If you go with Boost Mobile, you can't get a data plan without a voice plan. However, it's a pay-as-you-go service so you don't pay anything for voice minutes that you don't use.Rupp said:
You give them money every so often - the phone starts with $10 or $15 in your account. If you make or receive a phone call during the day, you pay $0.20 a minute. During the night or on weekends, you pay $0.10 a minute. You pay to send text messages ($0.10) but not to receive them. You pay to receive multimedia messages (audio or picture) - $0.25 a message. You can also pay to download games, etc.
If you don't use any of the above, you won't pay anything - nothing will be removed from your account. You must put money in every so often (I believe it is 90 days) or they will kill the account.
You get unlimited web access (required for tracking) for $0.20 a day. I guess this is removed from your account daily (I haven't checked yet - I'd log in now to check but I don't remember my phone number).
So, the initial $10 in the account will give you 50 days of service. You must boost (top-up) your account with more money after that to continue using it.
This is the good thing about pay-as-you-go - you don't need to pay for stuff you don't need. You only pay for things you use, when you use them. My current cell phone (that I use for calls) is also pay-as-you-go, but with a different company. I prefer the plan they offer and I don't have any intention of switching carriers.
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It looks like you may be able to get out of the $0.20 a day charge for web if you use accutracking (don't know about mologogo). If you only want to use the phone for tracking, you can disable web access but call them and have them enable MMS (which is supposed to be free).
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Tracking:
I've only played with mologogo so far. You can tell it how often to update the server. It defaults to 5 minute intervals.
You leave the phone on with the app running. It does not appear to be able to run in the background. Since I'm not using the phone for anything else, this isn't a problem for me.
Accutracking, on the other hand, appears to be able to run in the background. I will probably try setting this up tonight.
Mologogo displays updated maps on your phone showing you where you are (the map positions are updated when it updates the server - it doesn't show you your live position based on GPS). It can show the road or "satellite" view from google maps on the phone.
Mologogo can also show you the positions of your friends that are nearby and issue an alarm depending on proximity.
GPS Navigating:
You can also pay for a navigation system similar to what Squintz is describing through Boost Mobile. I think it's something like $5 to start and $1.50 per trip.
Personally, I prefer to use my PDA and GPS receiver for navigation. It may mean carrying more things, but the screen is bigger and my receiver is faster (to acquire) and seems to be more accurate than the phone one (and it works much better with limited satellite visibility).
