Certainly you have to put as much effort into choosing a cell phone gift as you would with your own choice of handset. One of the best aids in this search is the Internet itself, which offers plenty of resources. So, doing your homework first, along with a bit of common sense should see you through.
(If you're giving a phone to a teenager, however, you might just want to add another handset to your own contract on a family plan and forget everything else. But check everything out first. People I know found it was cheaper, especially when it came to text messaging, to get a separate plan on another carrier for their teen.)
One of the best things you can do, even if you think you know almost everything about cell phones, is to read or download (as a PDF file) the Canadian government's pamphlet called Cell Phone Choices for Canadians. You can find it at http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/oca-bc.nsf/en/ca02271e.html.
With all of this in mind, here are five steps to take to make that cell phone gift a pleasure for, well, at least two years to come, or whenever the contract runs out:
- Before you do anything else, find out what kind of reception you're going to get from any particular service provider. In most of Canada's large cities this shouldn't be a problem, but elsewhere there can be dreaded dead zones. Also determine, with some careful questions and using your own knowledge, just where the phone will be used. Is this person going away to college? Does he or she travel a lot? Are there places in there locality where phones won't get a signal?
For example, I once had a phone that didn't work anywhere on the campus of a major local university. Really handy.
- Figure out just what kind of a phone suits the person on your gift list. If you know them inside and out, then this ought to be easy, but there's an Internet site Mobiledia (http://www.mobiledia.com) that can help. It has a quiz (http://www.mobiledia.com/guides/quiz/) that you can take, putting yourself in the place of your intended giftee. Just answer a few easy questions.
After you've got your results, the site divides the choices according to personality - adventure, fun, fashion, functional, trend setter, etc.
- In order get a good idea of what each Canadian cell phone company offers you could go to their sites and download the information. That's certainly the way I did it a couple of years ago, but there's an easier way.
You can simply find your way to Cell Phones Etc. (http://www.cellphones.ca/), where you can select your province and your city and look at the models offered by each cell phone company. There are also user reviews on the site. Another good place for cell phone reviews is About.com (http://cellphones.about.com), where you'll also find more advice.
- The next step can also be done on the Cell Phones Etc. site where it has been made extremely easy to compare the available plans from plain old pay-as-you-go to the high end data plans you'll need if you're going to give someone an iPhone or a BlackBerry. If your head isn't whirling just a little bit as you do this then you're not human.
- Remember, with cell phone plans you should choose something that goes with the person's lifestyle. Unlimited text messaging might be great for a teen or twenty-to-thirty something but completely wasted on a senior. On the other hand, would you trust a teen with a heavy duty data account?
One thing a friend of mine discovered, for example, was that having 700 minutes of talk time a month meant nothing to her teen daughter because she mainly spent her time texting. And when the teen did talk she did it in the evening and on weekends.
- Finally, take a good hard look at any contract before you put your signature to it. You can, essentially, get nibbled to death by ducks, especially when it comes to the add-ons.
Now, with all of this said, do you really want to give an actual phone as a gift along with a contract that's going to tie you in for two or three years? Maybe your better bet would be a gift certificate to a cell phone service provider, so the choice of phone, contract, etc. can be made by the recipient. If you want to be generous you could include money for a neat add-on, like a Bluetooth headset.
