Well actually I was sorely tempted at the Verizon store today by a
small non-smart phone. Charming and insouciente in its naiveté.
Dumb and simple? Yep. No touch screen, no google search, no watching
YouTube on a telephone...
I can do all that easier and faster on my MacBook, which is almost
always with me.
All I need to know is the little phone works with my Bluetooth, and
gets some coverage at my studio.
So this (unlimited talk, $85 a month including taxes and fees, phone
is free) is looking better and better.
Owen, you can talk phone to me any day. I'm off to peruse the rest of
that thread.
Any tips on getting out of the termination fee?
Tory
On Dec 21, 2011, at 9:42 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
And folks thought I was obsessive in my cell phone Odyssey! Buying
a cell phone is the most difficult purchase you can make. You have
three opposing entities:
- The Carrier: Tmo, Vzn, ATT, Sprint ...
- The OS: iOS, Android, .. and the others
- The Handset mfgr: Samsung, Apple, Moto, ...
The mix is awful. What finally moved me to iPhone w/ Vzn (shudder)
was that I couldn't stand the way the the handset mfgrs pissed all
over android to "make it better". This wasn't just me. Tests
showed that adding onto vanilla Android lowered battery life
noticeably. If you can get vanilla Android, do that.
All the info I got from that long but useful conversation (thank you
all) was enough defense so that when I entered the arena against the
horror (Vzn) I could smack down all their lies and get a reasonably
good plan+phone. I also found out that us old folks can get a
deal. Vzn has a 65+ plan that saves you a bunch. Still way more
than Tmo, but OK given the better coverage.
One warning: if you do get an iPhone, you will find that Apple will
distort/improve (you choose) your experience because they are trying
to make the iPhone experience the same across the carriers so they
force the carriers into doing things they do not want to do. For
example, you may find them shipping the phone directly to you,
rather than walking out of the store with the iPhone.
I have to admit that getting good coverage w/ Vzn in Santa Fe is
nice. It'll cost you more in those sneaky "fees and taxes" however,
'cause Santa Fe charges them extra for the extra towers .. and you
foot the bill.
BTW: One reason iPhone does not have 4G, 5G, LTE, Gamaray Telco w/
radiation burns .. is that they discovered that all these super high
bandwidth systems:
1-Only work in NY and LA (and a few other huge cities)
2-Suck battery like crazy
3-Are lies anyway
.. so they decided to go w/ standard 3G (which of course Tmo does
NOT use) which is good enough if you get real 3G. If you really do
love watching videos on your phone, maybe you should consider the
trade-offs. BTW YouTube works fine w/ 3G.
I can go on forever, but better stop here,
-- Owen
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Victoria Hughes <[email protected]
> wrote:
FYI re TMOBILE:
I have just had the latest in a round of totally unsuccessful
interactions with T-Mobile.
I have a Galaxy S2.
I have only had phone service with them for three months:
however I've had to deal with constant lousy coverage and
unexplained gaps in service,
I've replaced the original new phone that turned out to be defective,
with another 'new' phone
which today suddenly lost all signal so after almost two hours on
live chat with a representative, I had to erase all data and re-set
everything to the factory settings
This all started right before I had a phone meeting with a client.
T-Mobile's only comment was 'well, unfortunately things just happen
every so often. We apologize for the inconvenience'
I could NEVER get away with that attitude as a business person. Never.
I am now happily going to pay the $200 to break my contract with
them so I can sign up with Verizon.
Why did Americans end up with such total scam phone service?
When did we blink? How did this get legislated?
Tory
On Dec 21, 2011, at 7:34 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Just to follow up on this thread for those who care:
I finally got around to ordering (and then got around to
installing) a Wilson Electronics DB Pro with a directional (Yagi)
outdoor receiving antenna and an omnidirectional indoor antenna.
It is a dual band "transciever", essentially taking in whatever
signal it finds in those bands from the Yagi and retransmitting
them (after amplification) on the omni (to be placed at least 20
feet away and not in "front" of the Yagi).
I'm testing against T-Mobile on an iPhone4 (not 4s). My wife is
still on ATT with her iPhone 2g (soon to be replaced with a 4s),
I'll do some testing there as well. For those of you who followed
the earlier thread, my location near Otowi bridge on NM 502 at the
Rio Grande has almost zero effective cell coverage. We are down
low and all the known towers (espanola, pojoaque, white rock,
pajarito mountain) nearby are either marginally line of site or
completely blocked by intermediate topography. My goal is to get
good enough coverage to delete my wired landline service (which we
hardly use even with cell phones not working)... I expect to use my
wireless (900Mhz from Tewacom) with Skype to provide a backup
alternative to the Cell coverage. I'm testing Google Voice to
integrate it all (hah!).
Using the aforementioned "field test mode" on my iPhone4 I was able
to verify that I was getting a modestly better signal... using the
RSSI (received signal strength indicator) measure in the field test
mode, I was able to roughly map the net strength of signal to my
phone with and without the repeater turned on.
The Yagi is about 15 feet above the ground (a permanent
installation will b ecloser to 20) facing roughly due East which is
both my best guess as to where the tower I'm most likely to use is,
and corroborated by some ad-hoc direction testing with the
RSSI. The Omni is roughly in the center of my 30'x30'x20'(tall)
stucco-mesh-frame faraday cage of a house.
At the location of the Yagi, my signal strength is roughly the same
whether the system is on or not (not surprising as one step in the
installation is to reduce the retransmit strength until there is no
detected interference). At the opposite end of the house, the
signal is similar with the system on and virtually zero without it
(far end of my faraday cage of a house)... at ground level, I
normally see from 0 to 1.5 bars which means I get the occasional
incoming call that i can't answer and can rarely call out (to the
point of never trying). With the system on I get a very usable
signal equal to 3 bars... As I wander away from the house
outside, the rebroadcast signal drops off fairly quickly but it
appears I might get useable signal on most of my 1.5 acre property
where previously I had a few hot spots where I might get enough to
catch an incoming call for a few seconds.
I am testing with data as we speak and so far, so bad... in fact,
the whole signal dropped out in the middle of my attempt to get to
my favorite speed-test site (speakeasy.net) and of course, when I
got there, I am told that my favorite method requires Flash 7,
apparently not on my Safari/iPhone4 (not surprising). So I'll have
to find a better solution for testing... meanwhile anecdotally,
Google Maps loads at least as slow as I'm used to *anywhere*
without wifi. Well, fortunately I don't care so much about Data,
or at all at home where I have WiFi.
Overall I'd say the Wilson system works well, mostly as expected
and seems to meet my needs/desires. Internet research suggests
that Wilson is the best system with only a few spurious compliants
while all the other options have many complaints (though many of
those sound spurious as well?!).
FWIW, it is also worth noticing that Wilson Electronics is a small-
town company out of St. George Utah... the quality of their
engineering, packaging, documentation, online support rivals that
of any large scale consumer product supplier I know of. That said,
there may be little going on in St George beyond shipping... the
parts and primary packaging may come directly from China and there
may be nothing more than a small warehouse in St. George, but
indications are that the engineering and support may becoming from
there as well. A business article linked from their website
suggests that they sell 200,000 units per year and hired 50 new
employees in the last quarter... clearly a big deal for a small
town like St. George.
Let me know if you are interested in more specifics.
- STeve
Gil -
Thanks! Very Interesting!
My iPhone does have a "field test mode" (*3001#12345#*) which does
expose the alternate towers that it sees (and might use). I see
no indication anywhere that I could influence it's choice, nor
have I been able to find a concise description of the algorithm/
heuristics likely used to decide. The most obvious of course,
would seem to be signal strength, but that ignores issues such as
congestion.
Since GSM is a Frequency Division Multiplex hybridized with Time
Division Multiplex, it seems like there would be almost immediate
feedback to the mobile device as it tries to connect as to whether
there even *was* an available time/frequency slot to use... the
heuristic could be as simple as "try the strongest signal you see,
if it is full, try the next, repeat".
Along with a dB indication of (useable?) signal there is something
called RSSI (received signal strength indicator) which seems
useful for recognizing how much interference in the band there
might be. It tops out at about 50 underneath a tower but is as
low as 5 when still useable. Multiple towers competing and/or
possibly other sources of interference run this number up without
running up the "useable" signal.
There are two very cryptic numbers, C1 and C2 which from the mumbo
jumbo I've found, might relate to the heuristic which I was
seeking above... but I don't know yet... this is subtle and
complicated stuff and it appears that short of finding a
professional training course, there isn't much information laying
around for the motivated layman.
See what we have become in this Internet/Google/Wikipedia age? We
DO expect a LOT!
Depending on the phone there might be a # code to get it to
search for
more frequencies. Might take a bit of diging though. My oold
Cinguluar
phone for instance used #689# that let it borrow other towers in
range. I'll check for the potenial andriod # codes to see if
there's
something simillar.
On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Steve Smith<[email protected]>
wrote:
I'm hoping *someone* out there knows more about this than I do,
though none
of the earlier discussion seemed to bring any of that out.
I took up Gary Nelson's question about Cell Towers/Coverage, my
own
frustrations, and the other resulting conversations to do a
little research
and see if I could learn more and maybe even fix up some of my own
problems/challenges.
I'm testing iPhone 2, 3G, 4 against ATT and T-Mobile SIMS right
now. Mostly
at my house (very marginal signal if any) but will be doing
other places.
I'm looking at Cell Repeaters (primarily for my home, but maybe
also
mobile). I'm therefore *mostly* sorting out GSM related
issues, but there
is a lot of overlap in general RF issues, repeaters, tower
locations, etc.
I started trying to write up what I know (so far) and discovered
that (as
often is the case) the more I know, the more I know I don't
know. My 3rd
Class Radiotelephony license from 1974 and a BS in Physics
provides just
enough background to get me in trouble. I wrote a long, rambly
overview of
what I know (dominated by what that made me realize I *didn't*
know) and
decided most of you don't care.
So, if there are others trying to make actionable sense (or
merely slake
your curiosity) about the issues of Cell Reception and the
potential use of
Repeaters, ping me and we can discuss offline. Maybe once we
learn enough,
one or more of us can write up a (more) concise "lessons learned".
My long-winded ramble was useful (to me) already, as trying to
explain it to
the larger crowd caused me to dig just a little deeper than I
was for more
"practical" reasons. Now to get my nose back on the practical
grindstone.
- Steve
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
