Thursday, September 1, 2011

Sprint's Creative Math

I was just looking over my monthly Sprint mobile phone bill, a bill that has swelled from $60+ per month for two lines to $120+ per month for smart phones. Anyway, this was the first month where our normal rates apply, after having purchased said phones, and having those costs paid off. So, I thought I'd peruse the details of the thing.

As it turns out, a lot is covered, which is fortunate given the monthly cost. We have unlimited anytime minutes (between Sprint customers), anytime mobile (any mobile phone), text, night & weekend, picture mail, 3G data, and even 3G data roaming. That's pretty sweet. And between the two of us, we only used 214 of our allotted 1,500 monthly minutes. But there some interesting nuggets in the rows of numbers on my bill.

For instance, The Other Half used 39,163 3G data  minutes. Downloading porn, no doubt (kidding, honey). That's a lot, right? Then, I  looked at mine: 100,609 minutes! Holy crap! What is my phone doing when I'm not using it? It's either in my pocket or on my desk about 98% of the time. And. . .wait. . .how many minutes are in a month, anyway?

31 days X 24 hours X 60 minutes = 44,640 minutes.

Soooo, either Sprint's math is way off, or the row of numbers on my bill represents something other than minutes. The column is headed "Used," and lists other things that are clearly minutes. But it lists 292 under texts for me, which must be a total number (but sounds a bit too high). So, it could be megabytes, gigabytes, hell Sprint-bucks for all I know. I'm just happy I have unlimited. . .whatever they are.


2 comments - Click HERE to Comment:

  1. If you don't close your browser application before you put your phone down (if you just lock your screen, or switch to phone mode, for instance), the last page you visited may keep updating, which may be why your phone is using so much data. At least, that's the case with my phone (I'm not familiar with the newer smartphones).

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  2. My Epic 4G Android phone is constantly using apps, often with no prompting from me. I actually downloaded an "app killer" to try to save battery juice. Every time I've tried it, it's had at least 5 apps to kill. So I'm fortunate that I'm "unlimited," considering I have NO idea how to make it stop doing that!

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