So as far as just going to buy the phone outright doesn't do much other than the flexibility to get another phone whenever I wanted to?
Yeah I was just confused because they were telling me this whole junk about some kind of data plan thats 30 bucks or something? LOL
I'm assuming she was trying to tell me I'd be on some kind of prepaid plan if I were to buy the phone straight up haha
Right, if you buy an unlocked phone, you can use it virtually however, and almost wherever and still be able to upgrade whenever you want. <-- What I'm referring to here is buying the phone on eBay or somewhere else; not from the carrier, because I'm not sure that a carrier would even sell the phone straight away off contract, though they might; never looked into that myself due to perceived cost.
If you buy one from ATT or any other carrier, you can get it for relatively cheap ($250-$300 versus $600-$700 for an unlocked Note) because the carriers subsidize the cost of the phone which they cover by whacking you over the head monthly with their ridiculous fees and such.
Here's the breakdown of my monthly setup-
450 min (same as you said below): $40
Unlimited text/messaging: $20
3GB data plan: $30
The next lower data plan is useless because its only 300MB per month and only saves you $10 off my plan listed above!!! To put 300MB in perspective, if you stream about half an hour of music a day (lets say using Pandora or Google Music, or what have you), you'll burn 50-100MB daily. Multiply that x30 for a full month, and you'd be foolish not to at least start at the 3GB level. Also, if you want to go with 5GB, it's like $20 per month more than my plan, but truth is, if you have WiFi at home (and maybe work, which I have both; lucky me!), then 3GB ought to be more than sufficient. I have never once exceeded 2.7GB in a month going back to Dec 2010, but again this is because 80% or better of my life is spent on WiFi (which doesn;t count against your data) and I am what I'd consider to be a "moderate level" data user, not someone who lives on the phone streaming Netflix from dawn to dusk.
So YMMV, but that's my story.
-Ryan