The Verizon website is showing a new tiered data plan for smartphones. There is still an unlimited data plan available, but new smartphone owners will have the option to pay $15 a month for 150 megabytes and then pay $15 per 150 megabytes after that.
Feature phones no longer require a data plan. Feature phone data users will pay $1.99 per megabyte and can buy a $5 per month email plan. If you already have a feature phone that requires a data plan, you can't switch to having a no-data plan on that feature phone; it's only if you buy a new feature phone. Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney wrote in an email to us, "If you have a multi-media phone now that requires a data plan, the requirement stays."
Ms. Raney said the new $15 smartphone 150-megabyte data plan is a promotional for a limited time only. She said that the plans will help users transition from feature phones to smartphones. She confirmed that using 170 megabytes of data would cost $30.
If you buy a Droid and only get 150 megabytes for the month, it will cover email and a few pages of web surfing a day. However, it you upload 2 high-resolution photos a day, it will put you over your limit. Using the Verizon data usage calculator, iti s very easy to use over 150 megabytes
For example:
50 emails a day = 14.65 MB.
Surf 5 webpages a day = 58.9 MB.
Uploading 2 High Res photos day = 300 MB.
Total = 3.6 Gigabytes.
The new plan would cost the user $15 for the first 150 megabytes, another $15 for the next 150 megabytes and then another $15 for the remaining data with $45 for data for that month.
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For calculating data use, Verizon shows:
Email (text only) = 10 KB.
Typical Webpage Lookup = 400 KB.
Online gaming = 5 MB/hr.
Audio Streaming = 60 MB/hr.
Video Streaming = 260 MB/hr.
Digital Photo download/upload (high res) = 5 MB.