T-Mobile – No contract contracts!

 

So there has been a lot of hub-bub about T-Mobile’s new no contract plans and the UN coupling of phone and contract. The advertising media claims no contract; no need to buy a phone out right, the heavens will open up and shine down glitter, bacon, and all things wonderful.

 

BUT

 

It’s not all coming up roses for the Pink sheep of the carrier world. Let me preface this rant with this: I have T-Mobile, and I have used all the major carriers and this has been the least painful experience. I recommend T-Mobile to anyone who asks me, and I will continue to do so with these new plans.
Now, for any tech follower these plans are just shining a light on what we already knew. A decent chunk of your monthly plan premium is for the phone that you got for such a low price. This has always been a marketing ploy by carriers and I commend T-Mobile for pull the wool up if you will on this horrendous abuse of the public’s trust. I do however want to clarify a few things seeing as T-Mobiles literature is pretty fluffy and light on full details. After asking some people the all important question (for me at least) Can you finance a phone on a pre paid account. The way things are worded and the general thought on the interwebs (specifically G+) is that yes you can since the plans are not contractual and separate from the phones. I am a skeptic and this seems too good to be true, so I decide to go straight to the source.

So I fire up a chat session with a T-Mobile rep. Now I have a copy of the conversation in full, barring any personal details posted at the end. But here are the clarifications I have gotten from my enlightening conversation with “!Rizalie M”

 

 

·         T-Mobiles Customer plans may be more transparent, but their reps still try to sell you some weird not published or out dated plan, unless you call them out on it.
·         T-Mobile does not really acknowledge Pre-Paid users.
·         You MUST be on a POST PAID plan to finance a phone.
·         You CAN cancel you plan at anytime… IF:
o   You have a 0$ on your plan (your payments are up to date)
o   You have PAID OFF YOUR PHONE.
·         You can suspend your account for 10$ a month if you want to keep paying off the phone monthly but not use the phone
·         Customer Service reps still don’t understand the product they are selling.

Now, for 70$, plus monthly payment for phone; you can get the latest and greatest device, and all you can eat mobile data, messaging, and voice. BUT you only get 500MB of Tethered data, with each additional 2GB for 10$ a month. This brings clarity to the murky grey world of Tethering. If T-Mobile’s networking robots noticed a not mobile device on their network they will throw up a page politely asking you to contact them to add tethering services if you do not have them, or if you have used your allotted amount. Now 500MB a month will cover the 99% who tether occasionally, and it is admittedly pretty easy to get around, and if your reading this blog there’s a pretty good chance you already know the work around, so I’m going to leave that alone;  But kudos for putting that out there and making it obvious.

 

So in short, T-Mo is being pretty up front about their plans, and there really is no ETF, you just have to pay off that phone first. But if you bring your own device (Nexus 4 anyone?) you can get a unlimited HSPA+/LTE data, Unlimited Voice,  and Unlimited data for 70$. Or if you’re not a big talker and can live with 100 minutes a month, and use less than 5GB a month, you can get away with a 30$ a month Pre paid plan; This is my choice, and with the aid of a little VOIP action for extended conversations I can safely say that T-Mobile is the best carrier to have [if you have coverage]. But please please PLEASE. Find someone who has T-Mo and hangs out in the same rough area you do and find out what kind of signal strength/speeds they are getting. Because of T-Mo’s less than stellar infrastructure they tend to suffer outside of Major Metropolitan Areas.

 

 

 

VMPM
WH

You have been connected to !Rizalie M.
Douglas DuCote: Phone purchase
!Rizalie M: Hi Douglas!
Douglas DuCote: HI!
!Rizalie M: Thank you for contacting T-mobile Live Chat Service, this is Rizalie M. rep ID 1450992. It is my pleasure to help you out about your concern. Is this about the line ending in XXXX?
Douglas DuCote: Yes, well kind of
Douglas DuCote: let me go ahead and explain my question in full
!Rizalie M: I see, how can I help you?
!Rizalie M: Sure!
Douglas DuCote: So i am looking at picking up a secondary, and most likely a tertiary device. I do a lot of tech reviews and will be reviewing new devices here soon.
!Rizalie M: Got it.
Douglas DuCote: I usually am forced to buy outright, but T-mobiles new plan/phone purchase arrangement seems like that is not 100% true anymore
!Rizalie M: We're very sorry you feel that way.
Douglas DuCote: Basically i want to finace the phones, while keeping my current line and plan
!Rizalie M: I see.
Douglas DuCote: From what ive read i can put a deposit down based on credit rating, and then pay monthly for the rest of the phone correct?
!Rizalie M: Yes, correct. That will be for our postpaid account.
Douglas DuCote: So its not with any account
Douglas DuCote: just the post paids
!Rizalie M: Yes, correct.
!Rizalie M: You need to switch to postpaid to get this program.
Douglas DuCote: so i would be forced to pay essentially double
Douglas DuCote: for less data
Douglas DuCote: and more minutes, which i never use
!Rizalie M: May I know if you're planning to get a new phone with a deposit only?
Douglas DuCote: I was hoping to do so yes
Douglas DuCote: and then swapping my sim cards in
Douglas DuCote: sim card*
!Rizalie M: You can switch your prepaid account to postpaid, then we will have your prepaid cancelled.
Douglas DuCote: but even at 60$ i would lose 3gb of data, and gain more stuff that i dont use
!Rizalie M: Then you can choose plans especially data plan for affordable prices.
Douglas DuCote: and realistically that is too low of a data cap since ive already used more than 2 gb
!Rizalie M: Least price for our individual plan is $50.00 a month before taxes.
Douglas DuCote: for 4.5GB less data
!Rizalie M: If you need more GB, our data plan is flexible cause you can add more upto 12.5 GB.
Douglas DuCote: how much is 5GB of data post paid
!Rizalie M: Every additional 2GB is $10.00 a month.
Douglas DuCote: so for... 80$ a month i could get 6.5GB of data
!Rizalie M: Yes, correct.
!Rizalie M: Did I answer all?
Douglas DuCote: Or, for 70$ i could get unlimited data
!Rizalie M: For $70.00 that will be unlimited talk, text and 4.5GB.
Douglas DuCote: but on your website here:
Douglas DuCote: http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/individual-plans.aspx
!Rizalie M: $70.00 is for unlimited without the talk and text.
Douglas DuCote: the unlimited option says " Adds Unlimited Nationwide 4G data on T-Mobile's network "
!Rizalie M: Yes, you're at the right page.
Douglas DuCote: But you just said it was only 4.5GB of data
!Rizalie M: You mentioned $70.00, I explained that this amount is with the talk and text bundle.
!Rizalie M: The $70.00 for the data plan is the charge without the talk and text.
Douglas DuCote: but the plan details clearly state unlimited minutes and messaging
Douglas DuCote:
Unlimited Talk + Text Plan
$50.00

+ 500 MB
$0.00

+ UNLIMITED Value
$20.00

Per month for 1 line(s)

Douglas DuCote: from your webpage
!Rizalie M: TI see, it now.
Douglas DuCote: but its actually ADDITIONAL for minutes?
!Rizalie M: Yes, it is an add on of $20.00 to get the unlimited talk and text.
!Rizalie M: I'm sorry I'm looking at the different page.
Douglas DuCote: So if i were to do that plan
!Rizalie M: Therefore that will be $70.00 for 500 mb with unlimited data and talk and text.
Douglas DuCote: and bought a phone on a monthly contract
!Rizalie M: If you wish to get this plan you need to call us cause we need to speak with you directly.
Douglas DuCote: and then canceled the service a year later
Douglas DuCote: what would the cost be
Douglas DuCote: aside from the montly cost of the phone
!Rizalie M: It's okay if you cancel it as long as you are willing to pay the balance of the phone and your account charges.
Douglas DuCote: so there is a contractual requirement on the service line
!Rizalie M: No contract for the line.
!Rizalie M: For the phone you can pay the unpaid balance once you decided to cancel it.
Douglas DuCote: but i cant cancel
!Rizalie M: Alright?
Douglas DuCote: and then continue paying a monthly amount on the phone
!Rizalie M: If you want to remain the account, you can suspend it temporary then pay for the unpaid balance of the phone.
!Rizalie M: Your monthly bill for suspended line is $10.00.
Douglas DuCote: I am planning on moving to an area with little to no T-Mobile coverage
Douglas DuCote: in about a year
!Rizalie M: I see.
Douglas DuCote: so i would have to use another carrier at the time
Douglas DuCote: but i would have to pay the remaining balance of the phone
Douglas DuCote: or suspend my account for 10$ a month, while paying off the phone monthly correct?
!Rizalie M: If you want to keep it active you can suspend it for maximum of 3 months then if you need more extention you need to call us after 3 months to extend it.
!Rizalie M: Yes, correct.
!Rizalie M: Did I answer all?
Douglas DuCote: that about sums it up
Douglas DuCote: so yes
Douglas DuCote: thank you for your time.
!Rizalie M: Yes.
!Rizalie M: You're most welcome. I just give the service that you pay for. We are commited to serve you better.
!Rizalie M: Thank you for your continuous patronage of T-Mobile services. May you have marvelous night. I'll go ahead and close the chat in 60 seconds if you haven't disconnected it by then.
Thank you for using our online help. You may now close this window.

Clearly T-Mo has not fully briefed everyone on how the new plans work, and there was a bit on confusion on the reps end of what was going on. But it answered a few important questions, and makes for an interesting read.

So you want to access LTE with your nexus 4

 

The first caveat of LTE access on the nexus 4 is that you will need to be on a carrier using BAND 4[AWS]. If you are in the U.S. this is limited to T-mobile . So if you are one of the lucky ones that has LTE turned on in your area you are a few simple steps away from enjoying low latency high throughput cell data on your nexus 4!

 

 

Prerequisites:

CWM

Root

Tools:

4.2.1 or Older Rom - Nothing

4.2.2  Rom – You will need a pre .48 radio[Recomend: .33 Radio]

15 minutes of your time.

 

Procedure:

Step 1)

·         Open up your phone dialer and punch in “ *#*#4636#*#* “

·         Select Phone Information

·         Scroll down to the bottom where you can select the preferred network type

·         Select LTE Only*

Step 2)

·         Open settings

·         Select more…

·         Select mobile networks

·         Select access Point Names

·         You can create a second APN if you would like, Or you can use the following to modify the default APN:

o   APN: Fast.t-mobile.com

o   APN Protocol: ipv4/ipv6

o   APN Roaming Protocol: ipv4/ipv6

o   Bearer: LTE

Now this will present one problem that I have become aware of, you can’t make voice calls over LTE yet. The remedy to this is to select LTE/GSM Auto PRL in the last phase of Step one, this also eliminates the need to do step two, and lets use make voice calls. But I have seen the device decide not to go back into LTE after idling/making a voice call. So I use the handy Network  app to quickly switch to LTE only to force the LTE connection and then switch it back.

Now this isn’t the most staple LTE setup, but hey officially this device isn’t even LTE enabled so I wouldn’t complain too much.

 

 

Galaxy S3 VS Nexus 4 {SMACK DOWN!?}

NEW POST!

That’s like, eight of these things! Look at me go!

But seriously this whole writing thing takes a lot more work than I thought (like everything). But I’m here so let’s do this. This time I going to scribble down a little bit of tech babble and regal you lovely people with my Samsung Galaxy SIII [henceforth S3] VS Nexus 4 [Henceforth N4] smack down.

But first a little:

[BACKSTORY]

So real quick, I’ve had a lot of people ask me why in the hell I would ditch the s3 for the N4. There was never a point leading up to this switch that I every looked at the S3 and thought anything bad about it. Sure its big, sure it’s fast, it’s over saturated (if your into that kind of stuff) and its smacking bitches (other phones) around. It’s got LTE, expandable memory, a massive and gorgeous screen, and a blazing fast processor (which can be made even more blazing fast with a little tinkering); All in all the holy grail of phones. But I had a problem, I had not LTE. Not only did I not have any LTE service, my 3g service was downright heinous. I’m talking sub 10kbps on a regular basis; Topping out around 600kbps on a good day. So after much deliberation and some random happenstance I have made the switch to the nexus 4 and this is the story.

[/Backstory]

So I get my N4 in the mail, and I’m ecstatic.  After unboxing (and taking copious photos) I can give my initial impression on the looks of the device. It is a black monolithic slab of phone sex. From the sleek button less front glass; with its subtle curvature and almost aerodynamic down turns to the "crystal reflection process" on the back side, it really is a looker. I after a couple more photos I finally pull the device out of the boxing. My very first thought was “Damn, this is solid”.  While it ways mere grams more than the S3 its “heft” is significant. It doesn’t feel heavy it feels, well… hefty. While I’m not going to go out of the way to subject this device to any abuse it has successful lasted longer that the S3 did without damage, even taking an almost identical fall, thank you mom for calling both phones at the exact wrong moment!

For the record, day 3 of having my s3 my mom called and due to the slick nature of the back of the device it vibraslid off my shelves, onto my wrought iron candle holder, and hit both the top and the legs. The resulting carnage is below.

So I now have the Nexus 4 in my possession, now what? Let’s turn it on

I press the ALMOST flush power button for a brief click and am rewarded with a lovely… Blank screen. I instinctively flipped the phone over and reach for the back cover removal tab; which I of course find missing, since it is an internal battery. So I resort to the time tested IT guru tradition of rapidly pressing the power button, when that fails after several frantic button mashing seconds I decide to fall back to failsafe tradition number two. Press and HOLD. After a slightly longer than the previous brief hold the screen fires up to white “ GOOGLE “ on a black background. I have that goofy IT geek grin that we all get when we fire up a new toy for the first time. After a short boot up I go through the intimal android setup, Gmail, restore, Wi-Fi, etc. I let it sit while I take a couple more pictures. I turn the screen back on and am graced with the same back ground I have on my S3, except that it is extremely crisp and much more true to life in regards of color reproduction.  Let’s take a look at some shots done with a D5000. Then I will get into my opinions on the screens. The Reflectiveness of the S3 in question by not be indicative of the whole series of phones, this is replacement glass, although is supposed to be the OEM glass. 

Here you can see the N4 has a matte-ish finish. 

And here the screen burn from the replacement of the

Glass is VERY evident, any of you who have heard

me complaining can now see why.

And here we can again see how Reflective the
GS3's Screen is.

Both Devices on full brightness with There 

Respective ROM's Wallpaper

GS3: Touchwiz App Draw

N4: AOSP @ 190DPI

Here you can see that the GS3 is actually a 

bit washed out when directly compared to the

IPS panel on the N4

Again, the GS3 is awash when compared 

to an IPS panel

The Nexus as a better calibrated color setup and 

when placed next to the GS3 you can really

tell over over saturated some colors are

First off I think the GS3's colors and saturation are muted. The Nexus 4 is very vibrant and crisp and has a little bit of a cool color to it. While the S3 is of course over saturated and extremely ‘poppy’ in the primary colors. The blacks as any of you familiar with AMOLED screens know are pretty much perfect on the S3. The N4 isn’t quite up to par with the s3 but when you aren’t comparing them next to each other it is above acceptable.

Now the next obvious thing is the UI. I am clearly not using a vanilla Setup. This is Paranoid Android 2.99 with most things set to 190 and 230 DPI. The S3 is FreeGS3 which UI wise is Stock TouchWiz UX. But you can ofcourse flash any of the popular roms to it;   So I’m going to leave the UI up to you all, since you can make it behave pretty much however you want.

Now, how does the N4 perform compared to the S3? This has a couple of components to it; first there is the raw processing power, then there is the day to day ‘snappiness’ and finally data speeds. 

[Raw Power]

I have tested a couple of apps with both devices and have found that a lot of apps don’t play well with 4.2 yet. This is of course to be expected due to the shortage of devices running it right now. So apps like quadrant and Linpak for android show subpar numbers for the N4 compared to the S3. For instances Linpak was coming back with a paltry ~73 to the S3’s ~233. This seems a little odd seeing as the N4 is the same microarchitecture, but with twice as many cores. So I fire up anTutu benchmark. This has been updated to play nicely with 4.2 and it shows. The S3 crosses the line with an asphalt ripping ~11K. After sorting out some oddball kernel behavior on the N4 (for n4 owners Faux's 002b6 seems to not let the cores hit full speed) I got the N4 locked into performance and let ‘er rip. The n4 brings in a blistering average of just over 16K. About what is expected with 2 more cores allowing for inefficiencies in scaling? Now I know some of you are raising your hands (because that’s how you ask questions isn’t it?) and want to know, but what if you overclock the. Well even if you weren’t about to ask that, you’re about to find out (unless you skip this section since it gets kind of ugly at the end, I won’t be offended)

<OVERCLOCKING>

I have already run the S3 @ 1.8GHZ on antutu bringing in a whopping 13K, not bad for a quick kernel flash. Now when I went to grab an OC enabled Kernel for the N4 I noticed that all current versions of all kernels have had the OC component pulled. I start to wonder if this is a good idea, but then my inner voice yells “FOR SCIENCE!” and I go and dig through the web. I eventually stumble upon Matrix v 1.5. With overclocking up to 1.72GHZ, and GPU overclock to 450MHZ. I immediately flash it and fire up Antutu after setting up the overclock. Now here it gets messy. Maybe half a minute after hitting start on anTuTu I noticed the phone is hot, I got to adjust it in my hand and almost drop it. The top of the screen and back are approaching the burning point. I flip it over to pull the battery, curse silently and hold the power button. After booting a stock kernel and making sure everything works I throw matrix back on and try it again. This time with a temp monitor in the back ground, and when it gets hot I start to turn it off, but the little voice inside my head says “FOR SCIENCE” so I go ahead and let it finish. I am rewarded with a paltry 9K. I realize there is likely some sort of thermal throttling going on, so I concoct a little cooling blanket out of paper towels and rubber gloves filled with ice. Resting the phone on that I am rewarded with a completed benchmark. This time I see an eye popping 19K. But taking as I hit the screenshot keys the phone blacked out. After cooling I turned its back on to a welcome screen that kept crashing.

SO I think it is safe to say Devs tend to know what they are doing, when they pull overclocking from a kernel, please for the love of whatever you love LEAVE IT ALONE.

*note*

My nexus is fine and just had some corrupt data, quick flash had everything up and running and its sitting next to me humming away

*end note*

Overclocking update 1/20/2013

The nexus is able to overclock to 1.83GHZ CPU and 487MHZ GPU, SAFELY, although this does get hot and suck down juice, and as you can see below it REALLY is not necessary.

[DAY TO DAY USAGE]

Now Day to day usage I honestly haven’t noticed any difference in usability. Both devices are significantly more powerful than you need to do basic web browsing and UI navigation and spend most of their time less than 50% CPU speeds.

[DATA SPEEDS]

The following are the break downs of the cell plans the phone had during the cellular data test, along with the speeds achieved in the two common places I spend time at, work and home.

S3: Sprint 450min unlimited data:

Avg Speed @ Home[3g EVDO]: 412KbPS/61KbPS

Avg Speed @ work[3g EVFO]: 81KbPS/12KbPS

N4: T-Mo prepaid 100min 5GB 4g:

Avg Speed @ Home: 8632KbPS/732KbPS

Avg Speed @ Work: 17657KbPS/1649KbPS

Needless to say the S3 didn’t even get to the starting line on this one.

[Conclusion]

Build Quality/Feel:

The GS3 is a much slicker phone, the thinner design along with the tapered edges and slick nature make it feel very thing and high-tech.  Whereas the Nexus 4 has the same solid feel as the IPhone 4S due to its slightly thicker dual glassed design.  From the drop damage I experienced with the S3 compared the to nexus 4 I would have to say the Nexus 4 has a much better build quality, but the S3 feels so damned good in your hand I have to say it’s the winner in feel.

*Build Quality: Nexus 4

*Hand Feel: Galaxy S3

[System Speed]

The Nexus 4 wins hands down here, with the same architecture; same amount of ram, but twice as many cores the GS3 doesn’t really stand a chance here.

Speed: Nexus 4

UI Feel:

The Nexus 4 sticks to the Vanilla experience or in the case of the photos in this review the wonderful Paranoid Android Rom. I personally enjoy this over TouchWiz UX on the GS3. Touchwiz is significantly bloated and while it has some nice features I have almost never used the extra features.

UI: Nexus 4

Camera:

This is probably the biggest caveat on the device in regards to the Nexus 4. While it takes decent photos, the GS3 does so much better in all conditions

Nexus 4:

Mug

N4 HDR

N4 Auto Flash

GS3 Auto Flash

GS3 HDR

Camera: GS3

All in all I chose the Nexus as my day to day device; data speeds alone pretty much mandated that. I still dig around in the hopes that someone comes up with a way to get a sprint S3 on TMO so I can play with both devices, but alas Sprint has nerfed that by soldering the SIM onto the board.

Anyways, here are the rest of the test camera pictures, if you would like to see a specific comparison, or have any question post them up and I’ll get them done/answered for ya!

[GS3 Camera]

[N4 Camera]