Finding a cheap cell phone and plan -- my experience

So I ended up buying M0to G6 ($179) and signing up for Spr!nt's "free for one year" plan. It isn't really free. You pay for the sim (~$3 USD). There's a $30 activation fee, which is supposedly refunded in the first two months. And then there are various taxes, etc., billed monthly. Most reports suggest the total is under $5 a month. Most write-ups I saw said you pay $10 for shipping but that's only if you want expedited. I didn't pay for it, and got the sim in 2 days.

You have to sign up with a credit card. It runs a credit check. I don't know how it did since I have my credit locked with all three agencies, but I passed. You also have to use e-billing and auto-pay or pay additional fees.

Since I didn't have an existing number to port, I got a free g00gle voice number and paid $3 to unlock it. The nice thing about the GV number is that you can select a number from a list of options. I should note I'm interested in the GV number ability to forward to another phone ... maybe I could use GV as a temporary phone number for annoying people. But I digress.

You can also buy port-able numbers on e-bay.

There was some kind of port problem and the e-mail said to log in to the website to continue. Only one problem: The phone number wasn't recognized and although I signed up for auto-pay, I never got the account number in a non-redacted form. So I could not create an account to log in. I had to call on the phone. Repeatedly. Finally got somebody who fixed the problem and after about an hour the number ported. But it was 1 1/4 hours of phone time, yo.

The other plan I heavily considered was M!nt (a T-M0bile MVNO), $15/month. It seems to be highly rated but I have T-M0bile now and while it's okay where I live, it gets no signal at all in a town I frequently travel to for work.

Freed0m Pop was another frequently-mentioned prepaid cheap service but apparently it uses VOIP for calling, call quality is not as good, and there are lots of hidden charges for overages.

Anyway, I still haven't decided if I'm going to keep the phone. I'm somewhat attached to my very cheap ($20) "dumb" phone and I only pay about $80/year to keep service.

edited to add: Here's my previous thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/axc9v8/suggestions_for_cheap_phone_service_and_phone/