What are the Best Cell Phone Services in the US?

James Hewfanger asks: "Cnet.co.uk has run an article on the five best cell phone services in the UK. These include a text-based service that gets you the number of a licensed cab company in London, Google Maps and Gmail on your phone, a service that can tell what artist and song you're listening to, an online service that backs up all your cell phone contacts and a text-based service that answers any question you can throw at it. What, however, are the five best cell phone services in the US?" Wirefly's cell phone plan comparison tool gives a good up-to-date look of all cell phone plans on the market.

TellMe (1-800-555-TELL)

[Anonymous Coward]

News
Driving Directions
Sports
Travel (flights, hotels, ...)
Movies (via fandango)
Weather

All voice activated with very good support for keypad.

Historically they had free directory assistance.
at times they had traffic information, it's now 511 (run by them)
They run 1-800-555-1212 (toll free directory assistance)

Google

[ari_j]

Text anything to 46645. That's the only such service I use.

how do they do that??

[dwater]

"
Hearing a song and not knowing who sings it or what it's called can be very annoying. Fortunately, Shazam provides a service that lets you hold your phone up to any song playing and it will then text you back the artist and track name in a matter of minutes.
"

"How does that work?", I wonder....clever stuff. ...and, again...

"
if you have a question that you need answering, AQA is the mobile service for you. AQA, which stands for any question answered, is a text-based service that literally answers any question you can think of. We asked it 'which was better, a CMOS or CCD sensor?' -- amazingly it came back with a half-decent answer.
"

In the words of Captain Darling himself, "Clever. Clever. Clever.".

I wonder if it's scalable.

jajah

[Anonymous Coward]

jajah.com must be one of the most useful services if you are calling internationally. I am calling to Europe routinely from my cell phone for something like 4 cents/min to landline or 17 cents/min to cell, and it could be free if I wasn't lazy. It is an internet-initiated callback service, and they have a java app that lets you to initiate a call directly from the phone, without the access to a computer.

Flurry

[sbyrnes00]

Flurry - (http://www.flurry.com) Mail and news on my phone. Also useful are: Google Local (http://www.google.com/gmm) Maps on my phone. Opera Mini (http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/) Web browsing on my phone. EQO (http://www.eqo.com/) VoIP and IM on my phone. Note that these all work with data services from Cingular and Sprint, but T-Mobile has recently started preventing the use of these services on their phones unless you buy an "unlimited" plan. Verizon either charges a few dollars a month for them or doesn't have them available in the first place. If you have Boost mobile service, you should also check out Loopt (http://loopt.com) - a service that lets you tell your friends where you are.

Best five services in Japan...

[KNicolson]

1. Deco Mail: most of the new phones now have HTML mail and large libraries of animated emoticons and the like - wifey's has over 1,000, plus lots more downloadable free. They can also be forwarded to PC mail clients and displayed successfully.

2. NaviTime: doesn't just tell you where to go, but copes with which exit from the subway station to get, if a taxi would be faster than trains, even which carriage to board to be closest to the exit!

3. Napster: well, maybe not.

4. iPot: mobile phone in granny's kettle so you can get an email if she doesn't use it for a day.

5. Anti-bullying kiddie phones [wireless-watch.com]: junior points camera at bully/perv, sounds the alarm, and parent gets a photo plus GPS coordinates, etc.

Come on people...

[todesengel]

Do people not even read the /. summary any more? The question is regarding the top cell-phone based services, not cell-phone carriers.

Re:how do they do that??

[Anonymous Coward]

I briefly worked for AQA so I know how it works. The questions are answered by real, human researchers. They can see a list of unanswered questions, grab one, research it and answer it. All previous answers are stored so they can also search the database for existing answers (the software automatically picks out sensible keywords from each question to facilitate this). As for scalability, they just keep hiring more researchers (they're paid per question).

Re:Google

[nickj6282]

I use this a lot, and it's fantastic. I'm on a text plan so I don't worry about the cost (google doesn't charge anything). You have to be with one of the major carriers though, when I tried to use this on US Cellular [uscc.com] it wouldn't work because they don't support the five digit text numbers. Google SMS [google.com] is a great way to get info on the go and has been my "yellow pages" for a long time.

On the subject of other cell services, I used to use Infone [wikipedia.org] before they went under at the beginning of last year and I haven't found anything like it yet to replace (other than google SMS). They were good because they'd give you directions and phone numbers and anything else you'd ask for and even text the info back to you so you'd have it.

Also, Cingular has their MediaMax data plan for $20 a month. This gives you unlimited mobile web from your phone, which is useful for grabbing an email or two on the road. But what they don't tell you is that you can use this as a dialup connection for your laptop/PDA if you have a phone that will work as a modem. I can connect to my Motorola SLVR via bluetooth (or USB) and get online anywhere on my notebook. It's slow as hell, but IM and browsing work OK through it.

Re:It is based on what you are looking for...

[flynns]

You put LOTS of effort into that, and your information is both timely and accurate.

However, this article is about third-party cell phone services that you access through your cell phone provider. Sorry there.