile is happy to have iPhone users switch to their service and they will not require you to buy a smartphone data plan. In my experience, T-Mobile’s coverage and customer service is better than AT&T’s, and I’ve gone from paying $45/mo for my old AT&T dumb-phone talk/text plan (and that was w/ a corporate discount) to *less than $20/mo* for a T-Mobile prepaid monthly plan (limiting iPhone data use to WiFi.)

(BillShrink.com was very helpful to me in determining what wireless carrier & calling plan best fit my needs and budget. I would not have considered a prepaid plan, but BillShrink.com analyzed my bills and showed me I could save at least $225/yr that way.)

Your 3yr old phone is out-of-warranty anyway. You can jailbreak and unlock your iPhone and leave AT&T. The process sounds more daunting than it actually is. IIRC, you use mac computers, so you could download the Pwanage Tool software from iphonedownloadblog.com (they have guides and tutorials there as well). Pwanage Tool is free and pretty easy to deal with.

Unlocking will free you from AT&T and the extra cost of a data plan that you don’t feel you need; and jailbreaking will add other functionality to your iPhone (if you want). You’ll be able to lower your monthly wireless bill and keep the phone that’s paid for and familiar to you.

The only downside is you must remember to never ever update your iPhone’s software from iTunes in the future or you’ll lose your unlock. (When you want to update the iOS, wait for Pwanage Tool to be updated and do it through there. If you ever need to restore, you tell iTunes to do a manual restore, and point to your Pwanage-created backup).

I was given a handmedown iPhone 3g and love it – I can sync calendars and contacts, and use some great apps for photos, tuning my guitar, keeping my grocery lists, etc. I’ve never had a smartphone w/ data plan and didn’t want to start, knowing I’d get used to having it and then feel it was a “need.” WiFi is good enough for my day-to-day needs, and because I can take/make most calls using my home phone (using google Voice, so no long distance costs and a metered service plan for about $17/mo total), the T-Mobile prepaid monthly plan suits me just fine these days (it’s $15/mo for unlimited texting + $.10/min for calls). If my needs change, I can switch to a regular plan and add data, and still not have to go back to AT&T and their headaches.

So before you ditch your iPhone, you might consider the option to unlock and ditch your carrier and data plan.

Personally, I find it sad that wherever you go, people are huddled over their tiny little screen instead of interacting and talking. My wife and I went to dinner the other night and the 2 ladies behind us barely said 2 sentences to each other the whole time, preferring to play with their phones.

The apps I use all the time when traveling, and which I feel have saved me money and endless travel frustration, are:

MapQuest
AAA Triptik
AAA Roadside
Flight Track
Gate Guru
Kayak
Packing Pro
American Airlines
Skype
Paris Metro
Convertbot
Currency
myWireless
Accounts (financial)
Yelp, Urbanspoon and AroundMe
WhiteNoise
Weather Channel
Lonely Planet guidebook apps

I appreciate that many people do not have a smart phone. As a result, this post isn’t much use to you. For my part, I don’t have children, so posts about family things are of little use to me. Not ever post is going to be relevant to every reader, and that’s OK.

As a smartphone owner, I am always looking for free or low cost apps to help me. I am self-employed and travel quite a bit for my work, and travel apps have been a huge boon in the last few years. Tripit.com and its associated app, for instance, builds my itinerary based on the online reservations I make. It’s been a huge help and have saved me time and money, since I no longer have to print off all my various travel documents. (United Airlines will even send a paperless boarding pass to your phone.) Yelp, Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon, Kayak, etc. have largely replaced guidebooks, which I always used to buy, just as my phone’s GPS means I don’t buy maps.

My point is that an article about smartphone apps is, to my mind, completely in tune with what this website is about, and for some of us, a big help.

With a smartphone and the mint app there is no reason to ever go over budget – whenever I get the urge to buy something, I just whip out my phone, check my current spending, and that’s it. Ridiculously useful.

IMO, planning DOES help you save money. And having this info on my ipod would have been much easier than having a tour book and a subway map to lug around & haul out to reference all the time.

Before our trip to Italy and France, for example, I downloaded a bunch of podcasts, PDF maps, and iPhone/iPad apps to make things easier. They didn’t make things easier. They just got in the way. The only tech tool we actually used frequently was the set of podcasts from Rick Steves. Everything else gathered virtual dust.

What did we do instead? We used free maps that were readily available in each city. We also used our guidebooks. Now the guidebooks aren’t free (and I’m not sure if April’s app is or not), but that’s okay because they’re packed with info and worth far more than their cover price. We also talked with locals. These old-fashioned ways of getting around worked well. If anything, I feel like the tech solutions would have just got in the way of what I wanted to do. They’d create more problems than they solve.

On another note: I’ve had an iPhone for about three years, but I’m thinking of ditching it. Has anyone else done this? (Wait. Did I already ask this here at GRS? I think maybe I did.) I find that I barely use the smartphone features, so I’m paying $70/month to play games while I wait in line at the take-and-bake pizza place. Ouch. Just writing that out makes me want to cancel the plan today.

I don’t mean to sound mean; I appreciate what you’ve discovered, April! But some of us are not in the position to afford smart phones and their monthly data plans. How does the cost of the phone/plan/app compare to the money you saved using it?

This article basically says: “I can use the Internet on my Internet-enabled phone to look up things that I’m interested in.” but it does it in a very product-specific, dare I say shill-like, way.

This article definitely is not about Personal finance or frugality.

Looks like this is a paid advertisement for Iphone, Ipad, Mycityway app, android, droid or whatever.

FWIW, I too get by without a smartphone, although I plan to acquire one next year.

If you want a good “financial experience” eat at Bobby Vann’s Grill across from the stock exchange. You can request to eat in the vault. This is the original JP Morgan’s bank vault and it is nothing short of one of the coolest places to eat. The menu isn’t too expensive – at least not by NYC standards. The burger was great. The vault is in the lower level restaurant (The Grill), not the upper level steakhouse. While you are in the financial district the Museum of American Finance is pretty good, too. They have weird hours though.

I will keep this in mind if I ever invest in a Smartphone though.

I consider both of them to be a waste of money.

If I get lost in NYC, I will do it the old fashioned way that is free.

ASK SOMEBODY ELSE FOR THE RIGHT DIRECTIONS.

I really want a smart phone, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t buy one until my wife and I ridded ourselves of our debts.

Based on our budget, we should be out of debt by April 2011! Then, it’s time for the Smart Phone.

I can’t wait!