Can you buy a nice phone at a small cost?

I finally got annoyed at my Apple 3G. It needed to be flashed with firm ware but Apple dropped support for this long ago. So I wanted a new phone

• It had to be cheap under $200
• Have ICS (Android 4.0) or greater
• Have a dual core processor at least 1Ghz
• 1GB of memory
• It would be really nice if it had a Micro SD card and replaceable battery.
• It would be nice if it had GSM sims
• Most important no contract pay as you go with a plan cost of $50

This was hard since the Nexus 4 met some of my requirements but it was sold out Cricket has a Samsung S3 for $329 but it was not available in my market since it was 4G only.

Virgin had a HTC EVO 4G for less $150 and it met 95% of my needs. So I was not GSM and the unlimited plan was $55. So I switched and I've been really happy. I dropped in a 32GB micro SD and I got a great phone. The works with the Google play store and all my music

Cost for the plan over 24 month is $1300 for unlimited everything. So I ate my own advice and went Apple free.

Buying a smart TV is a dumb idea

Buying a smart TV is a dumb move because you are locking yourself into a technology frozen at least six months ago. Here are a few points:

• It cheaper to buy a ROKU or at worst an Apple TV and it going to be cheaper than the extra you will pay for a smart TV. I picked up a HD ROKU for $38, most big box shops are going to charge you that for a HDMI cable.
• There is more to go wrong. The more complex a TV has the more components that can go bad.
• It is highly unlikely that once you buy that TV the vendor going to update the firmware. So those new services are likely never going to be available for your TV.
• Your cable box is dumb when a smart TV talks to a dumb device the TV becomes dumb. A lot of HDTV are still being feed by a coax based SD cable box.
• Unless you are hooking up a blu ray player all your sourcing device are going to look pretty much the same on a $300 HiSense verse a $800 Sony Google TV.
• This market is still in flex and no standard exist for smart TVs. The closes thing you have to Smart TV standard is a company store.

So basically buy the dumbest TV you can with as many HDMI inputs as you can find.