Smartphones

[Rut Row]

The Missus has consented and we will be breaking the land-line tether -- going all cellphone. So, who has the best coverage and which smart phone do you use? I'm particularly attracted to the Android phones.

Wingfixer - given you travel a lot, I'd be particularly interested in what you use and your carrier.

[Wingfixer]

I converted to Sprint from AT&T about a year ago. AT&T had good coverage but Sprint is much better, they also have much better customer service and my phone bill is about half what it used to be for more and better service. Of all the guys I fly with I would guess its about 50% Sprint 40% AT&T and the rest have odd ball stuff like T Mobile, the Sprint guys bitch the least and if you know pilots, that's the best yard stick there is.

Kathy and I have the Palm Pre, which is a good phone but we will both be going to the EVO in June. That phone is simply amazing! I got one for my Mom about 6 months ago, she and my Dad use it as a hot spot for high speed internet at their house in the sticks (Cross Junction, Va). The thing is just does it all, it has more power than a lot of laptops.

That's my .02.

[derf]

So, who has the best coverage and which smart phone do you use? I'm particularly attracted to the Android phones.

My last land line was in 2002, then I switched to At&T until 3 years ago when I switched to T-Mobile. I have great reception almost everywhere, but so far the only place I find I don't have any reception is some of the great smokey mountains in TN, other than that If I don't have reception, I just look again in 2 minutes and its there again. It has worked from bangore maine down to key west, all along the BRP, san diego to san fransisco, las vegas, phoenix, dallas, san antonio, austin, whatever city the mall of america is in, the backwoods of mississipi, and indiana.

As far as operating systems, you can't go wrong with android, I'm on my second android phone, and I'm gearing up buy a 3rd in march. When you buy just make sure that you get a phone with 2.2 or later, big improvements over the 2.1 and earlier builds. Overall android is super easy for the basic phone functions, making and recieving calls, gps, pictures, internet, but some of the more advanced stuff (using it as a mobile hotspot) is kind of annoying to do. Then if you ever want something to do that the phone cant do, theres an APP for that. The android marketplace isn't as big as the apple market place, but thats only because they haven't had the same amount of time to accumulate multiple versions of the same program.

The blackberry smartphones are more geared toward corporate users, and their programs reflect that being more business oriented in nature, windows mobile has the ability to be a player, but it will take a few years until it gets on its feet. The iphone a great phone, the operating system is excellent, works seamlessly, and really is a great package, but it does have some drawbacks, the AT&T system being the biggest one. Most Iphone users are constantly dropping calls, a 10 minute conversation with my father results in my having to call him back 2 or 3 times. Early reports say that the switch to verizon should fix the dropped calls, but the network is about to be overloaded with the influx of new iphone subscribers. It will be a while until they figure out how to fix that, in the mean time they are going to be slowing the internet speeds if you use the phone too much.

I'm going to try and make it to the get together tonight, if I can make it, you can play with my phone all you want.

I also have a mobile version of another board that I want to show you too.

[Grady]

+1 for T-mobile. Their prices are great on multiple lines, and I love my G2 android phone, and my wife loves hers too. We haven't found a carrier that has service at our house, but the G2 has wi-fi calling, so it uses our wireless connection in the house and gives us great service. The wi-fi calling is a great option, unfortunatly many android phones don't offer it.

[derf]

The wi-fi calling is a great option, unfortunatly many android phones don't offer it.

Works on any android phone, this is one of those slightly more complicated things I mentioned, but its possible for any android based phone to use

http://lifehacker.com/5354607/make-and- ... nd-android

Its not available for iphones or blackberries though, not sure about winmobile phones

[phoo]

> some of the more advanced stuff (using it as a mobile hotspot) is kind of annoying to do

I use easytether. It's only $10 one time fee, rather than an extra $30/mo to Sprint. There's also pdaNet, which was also pretty good, but it was $17 or so (again, one time fee). Being that the actual technology to do tethering is super-easy, I went with the cheaper one. And actually, it's easier to use on easytether, anyway.

FWIW, I've used Sprint for years, including six years of consulting, and never had a coverage issue. It does seem that I can't get a reliable connection when I'm inside the locker room at hockey rinks when AT&T can, but that's not much of a concern for me. Sprint's calling plan is cheap(er) and their giving of free minutes is *INSANE*. Nights & weekends free. Other Sprint customers free. Any cell phone on any network in the US free. And they give me 1500 anytime minutes. I share those minutes with my wife's phone and with how many free minutes they give us (and that most communications these days are via text message) we used about 70 anytime minutes all month. I find their data speed satisfactory, too.

I have the EVO, and it's a great phone. But it's also from last June. If you can hold on a little bit, a bunch of newer, greater phones will be coming out in June or earlier. But as someone else said, just make sure it has Android 2.2 on it and whatever other features you want (screen size, camera resolution, hardware keyboard if you want one) and you'll be fine.


~Patrick

[Grady]

The google phone from t mobile came with it ready to go...simple. And all my previous blackberries over the past few years had it also.

Works on any android phone, this is one of those slightly more complicated things I mentioned, but its possible for any android based phone to use

http://lifehacker.com/5354607/make-and- ... nd-android

Its not available for iphones or blackberries though, not sure about winmobile phones

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

[derf]

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

Sent from my T-mobile mytouch using swype

(sorry, I had to)

[phoo]

Gizmo5 has been acquired by google and is not accepting new accounts "until relaunch."

http://www.google.com/gizmo5/

And that was back in 2009, so good luck with that. :)

http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/200 ... izmo5.html


~Patrick

[Grady]

Normaly I delete the text it adds, but forgot to when quoting. I haven't figured out where the setting is on tapatalk yet to stop it from adding it. It used to do it on email too, until I figured how to change it. They love to sneak in advertising any chance they get.