What does this mean for realistic monthly earnings now? Max $5? $10 possible?
With adequate diligence, over 30 days:
30 check-ins at 5 coins each is 150
30 spins at 5+ coins each with four streak bonuses of 75 is at least 525
1 ad per day plus an extra every 6 days with five streak bonuses (because again, as far as I can tell, you complete your 7-day streak with your first video of the day and start the next with the second) is 445, but
5 ads per day plus five streak bonuses is 675.
So if you are careful to keep up with it every day, if my math is right, you're getting 1350 coins per 30 day period, plus...what is that, an extra spin streak bonus every three and a half pay periods?...plus whatever you spin above the minimum.
So I believe it's no longer a guarantee just for keeping up with it; your spins need to average out to at least about 12.5 or so, or else you may need to fill in with Offers and Surveys occasionally. And the math is much less forgiving for letting your streaks break, which mine did while I was on vacation recently.
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Provided there are no other regular methods of earning coins, users will have to decide whether or not just getting a discount on the service is worth the effort. Instead of getting the $15 plan for free, the cost would be in the neighborhood of a couple dollars.
Another option would be to choose the less expensive $10 plan if users want the best chance of getting service without paying anything.
Could also be that Boost users move somewhere else. That Helium plan for example might be satisfactory until they inevitably raise their prices.
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Status update:
It looks like this month I will finally end up paying actual money to retain my plan. That's a little over $20 (plus my time and attention that I don't begrudge or I wouldn't have tried this) so far, and about eight months of (for my purposes) More Than Adequate service, and the first $15 of that was basically the cost of entry. By my estimation that means they are competitive with how I've done so far with Tracfone, and (since all other challengers have folded) ahead of everyone else.
(Side note: Given my typical usage and general circumstances, the $10/mo setup on AT&T might have been the better choice in the long run. At the time, I didn't have a 5G device, and T-Mobile had slightly better 4G coverage at my house, so I went with the T-Mobile option. I think T-Mobile still has better 5G at my house than AT&T does - although both are better than the 4G coverage - but particularly considering that eventually I'm going to need to switch my Tracfone service to Verizon, I suppose there's a level on which I wish I'd gone with the cheaper plan anyway.)
There's no change to the maximized minimum earnings since my last post, as far as I can tell (although the suspicion I mentioned before that has gotten stronger - the one that ad availability is now on something like a time-of-day based cycle instead of a rolling since-you-last-watched). So if you are fully diligent about earning, you need to cover an average of about $2.12 per month in better-than-minimum spins or offer completions (without shenanigans - see below). Note that while it excludes shenanigans, this estimate does include both the fact that the app says there is now a loyalty bonus of 50 coins every three months just for sticking with the service (I'm not sure if I've seen that yet, though) and the fact that you should get an extra streak bonus about every three and a half billing cycles.
My experience is that spins are heavily weighted to the low end, - last time I had one higher than that was the 14th; 10s seem to be getting more and more rare; and last time I had one higher than 10 was a 25 on March 10th...before that there was a 50 on February 27, a 100 on February 25, and before that I'd had 25s and 50s on occasion and even a 250 back at the beginning of February.
Unfortunately, between the limitations of the rarity of higher spins and the fact that I have occasionally slipped up and lost my streaks, I exhausted what buffer I had built up. And there was one time a week or so ago when I could almost swear I lost a video streak because there were no videos available when there should have been. I wasn't paying close enough attention to when I checked to be sure, though.
I really need to be more careful about maintaining my streaks. I also may switch from my previous habit of looking for Offers only either when really bored or when I noticed they were offering multiplied earnings, to checking periodically for games I might enjoy anyway...
As for what I meant by shenanigans:
Back in July of last year, JVV said someone had commented that if you use both the IOS and Android apps you can double-dip on the number of daily videos. I think I missed that at the time. I wouldn't get an iPhone just to try to do that unless I come across one being discarded and get it for free, but I may test whether that works with multiple android devices. I doubt it, but maybe.
There's a 50 coin bonus for adding a second payment method and keeping it through the next month. It has just occurred to me to wonder whether adding a new Privacy card every month and retiring the previous one could make this a recurring reward. I doubt I would try to keep doing that, but it's mighty tempting at least to do it once and try to find out. Side note: Removing payment methods is not intuitive. You have to drag the payment method to the left a little from the screen where you select which one autopay would use, to expose a little trash can icon, or possibly just swipe right on it. I'm not sure whether the fact that I just removed one by swiping right was because I had the trash can icon showing or if that would do it anyway.
Actually, come to think of it...I wonder how long it would take them to notice if I tried switching my backup payment method back and forth between just two cards every month. They probably keep a history.
This isn't really a shenanigan, but there's also apparently a 50 coin reward for the first two times you make a minimum $5 payment through the app (I think the language implies this means a manual payment, not letting auto-pay happen), so...since I missed the mark this month by over $5, at least that should give me a little bit of a jump start on next month.
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Not sure I understand your ad availability theory. Can you elaborate? Are you talking about what time of the day an individual is able to watch an ad, or are you talking about whether or not there are enough ads to distribute to the whole Boost user base?
As for the 50 coin bonus, I have never seen the notification popup of that award. If instead the system silently adds 50 points every 3 months, I have not noticed that either.
Agree that spins are almost always land at 5 coins. Perhaps the odds of getting something better happen when there are fewer players like in the middle of the night? No idea. Just speculating here.
To earn more points in mobile games, the casino ones apparently are not that hard and do pay. I have never played them though.
In addition, a few people do the 1-coin web offers. Tap on the link offer. Wait for the web browser to open the results. Then, tap on one or two links on the resulting webpage. Wait at least a minute; maybe two minutes. Then, go back at tap on another offer with the Boostone app. This way of earning coins is of course tedious but you can determine immediately if you are rewarded. Tapping 10 1-coin offers a day would give you $3.00 more each month.
Boost closed the loophole last fall of using both an Android and ios device in order to watch more ads. Using 2 Android devices will not allow you to earn more coins either.
Sounds like you are getting close to being a Boost customer for more than 9 months. Once that happens, you qualify for a phone upgrade. Look then within the Shop section of the app and see what discounted phones you are eligible for. Basically, the prices will be the same as what new users pay who also purchase an expensive plan with the device.
For instance, you would be able to buy the moto g stylus 5g 2023 for $9.99 provided that Boost is still promoting that device and price to new users at that time. New users could also get the phone for $9.99, but they have to purchase the $60 plan.
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Thanks for the tips!
What I mean about the ad availability is this: I'm pretty sure back when I started (at which point the ad cap was still 25), my testing had me almost completely certain that - setting aside whether they had enough ads to show; I've never seen a situation where I was convinced that was an issue - they would not let me watch an ad unless I had seen fewer than 25 of them in the last rolling 24-hour period, similar to how the spins work. So I might do my daily spin as soon as it was available, then click to watch an ad, and if that ad were shorter than the first one I'd seen the previous day I might have to wait a few extra seconds before watching a second one.
At some point between July 10 and July 25, I think I concluded that they had changed it so that the ability to watch more ads seemed to be based on a fixed 24 hour period (time of day to time of day) instead of when I had last seen one, although I have never figured out what time that might be. I think midnight UTC would fit the behavior I've seen, but that's just a guess. At any rate, it seems as if I can watch my five ads right after I spin one day, and then watch another five much earlier the next day, but then I can't watch any more yet when I spin later on. I don't like doing that because I worry about whether it makes me more likely to break my ad streak (whether due to their system or because it makes it easier for me to forget).
My most recent approach to Offers is to pick a game that I think I'll actually enjoy and that offers some number of coins for every completed level within 60 days.
However, I'm probably going to drop the one I've been playing most recently (Wood Blocks by Staple Games) because its gameplay-and-ad loop gets its hooks in me more than I like and it takes quite a lot of play time to complete each level (to its credit, each level gets five coins, but I think it's still probably even slower than the 1-coin web offers, albeit more fun).
As for the device offers...I doubt they'll offer one I'd be willing to use, and I lack the patience and temperament for getting a discounted device and selling it. But I suppose when I pass nine months I'll take a look. Thanks for the heads up.
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A couple months ago, I did experiment with trying to watch more ads before the 24 hours was up. So if I watched 5 ads at 10pm, there might be a 1 or 2 available the next day at say 12pm. Then throughout the day, I might get another 1 or 2 ads. But then when I got to 10pm that night, less that 5 ads were available. Just too confusing to keep track of, so I gave up.
Supposedly, the casino games can be set to autoplay which means user interaction is not required. If Tapjoy ever offers 3X points again, I might try it to see if that is true. There however has not been any sort of promotion like that from Tapjoy this year.
I am sure Boost will eventually offer a good deal on a phone that you find worthy. The downside of waiting too long for the right deal though is that Boost requires the account used to purchase the upgrade to be active for the full year before they unlock the device. Device does not have to be used on Boost the full year to be eligible for unlocking; just the account has to be considered active all that time.
Going off on a bit of a tangent...You're right that they may offer a good deal I would take eventually...especially since, if I'm reading the result of a quick search correctly, Boost now supports eSIM on Android.
I believe when I was shopping last year for my current daily driver, there was no sign of either Boost or Tracfone supporting eSIM anytime soon except on iPhones, and since I figured I might have to move my Tracfone line to Verizon before my airtime runs out (and probably would want to anyway, if I had a device on their blessed list), I also needed Verizon compatibility. I think there were a few models that met all those criteria, but from what I recall, once I factored in that I wanted Android updates at least through Android 14 and security updates at least through 2026, I'm not sure there were any options left except the Galaxy S21FE (one specific model number out of about a dozen, which made shopping for it a pain) and the Oneplus 11 (or possibly 11R).
I'm still not sure I'm going to be interested in upgrading that soon (the plan at the time was to keep whatever I got until either I broke it or security updates stopped), and I'm even less sure I'm willing to go back to a carrier-locked daily driver (I have had a few carrier-locked devices since then, but I think my last one as a daily driver was the Motorola i85s); but if I could use eSIM for Boost, that at least means there are more options in the running than just latest couple of OnePlus flagships.
Would you mind sharing where you saw Boost Mobile was supporting eSIM on Android. According to their help article that doesn't seem to be so:
https://www.boostmobile.com/support/activation/install-your-esim
Boost Mobile does have an international travel eSIM offering which works on Android as well as iPhone but these are data only:
Search sometimes also includes results from Boost Mobile in Australia, which, I believe, supports eSIM on both Android and iOS. Boost Australia is separately owned and not affiliated with Boost in the U.S.
Now that you point that out, I'm pretty sure what I found was the data-only eSIM FAQ page, which doesn't really very clearly talk about being data only and just looks like a Boost Mobile support site, so I thought eSIM support must be either new or coming soon. I noticed and ignored the Australia results, but didn't look closely enough at what I had found beyond making sure it showed US support.
So yeah, at least at the moment it would probably have to be a Oneplus 12 or 12R. Assuming those are Verizon-approved, and if I were to pull the trigger before an even newer model was a better option. I don't really see myself going from the S21FE to an 11 at this point.
Boost does not sell any Oneplus phones. They do offer the Samsung S24, but not sure if they give any sort of discount for upgraders or not.
I wonder if anybody is buying the Coach Prime version of the Moto Razr. If not, that device could be heavily discounted soon.
As you guys figured out already, Boost only supports esims on Apple devices. Support for Android will certainly arrive at some point in the future. Exactly when? Who knows.
I don't remember if I specifically checked the S24, but I know I got the impression from my prior research that the S21FE was the last device Samsung had released with a US model number (almost certainly a prerequisite for being on Verizon's approved list) that had support for dual physical SIMs - and, at that (as I mentioned), only one model number out of about a dozen (I think there were three with dual physical SIMs for other countries); plus, if I understood and remember my reading correctly, dual-sim support was disabled in firmware at release (both physical and eSIM) and only made available later in an OTA update, and depending on the carrier it might have been further disabled in an additional way - one that could potentially persist even after unlocking and refurbishing, which is why I ended up having to return the first one I bought and ordering another. Samsung support even said my device ID was supposed to have dual SIM support, and it looked to me like the physical contacts were there, but no way to access the feature.
Taking a quick look now...the first several sources I found say the S24 is the first Samsung to support dual eSIM, but that it does not support dual physical SIMs. On the other hand, most sources I was able to find about the S21FE said either that it supported dual physical SIM or that it did not, and didn't seem to be aware that it depended on the specific model number.
GSMArena says the S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra can have dual nano SIMs and lists several models each. And there's no guarantee they have all the applicable model numbers. But based on my previous reading, I would expect that a US model with dual pSIM would have a model number ending in U/DS, and I don't see one of those.
Dual SIM is not a popular feature with US carriers, from what I have seen, and Verizon's whitelisting of specific devices allows them in particular to keep something of a stranglehold on that aspect of the market and restrict what it's worthwhile for manufacturers to make available with US network band support. At least, that's part of what some folks think is going on.
Anyhow, the S21FE should get Android 16 eventually and five years of security updates (it was originally supposed to get 15 and security through the end of 2025, and then Samsung announced they were extending that for a bunch of devices in February 2022), so unless I find myself frustrated by its shortcomings or I break it, I wasn't really planning to upgrade again until...probably Black Friday season of 2026, at which point (depending on what providers I am with at the time and what changes have occurred) my best prediction currently would be (in descending order of likelihood) that I would upgrade to either the latest or next-to-latest Oneplus flagship or step-down (I believe that's what the R versions are), the latest or previous release Pixel or Pixel A, or...well, looking at the direction everything else is headed, I feel like the next most likely candidate behind those is likely to be the Fairphone 6 or 7.
I've drifted WAY off topic now, though.
The latest update:
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
Spinning the wheel is gone. Streaks are gone. Videos are now one coin instead of two, and videos and offers are now the only means of getting coins.
My last spin streak was on the 2nd and my last video streak was on the 5th, and the change happened on the 7th. I might have missed my usual time on the 7th and broken my streaks anyway, but even if I didn't, at least I didn't have to suffer the added frustration of "C'mon, I needed ONE MORE DAY!..."
I'm not sure what the video limit is now, either; looks like it might still be five.
As @JVV pointed out, there may be some games that can autoplay and earn points for offers without interaction. There may also be some that any given user might actually enjoy (my latest vice is a Spades app that also has a bunch of casino in it - for me it's pretty much all about the spades, though). And there are the 1-coin offers for visiting websites, which are quick and easy, but (I find) require more attention than the video ads to make sure I'm actually hitting the point where I get credit. I also figure there are folks who will find offers under the Shopping category that they are interested in.
However, the fact remains that the monthly earn for essentially just keeping up with daily check-ins and letting a few videos play while I did something else has dropped again. First it went from guaranteeing enough to cover the $15 plan if your streaks were intact to only covering most of it unless your spins averaged better than 10 each. Now...well, the math is simpler, at least. 30 days at a nickel apiece is $1.50.
I am likely going to go ahead and try to make enough on offers to cover at least most of my next bill, and maybe, just maybe I might try to get the next one after that, but...that is probably the end of it for me.
...Heh. Someone dropped the ball...the app gave me a notification yesterday that I was about to complete a video streak. As expected, I did not get a bonus for a video streak.
I actually received the video streak bonus early this week. Wonder if I ever receive that again? Right now my account still has enough coins to last for a few more months, so I will wait a little while to see if Boost changes their mind and gives users the ability to earn more coins.
Supposedly, users can potentially earn free service on Helium Mobile if they enable location sharing on their phone. Since Helium just distributes a fixed number of points to those who successfully share their location each day, eventually there will be a time where there are too many subscribers and not enough tokens to cover the monthly payment. Furthermore to get credit for location tracking, the user apparently is required to cover some distance (like a mile???) each day. I suppose that will be okay for those who are in their vehicle all day. Those who work at home would probably not get credit everyday. I am also guessing that enabling location tracking drains the phone battery enough that it is noticeable.
It's quite possible. I'm using MOBILE tokens earned from what Helium calls "Discovery Mapping" to pay for Helium service. It is admittedly easier for me to cover the $5 cost of my plan (I got in when South Florida was Helium's test market) than the current $20 cost.
For what it's worth, the recent trend is I'm earning more tokens. I was averaging 400 a day but recently it's been 450. Generally, your analysis is correct but I guess, for now, those participating in mapping is down.
The ctiteria is a minimum of 40 hexes per day, which indeed works out to around a mile.
I suppose it depends on what one does besides work on a daily basis. I run 3 miles most days, so, for me, covering the distance is easy. It could just as easily be covered walking, biking, or driving while running errands. At least, where I live, it's not difficult covering a mile when out and about for whatever reason.
I would have thought so as well but can't say I've noticed significant battery drain. I also tend to toggle on Discovery Mapping in Helium's app, get my run (or other distance covering activity) in then toggle Discovery Mapping off otherwise.
I currently have 25,625 MOBILE tokens in my Helium wallet. The value of the tokens like all currencies (crypto or otherwise) fluctuates but today that translates into around $35. The tokens don't expire.
I'll go ahead and add my Helium referral code to the appropriate topic in case there's interest. The referral gets you (and me) $5 toward monthly service.