So I decided to compare phone plans. Since I never talk on the phone, minutes were not of interest. I just wanted to know what the cheapest plan (with data) I could find was. I also wanted to know whether buying a phone outright made sense.
| Vendor | Monthly Voice | Monthly Data | Monthly $ | Phone cost | Total 2 year cost | phone |
| T-Mobile | $30 | $299 | $1,019 | nexus 4 | ||
| AT&T | 40 | 30 | 70 | 199 | 1879 | galaxy s3 |
| Virgin | $35 | 450 | $1,290 | iphone 4s | ||
| verizon | 40 | 60 | 100 | 200 | 2600 | galaxy s3 |
| sprint | 80 | 200 | 2120 | galaxy s3 | ||
| h2o | 60 | 299 | 1739 | nexus 4 | ||
| boost mobile | 47.5 | 369 | 1509 | galaxy s2 | ||
Short answer: none of the big plans could compete. Even a little bit. Note that the T-Mobile plan is 100 minutes talk, Virgin is 300 min, and in general I've assumed 2gb data.