Life and times of palmsolo (aka Matthew Miller) » wireless carriers

Mobile phones landing daily and I can’t catch my breath

palmsolo — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:31:31 +0000

Wow, if you have been reading my ZDNet blog you will have seen that I have been inundated with mobile phones to evaluate over the last month. The phones I have received to evaluate have included the HP iPAQ 910 Business Messenger, Palm Treo 800w, Nokia E71, the Nokia N78, Nokia N82, Sprint BlackBerry Curve, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Advantage X7510, and Samsung Blackjack II with Windows Mobile 6.1 . I am still expecting the MWg Zinc II soon and there is a possibility an iPhone 3G may be in my near future.

The iPAQ 910 is going back tomorrow and then the other will be sent back soon too. It is almost a relief to box things back up and send them back since it reduces the phone clutter around my house and actually gives me a bit of a sense of freedom since so many can get overwhelming when trying to figure out what to pick up and take along.

palmsolo’s still here and summary of mobile happenings

palmsolo — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:49:32 +0000

Wow, I have been quite remiss in posting updates to this personal blog of mine and for those who are still actually reading it I apologize. I have been very busy with my yard (the grass is now about an inch in length and looking good – Flickr photos coming soon), coaching soccer (we only lost 1 game all season so far), watching soccer (my 2 oldest play for great teams too), spending time with my family, and blogging for ZDNet. I’ll try to update this a bit more regularly, but will give you a summary update below:

BlackBerry device in the house: Yes, it is true. I was sent a review T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve and this was really the first BlackBerry I spent any significant amount of time with. I really enjoy using it and plan to pick one up for myself soon, maybe even with the excellent @Home UMA/WiFi service that can reduce my monthly minute usage. I am amazed by how many 3rd party applications work with the device and find it to be very consumer focused now with the camera and media player. I posted a review on ZDNet and have very little to say about any dislikes with the device. I even found that Laridian has a Bible for the BlackBerry so I am very satisfied with the device!
iPhone still here too: I do still have my iPhone and AT&T account, but am probably going to be ending my AT&T contract soon by paying the early termination fee. I don’t need to be shelling out $70/month for a bit faster data than I see on T-Mobile, especially given the fact that I probably won’t be traveling as much in the future with much of our salvage work stopping soon (a change in our strategic plan at work). I still have my iPhone with the 1.0.2 firmware and find it to be a very nice device, but do miss all the 3rd party stuff available for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

HTC Advantage being used on the Sounder: HTC is still letting me evaluate the HTC Advantage as I conduct some software reviews (SoftMaker Office Suite, etc) and I have been using it primarily via WiFi on the Sounder commuter trains to and from work. I still may pick one of these up for myself for Christmas, but we’ll see what comes down the pipe soon.

New T-Mobile Shadow: T-Mobile just announced the HTC Shadow last night and it looks like a wonderful Windows Mobile Smartphone. My wife took my Dash and really likes the Smartphone platform, but she may like the Shadow even better with its larger display and cool slide-up display that reveals the phone keypad. She hates the volume JOGR on the Dash and at only $150, the Shadow looks like a great deal.

What about Nokia and S60?: I keep falling back to the excellent Nokia N95 for high quality phone functionality and 3rd party apps, but have no plans for upgrading any time soon. I thought of the N95-8GB, but with the new SanDisk 8GB microSD cards I think that is a better option. The N95-3G version looks good, but only works with AT&T in the U.S. The N81 looked good, until I read some reviews that weren’t that positive. It will be tough to top the N95, but I do really look forward to what Nokia will bring in 2008 with the new touch UI.

Thoughts on the Palm Centro: I am just about done with my review of the Palm Centro and have to say I think this is the BEST Palm OS device I have seen in a few years. When a GSM version is released I will most likely be picking one up for my Palm OS device (currently I only have older Palm devices in house). It is sleak, full featured, and priced right at $99.

MacBook Pro now running Leopard: My 160GB MBP drive crashed on me a couple weeks ago and I lost about 2 months of photos. It was still under warranty and a new drive arrived on Friday, along with my copy of Leopard. I made a clean install of Leopard on the replacement drive and now will be regularly backing up my data using the new Time Machine feature. I have no plans to upgrade my laptop any time soon and with my mobile device collection I don’t plan to get a UMPC either right now (as much as I would love to have an OQO Model 02 or something like that).

Upcoming travel plans: I will be flying into Amsterdam in November for a few days and then will be hitting the streets of Vegas for CES in January for 3 days. I am almost to MVP Gold status and may even have a trip or two to Alaska and one to Miami before the end of the year.

How To: Login to T-Mobile Hotspot when you are T-Mobile data customer

palmsolo — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:56:20 +0000

I was forced to upgrade to the full US$30/month unlimited data plan on T-Mobile that includes the T-Mobile Hotspot access. The problem was that I could not figure out how in the world to login to Hotspots because I needed a username and password that I was never sent by T-Mobile and had no clue how to get. I tried my My T-Mobile login and password that I use to manage my account at T-Mobile, but that didn’t work. I then Googled like a mad man and finally found the simple answer.

If you have the unlimited data plan here is what you need to login initially (I recommend changing your password after your initial login):

username: your 10 digit mobile phone number
password: last 4 digits of your social security number

That’s all you need to get into your account and update it with a new password.

T-Mobile data plan issues yet again, but Nokia seems to work

palmsolo — Fri, 11 May 2007 13:39:25 +0000

I am getting a bit tired of T-Mobile and their data plan issues. I had the unlimited data plan for US$19.99 per month and then added the WiFi option for my trip to London in December, but they never came through with the WiFi part so I tried going back to the data only plan. They wouldn’t let me do that and said I had to pay the US$29.99 plan with the T-Mobile HotSpot access. Well, I don’t want the HotSpot access since I would rarely use it so I tried the US$5.99 T-Zones plan and that has worked for the last 4 months or so.

I just recently upgraded my T-Mobile Dash to Windows Mobile 6 and also just received a Vox to try out and now neither of them will connect with the T-Zones plan, even trying the proxy settings. It looks like my only alternative with T-Mobile is to go with their US$29.99 plan again. I would pay it in a heartbeat if they had 3G like EVERY other U.S. carrier, but they are still on EDGE and I don’t think consumers should have to pay US$30 per month for EDGE and WiFi that is not needed. Why can’t T-Mobile offer the US$20 plan again just for data? I think they better watch out or they may lose more customers with their extreme slowness in adopting 3G while still charging 3G data rates.

On a whim, I put my SIM back into the Nokia N95 I am testing and data seems to work fine with the S60 devices so T-Mobile must have some way of detecting what type of device a person is on and shutting down that pipe. So it looks like my choices are limited in devices if I stay with the T-Zones plan and T-Mobile. I guess that knocks the Vox out of contention for a new device and the Nokia E61i is looking more and more enticing to me now.

I am locked into T-Mobile for at least another year due to contract extensions or else I would most likely jump to Cingular where I could get 3G data for US$20/month. T-Zones may open up again on these Windows Mobile devices like it has before and if not it looks like I’ll be using S60 and not Windows Mobile for my wireless data access.

UPDATE: I gave in and added the full unlimited internet plan (with T-Mobile Hotspots) so I am not limited in what device I use and don’t have to worry about loss of connectivity again.

No power, but still able to work

palmsolo — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:01:23 +0000

I just sat down to work on some Geek and ZDNet reviews and some of my regular naval architecture work when all power was lost throughout our house and every house within at least a 3 block radius. I just started tested out and taking photos of the Sprint EVDO Rev. A USB modem. Prior to today I was only seeing something around dialup speeds at my house, but earlier this morning when I tried out the modem at work (where I have 4 bars) a firmware update was downloaded and applied. Then when testing it out at home with this new firmware, I am seeing 1-3 bars with download speeds of about 500 kbps and uploads of 250 or so. This isn’t DSL, but it sure is faster than any other wireless service I have so I am able to continue working.

Sometimes mail-in rebates just SUCK

palmsolo — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:45:49 +0000

I am a religious follower of my mail-in rebates and NOTHING sneaks by me due to my diligent tracking. I submitted a $50 rebate a couple months ago when I picked up the Sidekick 3 and accidentally put my phone number on the form not knowing that I needed to put the number for the phone I was upgrading to get the rebate. I resubmitted the form with the right number and just received another form back saying my rebate was unable to be processed. I swear these companies do everything in their power to not give you the rebate after sucking you in with a good deal. This rebate is from T-Mobile so there is no way I am giving in this easy and they really need to think about who they are trying to mess with before picking their fights.

T-Mobile disappoints, but at least cheap data is available

palmsolo — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:29:50 +0000

I wanted to prepare for ways to connect while in London so I updated my T-Mobile EDGE data plan to the EDGE and WiFi plan a couple days befor e departing. The problem is that I never received any login information for the T-Mobile Hotspot account and had no way to connect once I arrived in London. As a result, the new service was useless to me. I then came home and requested that my account be restored to what I had, the $19.99 unlimited data plan. I actually received a couple emails back from them stating that I never had a data plan on my account and that the $19.99 plan hasn’t been offered for a couple years. I told them to check my bills for the last year and see what was on my bill. They then replied that yes I did have that plan, but that plan is no longer available so I was stuck paying $29.99 a month even though I would never use the T-Mobile Hotspot access.

I then actually considered signing up with another carrier for data, but T-Mobile gives me a very strong signal at home so right now this doesn’t make a lot of sense. I then told them to drop my unlimited data plan and just add the $5.99 t-zones data plan. The guy on the phone said that t-zones only allowed you to browse wap sites, but after getting my account setup I can access everything I did before using S60 and Windows Mobile devices. I haven’t tried any instant messaging client out yet, which may not work. However, I don’t really use IM on my devices.