U.S. Cellular Debuts New Prepaid Plans

U.S. Cellular is offering a few new prepaid phone plans for smartphones and “messaging phones.”

The new U.S. Cellular prepaid plans range from limited talk and text to unlimited talk and text with 2GB of data. The new base prepaid plan for “messaging phones” starts at $35 per month and gives users 400 minutes of talk time, 400 text messages, and 400 picture messages. The plan seems really limiting, but it should work well for some users.

The next step up in the carrier’s prepaid plans offers unlimited talk and text with 1GB of data per month for $50 a month. The third and final plan offers the same unlimited talk and text, but ups the data limit to 2GB for $65 a month. Unfortunately, U.S. Cellular doesn’t offer unlimited data to prepaid subscribers like some other carriers.

U.S. Cellular’s new smartphone data plans are available on a number of its Android smartphones. The list includes: Samsung Galaxy S II, Motorola ELECTRIFY, HTC Merge, Samsung Mesmerize, Huawei Ascend II, HTC Wildfire S, and Samsung Repp.

Unfortunately, U.S. Cellular doesn’t offer 4G LTE smartphones on its prepaid plans. The carrier currently offers the Samsung Galaxy S Aviator as its only 4G LTE option for subscribers with two-year contracts.

The “messaging phones” in the new plan include: Pantech Verse, Samsung Character, LG Saber, Samsung Freeform 4, Pantech CDM8635US, and Samsung Chrono 2.

The new prepaid plans are nice, but with other carriers like Cricket and eventually Boost Mobile offering the iPhone as a prepaid phone, it’s hard to see why users wouldn’t choose those carriers instead. The iPhone isn’t for everybody, but it’s better than year-old Android phones that may never be updated.