[ale] OT: Cell service provider recommendations
Scott Castaline
skotchman at gmail.com
Fri Jun 6 18:03:04 EDT 2014
Charles,
I was just reading an article about CM in I think it was a post on G+.
They are developing an installer that is supposed to "automate" the
process and thus make it much easier to install CM onto your phone. The
downside is the installer is going to be closed source. I've also seen
reports that HTC has really come a long way up in quality control. I
still have their older Inspire molder which was fine at first but really
sucks now. Both of our Inspires seem to be possessed. My wife's will
just reboot or power off on its own. Mine I have to reset to factory and
then re-install what I use extra every few weeks. But they all saying
that the new One and I saw the M8 at AT&T yesterday is really nice. The
only thing is that the Samsung S5 had a much larger screen allowing my
old eyes to see stuff on it. Although I do have to admit that the M8 was
very clear and I was able to see most things on it.
As to everyone else thanks for the input. My wife wants me to try to
reach out one more time to AT&T letting them know that we are definitely
considering of separating ways with them and reach out with someone
else. Of course the upcoming merge with Sprint as Greg pointed out,
could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending who controls what. Since
it's after hours I probably won't do anything until Monday. I will
definitely let y'all know what we do. In the meantime I'm still open for
any other suggestions.
Thanks,
Scott C.
On 06/06/2014 09:35 AM, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> My current plan is to buy an HTC One M8 from swappa (
> http://swappa.com), then go with T-Mobile's BYOD plan. I was able to
> pick up a NIB M8 for about 12% less than retail. If I had waited
> longer or been willing to accept an older device, I could've gotten it
> for less. T-Mobile currently wants $660 for the phone, although
> they'll allow you to stretch the payments out over a couple of years.
> I'm going with HTC because they have officially committed to allowing
> you to unlock their bootloaders ( http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader
> ). This allows you to remove the bloatware that most carriers stick
> on their phones ( Verizon junkware, NFL Mobile, et cetera), and it
> allows you to install a 3rd-party (or your own) Android build on the
> phone if you wish. That in turn will keep you at least marginally
> safer from things like Carrier IQ (
> http://gizmodo.com/5864220/what-is-carrier-iq ), although of course
> the radio part of almost all phones is closed-source and there's no
> way of telling what goes on in there.
>
> Alas, if you buy a CDMA phone from Verizon, they will try to prevent
> you from working with your own device. You'll have to use a 3rd party
> tool ( firewater ( http://firewater-soff.com/instructions/ ) seems
> most recommended) to gain access in that case. T-Mobile seems to have
> the best contract deal, from my somewhat less rigorous research on
> carriers, and since they're GSM the phone will work in a lot more
> foreign countries. I'm going to put a CyanogenMod 11 nightly build on
> my new phone after it's activated. My current phone is an HTC
> Incredible 2 running CM 7.2, and it's been near flawless since
> December of 2011. Some of the CM enhancements have finally gotten too
> good to ignore though. I'll let the list know how it goes.
>
> -- CHS
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Greg Clifton <gccfof5 at gmail.com
> <mailto:gccfof5 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> My family used to have 7 phones with Verizon, until they wouldn't
> let me have an Alias 2 phone without $10/mo data plan or a smart
> phone without a $30/mo plan per line, whereupon I told them to
> take the phones and shove them (figuratively speaking). As the
> kids were in the "kick them out of the nest phase" of life, we
> wound up using a number of carriers including Verizon by way of
> Page Plus, Sprint by way of iWireless from Kroger, AT&T by way of
> Straight Talk and T-Mobile directly and in different parts of the
> country including NYC, DC, Atl, Columbus, GA. All of them worked
> pretty well, but like others have said it depends on where you
> are. Home coverage still isn't very good with T-Mobile, but they
> have WiFi calling on all their phones, so, assuming you have WiFi
> at home, you can use that to fill in the gaps.
>
> Since all carriers are transitioning or have already to LTE, I'm
> not sure you can rely on experiences from 4 years ago. T-Mobile
> coverage did improve after their merger with AT&T failed (the rep
> told me AT&T had to give them a bunch of 3G towers in the breakup,
> never verified, but my coveage did improve). The iWireless was a
> CDMA/EVDO phone and the Sprint coverage in South GA
> (Savannah-Fayetteville via Waycross) was much better than the
> T-Mobile GSM service a couple of years ago. I still rely heavily
> on the WiFi calling feature and it generally works well.
>
> One other note, T-Mobile merged with Metro PCS not long back (I
> think that is when they got into LTE since Metro was already
> rolling out LTE service). Also, I just heard on the radop today
> that T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed to merge. If T-Mobile handles
> customer service, that will probably be a good thing, if Sprint,
> not so much. Right now, the T-Mobile famly plan is hard to beat,
> though the Sprint Frambly plan looks good if you have a large
> family and/or lots of friends. What sorts of plans will they offer
> after the merger, who knows, but one might expect their LTE
> coverage to improve.
>
> Regarding phone choice, pick the size and features you want/need
> (T-Mobile's upgrade plan is pretty sweet in case you aren't happy
> after 6 months). My wife has a Galaxy S2 (GSM), I and my son have
> Galaxy S4's, one daughter just upgraded from an S4 to a Nexus
> (made by LG) and loves it. She says it is much faster than the
> Samsung and the screen is actually readable in daylight which is a
> major shortcoming of the Galaxy line. I have always had good
> service life of both their phones and their batteries with
> Samsungs. I think they are the top phone manufacturer for good
> reason. However, all the phones seem to have gotten much better
> over the past 4 or 5 years (a short eternity in the phone/computer
> universe). Competition does wonderful things for innovation!
>
> HTH,
> Greg C
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Calvin Harrigan
> <calvin.harrigan at gmail.com <mailto:calvin.harrigan at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On 06/05/2014 03:26 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>
> So we're sort of getting tired of ATT's games with
> pricing. We have 5 phones with 15Gb data and paying
> ~$340/month with my wife's state employee discount. We're
> looking to bail out of ATT and go with T-Mobile's program
> to pay contract termination fees. We can get all 5 phones
> exchanged for new ones plus the deal only gives 1GB/phone,
> but I can get and extra 2GB for $10. So what I'm asking is
> 2 things:
>
> 1. How is T-Mobile's service and also their coverage?
>
> 2. Motorola, LG, Samsung, or HTC?
>
> Thanks,
> Scott C.
>
> I've been with them for a bit. I used to travel a bit and have
> never had any trouble in metro areas. I only remember a
> couple times not having any signal at all. In rural areas it
> falls back as far as 2G, but you could still make/receive
> calls. Service has been great. Contacted customer support
> twice when I initially setup. One was to switch from prepaid
> to post-paid, the other was adding my wife to my plan. Both
> times the rep was knowledgeable and empowered (no need to
> speak to a supervisor). They just took care of business and
> even credited me a few bucks during the switch overs, even
> though it was working. Then earlier this year they doubled my
> data for free! Can't argue with that. Being able to text
> family over seas is also a win. No data overages also saves
> the day when you do go over. They throttle you back, not
> charge you more. All in all a happy camper.
>
>
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