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March 3, 2008

Another reason to dislike T-Mobile ()

by fluffy at 11:58 AM
My parents recently upgraded their phones. They didn't want to pay a lot for them, so they opted to just get some Nokias (the 5300, I think) which were $50 with a contract extension. So I was showing off Google Maps to my dad on my W580i, and he wondered if he could run it on his Nokia. I figured he could, so I put my SIM into his phone so I could download Google Maps Mobile, which downloaded and installed just fine.

However, the phone doesn't allow applications to do network stuff by default; you have to grant access to an application for that purpose. Unfortunately, T-Mobile has disabled the option to grant network access to applications. Clearly T-Mobile just wants to restrict people to only using the craptacular network stuff they deem appropriate for mobile use, rather than allowing them to actually make use of their network access.

I have a feeling when my contract is up I will be switching to a pay-as-you-go service. Unfortunately, T-Mobile is the only one with PAYG rates which make sense, and no useful data service whatsoever (you can only access T-Zones, which is little more than a ringtone purchase portal at this point). AT&T supposedly has data service on PAYG but they're completely unclear on the details, and their PAYG voice rates are confusing and byzantine.

1:57 PM I found unbranding instructions which should make it so that you can run any Java app without restrictions.

Comments

#10529 03/03/2008 12:25 pm
Hey fluffy do you know the very cheapest way I could get a mobile device that can access amazon.com or addall.com? I'll ask this over on the amazon seller forum, too.
#10530 03/03/2008 01:25 pm
If you just need WiFi access and want a keyboard-type data entry, there's the iPod Touch ($300), the Asus Eee ($400), the Nokia N700 ($200ish) or N800 ($250ish), and the Sony Mylo ($300 for the general public, $250 for well-connected people). Of those, only the Eee and Mylo have anything approaching an actual keyboard though (the others use an on-screen keyboard; there's also the Nokia N810 which has a keyboard but it's much more expensive than the N800). The Mylo and Nokias have the advantage of also having a Skype client, so they act as a (gimpy) phone when you're on a WiFi network. If WiFi were more pervasive and the Mylo had a way of syncing my PIM stuff (via Plaxo or iSync) I'd probably go with that (I actually probably should have bought that instead of the iPod Touch, but I made the iPod decision based on evangelism from a coworker when I'd forgotten about the Mylo's existence).

If you just want to add data access to an ordinary cellphone, T-Mobile has $6/mo for unlimited web access. However, I doubt that the Amazon marketplace interface is very accessible from a cellphone.

For data-oriented cellphones, you can get a T-Mobile Sidekick for $300ish or a Wing for $150 (with new contract), and the data service on those is $20/month on top of voice service, or pay-as-you-go with $30/month for unlimited data + $.15/minute for voice (although that's only available on the Sidekick, not on the Wing). AT&T and Sprint also have lots of data-oriented smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, Q, Treo, etc.), but their data plans are a lot more expensive than T-Mobile's (and of course their voice plans are a better value than T-Mobile for high minute usage but for normal non-teenaged human beings, T-Mobile still seems to be the best deal).
#10532 03/03/2008 01:47 pm
Oh, and regarding the OP, it sounds like T-Mobile loves to misinform their customers, go figure:
http://www.howardforums.com/archive/topic/1119842-1.html
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-for-mobile/browse_thread/thread/1e98edd19d021cb0
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-for-mobile/browse_thread/thread/e36b39c6a3c2b846/565ec20773e02ec2
http://www.google.com/search?q=nokia+5300+%22application+access+set
#10533 03/03/2008 01:51 pm
Oh, hm, apparently it might actually be a Nokia bug: http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/discussions/board/print?board.id=phones&message.id=34746&page=1&format=page
#10534 zzyzx (unregistered) 03/03/2008 02:37 pm
AT&T's data plan for pay as you go is that you call them and ask for unlimited data for $20, and that lasts for 30 days, at which point you have to call them again (and presumably it silently fails over onto really expensive data if you miss the 30 day interval.) Combined with that their idea of "pay as you go" being that you pay $1 per day for any day on which you "use" a phone plus whatever the minute charges are it doesn't seem like much of a win.
#10535 03/03/2008 02:41 pm
Yeah, I was aware of the $1/day surcharge for the $.10/minute "plan," though $.25/minute doesn't have the surcharge. They do have rapidly-expiring minutes though. AT&T sounds like such a pain overall (though since minutes are flat-rate it's not like you have to buy them in huge chunks so I guess expiration isn't as big a deal).

I wish T-Mobile had PAYG data worth mention. Argh.
#10536 03/03/2008 02:51 pm
AT&T GoPhone's data service is $.01/kB (holy crap that's expensive), or on Pick Your Plan (where they automagically add some pool of minutes per month) you can pay out the nose for a certain monthly allocation. Ugh.

Also, on the "pick your plan" side they don't say whether it's possible to add more minutes should you go over. Though that wouldn't be necessary anyway, since 200 minutes per month which roll over (for the next two months, it looks like) I'd very quickly get to the point that I always have around 600 minutes available at any given time. Of course that plan isn't much cheaper than what I'm doing already, and the data service would very quickly add up a lot (and for unlimited it'd cost more than what I have now), although the unrestricted data might make it worthwhile.
#10544 Anonymous 03/05/2008 05:06 am
i think the verizon plan is a good flat rate (not totally sure, m pays the bill) and we get virtually-unlimited. good for me, since i'd totally forget to turn stuff on. can't get to much on the phone tho because it's a pita to type and read on the thing.
-bill
#10549 03/05/2008 09:34 am
The problem with Verizon is you're stuck with whatever phones Verizon wants to provide. The nice thing about GSM is being able to use basically whatever phone you want (except for the odd CDMA-only ones, except most of the CDMA-only ones completely suck, and the rest only mostly suck). Verizon takes it an extra step in the direction of annoyance by customizing all their phones with BREW, which further limits you in the applications you can run (since you can effectively only run ones that have been signed by and purchased from Verizon). Also, their unlimited data plans still cost more than even the unlimited data plans on AT&T.
#10551 03/06/2008 01:07 pm
yeah, that's where i know less - the money aspect, and actually i don't run apps except the web browser. would like a better browser, though. the old version would remember the page you were last on, and as long as you didn't turn the phone off it would reconnect to that page. now i have to navigate through menus every time. annoying.
-bill
#10856 05/07/2008 09:38 pm
Don't know why someone's chosen this article to repeatedly spam with pure gibberish, but I guess it's okay to lock it.