It was once required that with a prepaid cell phone, one had to sign a contract to avail the services of a particular carrier. Hence, in order to be able to use a particular prepaid 4G smartphone, one had to enter a contract with a carrier. The prepaid services included pay-per-minute and pay-per-text offers. However, things have been changing with a lot of people opposing the contracts. Several carriers are broadening their scope of business with prepaid 4G smartphone plans that allow customers to get the phones of their choice that have no contract.

Paying only for what you use can be a great money saver for those customers who rarely use their cell phones. These prepaid plans can be either daily or monthly pay-as-you-go deals and provide a lot of flexibility with all-in-one bundling. Although several plans claim to offer unlimited services like talk, text, and data, it should be noted that the high-speed data allocation is limited to a certain limit. Prepaid 4G smartphones slow down on their speed, usually to 2G after a specified limit is crossed, which is usually around 1GB. The data allotment can be increased by paying a slightly higher amount. However, if you are taking the device from the carrier, then the charges paid for prepaid 4G smartphones usually come with the charges of the plan opted in addition to the cost of the device bought. Almost all features such as a postpaid plan and include long-distance calls, conference calls, caller ID, etc. are offered by prepaid 4G carriers. However, only a few offer unlimited directory assistance where the 411 dialing is often charged per call.

Since the prepaid services are not usually offered with a subsidy, most carriers offer cheap phone sets if you are buying a handset from them to keep the overall costs low. However, if you wish to get the latest handset from the market, there may be some carriers offering a prepaid variant. You can do your research before zeroing in on a particular handset.