T-Mobile Prepaid

Reviewers say T-Mobile Prepaid offers an excellent combination of voice quality, phone options and flexible-rate prepaid wireless plans. The cheapest option is $10 for 30 minutes, which don't expire for 90 days -- making this a good option if you don't plan to use your phone very often. There are also packages for $30, $50 and $100. The $100 package gives you 1,000 minutes, good for an entire year. See our review of T-Mobile's Prepaid Annual Plan (*Est. $100 for 1,000 min.). If you replenish your account before your minutes expire, the unused minutes roll over. You can do this online, from your phone, or at one of 90,000 retail locations nationwide. You can also sign up for automatic refills.

T-Mobile also makes it easy to get a prepaid smartphone: If you already have an unlocked GSM phone, you can insert T-Mobile's $7 prepaid SIM card and use your phone on T-Mobile's prepaid network. T-Mobile also sells prepaid Samsung Gravity Smart (*Est. $200) and Nokia Lumia 710 smartphones (*Est. $350). However, T-Mobile's unlimited talk-and-text monthly plans cap data at 100 MB (*Est. $50 per month) or 2 GB (*Est. $70 per month), unlike Virgin Mobile Beyond Talk Unlimited (*Est. $60 per month), which offers unlimited talk, text and data and a more advanced smartphone.

Prepaid wireless cell phone services such as T-Mobile Prepaid can be judged most effectively by customer surveys in which users are polled about network coverage, circuit overloads, dropped calls and customer service. ConsumerReports.org, J.D. Power and Associates and PCMag.com all run annual polls, ranking T-Mobile against other prepaid providers. PrepaidReviews.com posts an editor's review and up-to-date user comments.