Like many no doubt I have hung onto my beloved Kyocera 3245
pre-paid until almost the death knell.
After a fair amount of investigation I have just recently changed
over to a black Samsung A411 prepaid NextG thru Telstra in what I have to say was a completely painless experience.This is the blue tick country version that takes an external aerial.
The entire process took under 10 minutes, including adding my
existing credits to the new account.
The same phone number is preserved.
The cost is apparently standard country wide at $134.10 for a CDMA change over which is lower than the straight purchase price of $149 without a changeover.
With this you get $10 credit and 6 months extra life.
I still do the cheap thing and buy $5 recharge vouchers which
give 2 weeks extra life.
Had I been able to keep the 3245 for another 6 months this would have cost another $66.
Hence the real cost of changing from a 3yr old phone with weak battery to a new phone has been $134-$66-$10 or $58.
In addition the current option of cheap overnight and weekend calls (no-longer available) has been preserved.
The phone itself has a number of pluses and minuses, and I would
probably not have brought a flip phone except that I have got
the excellant Nokia 6120 ($295) for other family members and even they have found the small key pad harder to use than expected.
In actual use though, once you open the phone you are presented with large easy to see and use numbers and a screen which can display large text for entering a phone number.
The phones performance appears to match that of the CDMA one and our Nokia 6120 but this will require further testing to validate.
All in All a throughly painless process.
Robin Miller