Boost Mobile recently announced a device called the Samsung Transform Ultra. At the very bottom of the press release detailing said product, buried in the hopes that we would miss it, Boost also revealed that starting on October 6th they’re going to charge new customers who join the network and use Android an extra $5 per month. Sneaky. Now Boost Mobile is nothing more than Sprint, but with different devices and different price plans. For $50 per month they’ll give you unlimited everything, which is half of what Sprint charges, but as we said earlier, you don’t get to use the flagship devices that Sprint has access to, nor do you get to hop on Sprint’s (read: Clearwire’s) WiMAX network. The $50 will now become $55, but thanks to “Shrinkage”, which is Boost Mobile’s way of encouraging customers to pay their bills on time in order to get discounts, your bill will fall back to $50 per month after just 6 on time payments.
If you’re one of the many Americans looking to join a prepaid operator, then you should be aware of your options. There’s Virgin Mobile, who also uses Sprint’s network, and they too charge $55 per month for unlimited, but unlike Boost Mobile there are actually some pretty compelling devices being offered by Virgin, most notably the Motorola Triumph. It features a 4.1 inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 1 GHz processor, and a 5 megapixel camera. There’s also SIM only prepaid plans. Operators such as H2O Wireless (uses AT&T’s network) and Simple Mobile (uses T-Mobile’s network) offer unlimited everything plans for $60 per month, which sounds like a lot, but you pay more to get to use whatever GSM device you want. That’s right, you can import the latest smartphones from Europe, buy an unlocked iPhone from your local Apple Store, whatever. You’ll pay just $60 per month while your friends pay nearly twice that for the exact same service.