Ask HN: Have you replaced your phone with an iPod Touch?

5 points·keiferski··7 comments

My contract iPhone is expiring soon, and instead of renewing for another 2 years, I'm considering just using an iPod Touch to talk and text over Wifi.

Anyone have experience with this? I'd also get a cheap pay-as-you-go phone for emergencies. But I like the idea of not always being "on", as well as the obvious lack of monthly charges.

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I'm on tmobile (android phone). The wifi calling feature doesn't work very well. You have to have a really strong signal, and even then the connection can be flaky. And for some reason, the feature doesn't work at all with some wifi hotspots.

So while it's a nice idea, in practice it doesn't work very well for voice. Texting seems to be OK.

I think it doesn't work because you have to open your browser and accept the terms before they let you out of their intranet. That's how it works at Starbucks anyways.

Right, I'm talking about after any browser-based authorization has happened.

Why not use the iphone with a pay as you go sim (or as a ipod without a sim)?

I have been using my iphone with skype as the phone and just a data sim, it works okay but IP telephony is not as reliable as normal cellular telephony but I can live with it.

In my country (denmark) there are no real options for SMS texting without a normal SIM card (no ip based receiving of sms messages) so unfortunately that made the thing a no go for me.

Use an Android phone without service on wifi. Install any of the these apps: GrooveIP, Spare Phone, or Talkatone; and you can use Google Voice for texting and unlimited minutes for free.

Have you heard of http://republicwireless.com/? Might accomplish what you're looking for.

Have you heard about Ting.com? Pretty cheap mobile service.

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