very confused: GSM? Quad-band? Unlocked? Radio?

Newbie. I hope you can help me.

My carrier is AT&T and I would like to get a new phone, but without
smart phone services. (too expensive)

I have a Go-Phone contract. Might that make a difference?

There are lots of phones for sale on Ebay.

Should the new phonet be GSM? Must it be?

Should it be Quad-Band?

Locked or unlocked? If I'm only going to make phone calls, no
Internet**, no texting, no games, no apps, unlocked is fine? **Well
maybe in some sort of emergency that I can't imagine, I'd want the
net, but given that aiui without a data plan it's so expensive, I'd
probably never want it.

Most of all, I want it to have FM Radio.
There are two FM stations 40 or 50 miles from here, WAMU and C-Span
radiio, that I would like to receive. The car radio and 2 or 3 of
my table radios at home will get those stations but most won't. Are
all the cellphone FM tuners the same, or can you recommend a brand, or
a model that is better than average? I listen almost entirely to
talk radio, not music so broad frequency response is not important.

A friend says she's read that Samsung makes the best phones. True??
True regarding the radio?


FWIW, my previous phone was Samsung-SGH-A777 and it had GSM 850, 1900,
WCDMA 850, 1900. A guy at AT&T told me that I was using the GSM part
of that, buit I'm not sure.

I've lost that phone (which didn't have rado) so I'm back to using
the original basic phone I started with.. No speakerphone, no radio,
no bluetooth, no camera, That phone was a Motorola C139, which is
in the US is GSM 850 / 1900

Thanks a lot for any help you can give.

On Wed, 16 May 2012 11:41:53 +0100, "Anthony R. Gold"
<not-for-mail@ahjg.co.uk> wrote:

>You don't need an unlocked phone so long as it is locked to ATT. Buy an
>unlocked phone or one that was originally supplied for an ATT account. Avoid

Thanks for your reply. Somehow I didn't realize how many phones there
were, unlocked but for AT&T, until after your reply (even though I had
looked.) Got distracted and haven't bought the new phone yet.

>any phone that came on a T-Mobile account unless it has been unlocked. Best
>to put your own SIM into any phone you are considering and test it that way.

Uh huh, okay. .

>If your home table radios have difficulty receiving the radio stations you
>want to hear than you are unlikely to hear them at home on any cell phone,

Some of my table radios work with DC statsions and some don't work,
and there doesn't seem to be any price or age correlation.

My friend had a Sony Ericson and got good radio reception (stereo
radio with RDS (I think the abbreviation is) , but that phone broke
and she got a Samsung, whose reception is bad. A small sample but
it's all I have to go on.

>but you will get better reception when you are in places that are higher
>(with better long distance views) or closer to the transmitter masts.

Thanks.