AT&T GoPhone Prepaid Plans & Phones (Great for Teens) + Samsung Galaxy Express Review

It’s been several years since my daughter has had her own cell phone. That’s also “x” number of years that we’ve been paying that much extra on our already outrageous cell phone bill. We’ve been thinking long and hard about how cut down costs and weigh it against what services we really need. It may just be time to ditch the contract and go for a prepaid phone for my daughter. You can imagine how timing worked out perfectly when I was asked to check out the AT&T GoPhone plan.

DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored. All products mentioned and reviewed on this page are compliments of AT&T. All opinions of the products are my own.

We knew from the beginning that we wanted our daughter to have a smartphone with internet connectivity. The main reason was for safety. We wanted to be able to track her location to make sure she was okay (tweens are infamous for “forgetting” to check in when they arrive places) or in case of emergency. It was also important to us that it was easy for her to text and share photos with friends and family, especially since much of our family lives far away. And, while we try to discourage Munchkin from playing on her phone too much, having games at her fingertips does help keep her busy on long shopping trips and lessens the “I’m hungry,” “I’m tired,” and “Are we done yet?” statements.

AT&T GoPhone Prepaid Plans

Since she rarely talks on the phone and does most stuff via Wi-Fi, it just doesn’t make sense for us to have her on a full cell phone plan that costs an arm and a leg to keep up. AT&T GoPhone offers seven prepaid plans for their phones.

For Smartphones:

• $60/month
  Unlimited nationwide calls
  Unlimited messaging
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  2.5GB of data (Not shared!), Wi-Fi hotspot capability enabled
• $40/month
  500 minutes calling
  Unlimited messaging
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  500MB of data
• $25/month
  250 minutes calling
  Unlimited messaging
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  Add a data package for $5/50MB

For Basic & Messaging Phones:

• $45/month
  Unlimited nationwide talk
  Unlimited text
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  Unlimited data with first 2GB at speeds up to 3G
• $25/month
  250 minutes talk
  Unlimited text
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and 100 countries
  Add a data package for $5/50MB
• $2/day used
  Unlimited nationwide talk
  Unlimited messaging
  Unlimited text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  Data pay per use 1¢/5KB
• 10¢/minute
  20¢/minute nationwide talk
  25¢/text
  25¢/text to Mexico, Canada, and over 100 countries
  Data pay per use 1¢/5KB

AT&T GoPhone Cell Phones: Samsung Galaxy Express

For a teenager, there are some basic features that the phone paired with that plan should have. Those one-button walkie-talkies just would not do the job. AT&T has a nice variety of phones at different price points that work with their GoPhone plans. We received the Samsung Galaxy Express. It’s basically a “light” version of the Samsung Galaxy with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, touchscreen with good resolution, plays video, good sound for talk and music, and you can use all the Google Play apps including the Kindle for Android app.

I’ve had no issues testing out this phone at all with speed or functionality. In fact, our internet was out a few days and I was able to get super fast speeds when tethering my laptop to the phone’s super-fast AT&T 4G LTE connection ($60/month plan). I only wish this version didn’t have a sub-par camera. Photos are decent but nowhere near the “S” series phones. Good colors but pretty low resolution at only 5MP.

Making the Switch

My husband and I have been impressed with the phone, service, and plan options. When my daughter’s contract is up, we may give her this AT&T GoPhone Samsung Galaxy Express and then do either the $40/month or $60/month plan. The camera issue won’t be such a big deal as she has a small digital camera for those shots that deserve more megapixels and need some zooming in. This will also lessen the fear factor that she’ll lose or ruin a fancy-schmancy smartphone that will cost some $600 to replace or that she’ll have to use with massive cracks all over it. Hey, who knows – if it works out, maybe we’ll all be switching over to prepaid soon!