Coffee Talk #319: Do You Still Make Calls With Your Phone?

Unlike most of my friends, I actually use my mobile phone to make a lot of phone calls. That’s not too surprising considering that most of my friends are gamer geeks and/or tech nerds. I used to think that…

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Unlike most of my friends, I actually use my mobile phone to make a lot of phone calls. That’s not too surprising considering that most of my friends are gamer geeks and/or tech nerds. I used to think that their phone usage was weird, but it’s becoming more and more common — people are spending much more time using their phones for data rather than voice. Hell, at this rate we probably should stop calling them phones. They’re portable computers that also happen to make phone calls. (For the record, I think the term “connected devices” is one of the worst marketing concoctions I’ve heard in the last five years. I refuse to use it.)

I wanted to see how you guys and dolls use your mobile phones. Are you primarily data hogs? Do you burn through your monthly minutes? Do you use a ton of voice and data? Or is it usually much more of one? Over the course of a month, what percentage of your phone use is voice and what percentage is data? I’m really curious to see your comments for today’s Coffee Talk. There should be lots of interesting data points.

Author: RPadTV

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35 thoughts on “Coffee Talk #319: Do You Still Make Calls With Your Phone?”

  1. I went and checked our bill for the prior period on ATT's website. We (my gf and I) are on a 700 minute per month plan. We rolled over 637 minutes in the last billing cycle. I went further and analyzed exactly how many phone calls are made per line. That number was 7 on my number and 16 on hers.

    At home I either talk to my friends via email, skype, or Ventrilo if we are doing something online.

    Now that I have looked at this, I need can lower our plan to the minimum talk time.

    1. It's funny, most of my friends will respond faster to DMs on Twitter or Facebook messages than phone calls. What's not funny is that PR people have learned this too.

      1. @Ray

        I've honestly never been fond of a phone call while I'm out and about. It always seemed rude to strike up a phone convo that way. I preferred the discreteness of an IM, text, or email mostly. I feel that I can get my point across just as easily and perhaps more quickly via a text type of communication.

  2. I've never had a problem with phone calls, and I continue to use them the most followed by texting. Not enough of my friends or family would use twitter, facebook, or skype in order to communicate on a regular basis. And in all honesty I'd prefer they stay away from me on those mediums anyways.

  3. I make calls on my phone but not often, maybe about 10-15 calls a week. I work answering phones so that has a lot to do with it. I used 170 minutes out of 750 and sent 510 texts last month.

    1. i got a lot of stuff goin on, BB…cant find time to tell you happy birthday this year.

      Maybe next year, BB

  7. I only use my phone for calls and texts. I have a iPod Touch I use for everything else geeky. I like the two devices being separate. Call me weird.

  8. Meh. I had an HTC Thunderbolt video ready to go, but Adobe Premiere Elements ate the soundtrack. I've been trying to fix it for like three hours. It's such a crappy batch of code.

  9. 3DS is on display at Bestbuy. Pretty neat honestly. I think I will get it once there are titles I want for it. I'm pretty sold on StarFox being amazing after playing PilotWings on it.

  11. **my Cableone internet and phone have had an outage for 3 days. just came back on this morning**

    I have 3 cell phones on my plan we use around 6000 minutes per month with a 700 anytime minute plan. Now that AT&T has fee calling to ANY cell phone on ANY carrier we don't use many of our anytime minutes. Also I got the 1000 free Rollover Minutes AT&T was giving away when the Verizon iPhone came out.

    As far as Data goes the other 2 lines I have use around 50-100Mb total and I have been clocking around 7Gb each month lately. They make more calls than I do, but I clearly use more data.

    I never use VOIP, mostly because I don't know of anyone that actually uses it. I have a Skype account but that is only so I can chat with my with the one other person I know with a Skype account.

  13. Very much fascinated by AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. T-Mo has some nice bonuses if the deal doesn't go through (cash and spectrum). Let's see if the government is cool with it.

    1. @Ray

      They let Comcast/NBC merge…I don't see them stopping this.

      Nice way for ATT to eliminate competition who had a better data offering to consumers in metropolitan areas.

      I guess in a few more years once LTE is more widespread ATT and Verizon will merge and we'll have some large megacompany to rule them all. hehe

      1. From what I've been hearing, the FCC likes this since it'll speed up LTE deployment. Between the two companies, there's a lot of spectrum that could be used for 4G.

    1. They were further along than T-Mo. The combined spectrum makes it easier.

      I do agree that it will eventual eliminate a choice. More thoughts in tomorrow's Coffee Talk.

      1. Its laughable to see all of the people on FB complaining about this. They are thinking they are now going to get bad reception because they are on AT&T.

      2. That is pretty funny. It'll be at least a year before anything changes. I suspect the first things that'll change are customer service and pricing. If anything, AT&T is in a better position to improve network quality because of the additional towers and spectrum.

      3. If they improve network q uality, I'll eat a bucket of sand. They said they have improved over the last 2 years. The opposite is true. I still drop calls, low data rates, and poor reception in all of the same places.

        Buying TMo I get the high points. I don't believe it will actually be a positive thing though.

  15. Pingback: Today's Poll: Will AT&T's Acquisition of T-Mobile Be Approved? | RPad.TV -- Raymond Padilla & friends talk games and geek culture

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