Sure, the pricing isn't as competitive as I expected given that T-Mo is so far behind the others, but they've probably calculated that they don't have to undercut the big guys by a lot to start siphoning off business. Or perhaps they don't want the large influx of new customers that would come with even cheaper plans, since that could overload their existing network.

On my phone and my wife's (CM10 Spring and CM9 T-Mobile respectively) there's an "R" next to the signal strength indicator when it's roaming. I'm sure T-Mo's coverage map will be inferior to AT&T or Verizon's, but all it has to do for me is be better than Sprint's, since there's no way I'll go with either of those carriers.

A tangentially related question: I also need to get a second phone in addition to the free-ish iPhone.

I'd like to get a ruggedized phone because my wife seems to break pretty much everything electronic that she touches. I'm also trying to keep it as inexpensive as possible. So far, my best option seems to be an unlocked Motorola Defy+ for $129 on Amazon and then upgrade it to Jelly Bean by installing CM10. I've got absolutely no experience installing modded firmware on a phone, but the write-ups online don't look difficult.

Any problems with this? Any better deals or better supported phones I should consider?

Perhaps a tough case/shell for the iPhone?

A friend of mine bought a Samsung Rugby, for reasons much like what you're talking about. He decided that he didn't like Android and is instead planning to go with an iPhone + some sort of hard case.

Broadly speaking, if your plan is "buy phone X only to strip it and reinstall some other OS build" then you're asking for a world of hurt, since most Android phones have various hurdles between you and installing that third-party firmware.

If you can wait until mid-May, you'll see what Google's "X Phone" is all about. I suspect it might be quite attractive. We'll see.

Maybe a Sony Acro S!

Thanks for the suggestions. That Sony does look nice, but at $400, is a bit out of the price range. It'd be nice to not have to root and hack something though.

You could give the Blu Tank 4.5 a try. It's not necessarily rugged, just waterproof. Though, I think the Acro S isn't terribly rugged either.

I wouldn't count on much 3rd party ROM support with the Tank.

Now we're talking. That's much closer to my price range, especially since it's already running Jelly Bean. Great suggestion.

EDIT: Except no 1900 mhz band. They claim make a version of the Tank with it, the w110a, but they don't sell it on Amazon, or seemingly anywhere else.

Bummer.

I saw some unboxing videos on Youtube where the box for the W110i said 850/1900/2100 3G. Of course, this contradicts every spec out there, so who knows what to believe.

PSA: Straight Talk SIMs for the AT&T newtork are available again

Thanks for posting about this. I'm not sure I could live with the data caps for Straight Talk or Net10, though.

I wanted to update something you said earlier in this thread, Rob. As far as I can tell, Net10 is back to not indicating anywhere on their site what the cap is. The only thing I could find was something buried in their TOS that says AT&T SIMs would be capped at 1.5GB.

It still astonishes me that every carrier is able to get away with their bastardization of the word "unlimited." It's absurd.

Well, I've got one of those "grandfathered" Verizon "unlimited" 4G plans. The other day, I was trying to push a 600-ish MB file from my laptop to home through a tethered link. It got to about 120MB and the connection died and I had to wait a few minutes to resume. Verizon has some kind of serious throttling going on.

Ah..the beauty of prepaid. I can switch at the end of the month!