My father needed a portable Bluetooth-capable MP3 player with large or expandable memory. Portable MP3 players with such features typically sell for $80+ (
Trio mini), with the nicest units being at least $150 (
iPod nano) or much more. The cheap models have terrible battery life (3 hours for Trio mini). Creative solution? He bought a no-contract
LG Optimus Exceed 2 from
Verizon Wireless for less than $50 at Best Buy and used a
16GB microSD card that he already owned.
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| LG Optimus Exceed 2, Prepaid (no-contract) Phone from Verizon Wireless |
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This particular no-contract phone is fast, runs Android 4.4.2, and can be used without activating. In fact, it is very easy to bypass the initial activation screen with a special key sequence –
volume up,
volume down,
back,
home – pressed after restart at the language selection screen. After bypassing that screen just once, the phone is happy to run unactivated indefinitely after that – it will never present that activate screen again. Use airplane mode to prevent phone from looking for a network to save battery, and flip on WiFi and Bluetooth. It's like a $50
iPod touch. Nice deal.
You can get this phone from a number of places, as shown in links below. Of course, there are other no-contract phone choices you could make (check all no-contract carriers –
Boost Mobile,
Virgin Mobile USA,
T-Mobile, etc.). If you're willing to compromise on the phone software or other capabilities, you can get decent "MP3 player phones" for $30 or even $20.
For example, you can get essentially the same phone from
Boost Mobile packaged as the
LG Realm for only $35 on Amazon right now. It's $40 from other retailers.
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| LG Realm, Prepaid (no-contract) Phone from Boost Mobile |
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So that's like a $35
iPod touch.
Even nicer deal!
