Many Tracfone Triple minutes phones have now been
introduced. Some of these are touchscreen phones (most of which are Android), and some are QWERTY phones. Also, if you bring your own smart phone to use with their SIM card, it will also be considered a triple minutes phone.
Tracfone airtime cards normally come in units of 60 minutes, 120 minutes, 200 minutes and so on. The 60 minute card costs $20, and the minutes are good for 90 days. At $20, the per-minute rate is pretty expensive. So Tracfone first introduced the concept of Double Minutes, where the airtime on the card would double when you added it to your phone if you had a double minutes Tracfone.
At first, only a few of their phones had the double minutes feature, but now all have at least that. However, airtime rates have continued to fall, so people started to take the double minutes feature pretty much for granted. So, Tracfone introduced...
Triple minutes phones now offer three times the number of minutes listed on the airtime card when added to the phone. So the 60 minute card now gives you 180 minutes, and the 200 minute card would give your 600 minutes. This is a pretty good deal right now. It’s especially useful, because the latest Tracfones come with advanced features such as access to social networking sites like Facebook via the phone’s web browsers. This tends to use up your minutes pretty quickly.
To be clear, the "for life" part refers to the life of the phone. If you have to switch phones, you will only get triple minutes on new airtime purchases if your new phone is also a triple minutes phone. All your current minutes should transfer to your new phone.
If you bring your own unlocked smartphone to use with their service, that phone will be considered a triple minutes phone. The Tracfone BYOB kit includes SIM cards of various sizes to use with a GSM phone compatible with AT&T or T-Mobile networks and CDMA codes to use with a CDMA phone compatible with Sprint or Verizon Networks.
Many Android phones along with a couple of iOS phones have been introduced.
Some of the newer models (for Tracfone) include the iPhone 7, the Samsung Galaxy S7, the Samsung Galaxy J7 Pro and the Motorola Moto G6.
Some of the older models include the LG Ultimate 2 with a megapixel front-facing camera and the Alcatel OneTouch Pop Icon with a five-inch screen.
Note that for these phones, you also have a separate allowance for text messages and data. So for a "60 minute" card, in addition to the 180 minutes (60 x 3), you also get 180 texts, and 180 MB of data.
Tracfone used to carry a few phones that had touchscreens but were in-between smartphones and feature phones in terms of their capabilities. They are usually no longer offered on their main website, but you can sometimes find them on eBay and similiar sites.
If you find one from a seller who has sold multiple units of a model from an overstock batch, you should still be able to activate it with Tracfone, as long the box says it's a Tracfone.
The LG 306g and 305c are basically identical touchscreen phone but run on different networks (ATT/T-Mobile and Verizon respectively).
The LG 840g has a 3.2 inch touchscreen and can access WiFi networks when available for internet access.
The Motorola EX124g has a 3.2 inch screen, 3 megapixel camera, music player and dedicated email client. There is a stylus to help you with those texts and emails.
The LG 800g Tracfone with triple minutes is a compact (its nickname is "cookie") touchscreen phone with a slightly smaller screen and a more rounded appearance. It's easy to use, but accessing Facebook is addicting. You just have to remember to shut down the browser to save your minutes.
Tracfone currently sells just one or two feature phones, usually fiip phones. It used to offer the QWERTY phones listed below. As noted above, if you find new old stock of these from a reputed seller, you may be able to activate them on Tracfone's service.
The LG 530g has bigger screen than their earlier vertical QWERTY LG model (500g). It has a separate email client and a mobile web browser.
The Samsung S390G has WiFi capability so you don't even need to use your triple minutes if you have access to a wireless network.
The Samsung S425G is another phone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard. This one has a 2 megapixel camera and Bluetooth.
The Samsung T404g has a slide out QWERTY keyboard for fast texting. It also has a two megapixel camera and music player, but you get it for the keyboard. Those texts you send will now cost less than ever with the Triple minutes for Life feature.
A text costs one-third of a minute. So let's say you buy the one-year 400 minutes card for $100. You get 1200 minutes when tripled. That works out to 8.3 cents per minute or 2.8 cents per text. That's a pretty good deal.
The Samsung R455C also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Its features are similar to the T404g except that it has 1.3 megapixel camera. As a CDMA phone, it will probably run on Verizon's network, which may have better coverage in your area.