Verizon has a nice albeit familiar surprise in store for 3G holdouts
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More than two decades after its original commercial rollout in a number of major markets around the world and several years on the heels of many wide-scale 5G deployments using various combinations of low, mid, and high-band spectrum, 3G technology is somehow still a thing... at least on one US mobile network.
Evidently, some Verizon customers continue to use 3G-only phones as daily drivers... for some reason, refusing to upgrade to 4G-capable devices so adamantly that the carrier is now taking said switches into its own proverbial hands at a (small) financial loss.
Following AT&T and T-Mobile's examples, Big Red is ready to send "select customers" a free new "basic" phone equipped with 4G LTE support. By "basic", of course, the nation-leading wireless service provider means that you'll need to settle for a dumb flip phone with no Android or Google Play access.
Then again, that might not be the worst play here considering that the goal of this "giveaway" is to keep folks set in their ways connected to a working network beyond the end of 2022. The vast majority of these customers will presumably be happy to receive something "basic" with a familiar design and a short learning curve as far as overall functionality goes.
Depending on your luck, you'll get an Orbic Journey V, TCL Flip Pro, or Nokia 2720 V Flip at no charge whatsoever in the near future if you're still using a 3G device, although with similar retail prices of between $79.99 and $99.99, we really couldn't tell you which one of these bad boys is objectively better than the others.
What's crystal clear is that all three are vastly inferior to the 4G LTE and 5G-enabled phones AT&T and T-Mobile offered in recent months to set the stage for their own 3G network shutdowns.
Naturally, you're always free to make the switch to a more advanced handset (at a cost) on Verizon if you want to, and you can even "decline the free phone for CDMA Sunset" by calling (800) 922-0204. We don't see why you'd want to go through the trouble of refusing something gratis, of course, that won't change your plan or contract in any way, merely bringing you one step closer to cellular modernity.
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