Month: August 2015

For several months, I have been using my iPhone without a cellular plan.1 I cancelled my service last summer when I left my full-time job and began dropping monthly expenses in an effort to tighten up the household budget.

All in all, I haven’t missed the cell plan too much. I am covered by WiFi 95% of the time, and rarely miss cellular. I’m covered at home, and almost everywhere I go on a weekly basis. This includes my local grocery store, Sam’s Club, the public library, our church, and my kids’ favorite playground. I have Comcast business internet connection, so when there’s no free public WiFi to be found, I can use my credentials to hop on one of the various “xfinity” WiFi nodes around town.

I use FaceTime Audio whenever possible for calling friends and family. If I need to make or receive a “real” phone call, I use my Google Voice number with the Hangouts app. Incoming calls appear as a push notification which I swipe to jump straight into the call. And these days, asynchronous messages such as texts and email have cut way back on the amount of calls I make.

Though, there a few many downsides to this system that I must mention. I can’t ask Siri to make a call using Hangouts.app. If I’m listening to a podcast and my phone is in my pocket, I can’t answer Hangout calls using the earbud’s “clicker.” I can’t make calls directly from Contacts.app. If I have Do Not Disturb enabled, my VIP contacts can’t reach me by calling my Google Voice number. For me, this means that when my wife is working a night shift, I can’t use DND and expect to receive a call from her.

Also, the incoming call notifications in Hangouts.app don’t show the caller’s name even if I have her in my contacts. This means that I have had to begin remembering everyone’s phone number if I want to screen calls. Party like it’s 1995.

Here are a few items I’d like to see in iOS to make things a little easier to live without a cell plan:

1. Siri API for 3rd party apps. Specifically, I want to be able to say something like, “Call my wife using Google Hangouts.”
2. VIP and Do Not Disturb integration. If my wife, a VIP, calls me in a VoIP app, I would like to receive the notificaiton even if I have Do Not Disturb enabled.
3. The ability to jump from Contacts.app to any other VoIP app.

   Update: When my wife became pregnant, she convinced me to get a SIM so that I would be reachable at all times. I bought a Ting SIM, and simply keep cellular data turned off iPhone-wide. Shameless referral link. This costs only $6/month, and gives me the option of receiving an emergency call from my wife at any time.

   TL;DR: I use WiFi, even for phone calls, and carry a Ting SIM for emergency situations.