Straight Talk Wireless Gets Smart with Samsung Finesse R810

The prepaid wireless market has been hot in 2009, and it only looks like the trend will continue in 2010 and beyond. Now that the value wireless provider Straight Talk has snatched up the Samsung Finesse R810c, it's clear what direction the industry is moving.

Why wouldn't the heating up of the prepaid market continue when there are some really good deals on prepaid phone plans out there? As the market gets more competitive, more attractive plans will be available and more people will snatch them up and make the switch over to prepaid from postpaid contract plans.

It makes a whole lot of sense for many people to use prepaid plans for a few reasons. For one, many people save on their phone bills with prepaid plans. Service tends to cost less and phones are cheaper. Well...they used to be.

Blurring the lines even more between "traditional" cell phone plans and prepaid plans, Straight Talk Wireless has acquired the Samsung Finesse R810 for use on its prepaid plans. While Straight Talk isn't the first pay as you go wireless provider to roll a smartphone into its prepaid plans, this is significant because it shows that even the most affordable wireless companies out there realize that in order to win a certain segment of the population's business, they're going to have to make some high end phones available.

MetroPCS has made the Samsung Finesse available in the past. A few months back, T-Mobile unveiled prepaid BlackBerry plans (just in time for the holidays). It appears that prepaid plans and postpaid phones are coming together, which is an obvious response to the savings that prepaid provides and the high tech functionality that higher end phones provide.

Some people really like to have a nice phone--and with new technology being rolled into new phones seemingly every other month, people will always desire the new hot phone. There's nothing wrong with this except that it can get expensive. The obvious response to an expensive phone on a prepaid plan is that it defeats the purpose.

Since the long-standing generalization of prepaid users is that they are frugal and cost-conscious, a $300 Samsung Finesse smartphone does not exactly make sense since it would dig right into any savings customers may get with a well-priced prepaid plan. But now that more and more people from the postpaid contract market are "discovering" competitive prepaid plans, customers who are generally used to higher-end phones, the decision to have smartphones for use on prepaid plans makes good business sense.

In the ensuing years, we will probably see this trend continue, which is a good thing for prepaid and postpaid customers alike. One of the big problems with prepaid phone plans has been the lack of good phone choice. That is soon going to change and more people will be able to have affordable phone plans and an extravagantly expensive smartphone!

Read more details on Straight Talk's Samsung Finesse smartphone.