Lost my cellphone

MikeWhitney · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 9:15 pm **Posts:** 4724

Scott Lusted wrote:

I did some digging on the net yesterday and I find the combo that Mike has seems to be a pretty good way to go and in line with what I would be interested in. Do you have to get a dataplan or can you go with a prepaid minutes only then use wifi where available?

Do it. You'll use it more than you think once you have a good phone and plan. $45 unlimited it hard to beat if you can swallow the initial $350 cost. Watch Craigslist, I got mine for $250 nearly perfect.

Nice thing about the gnex is that it is a carrier unlocked pentaband phone. Works everywhere on any GSM carrier. Going overseas? Buy a Sim at the airport for $20 and it works. I used it (well a similar old phone) in Scotland and Ireland no problem

BretLuter · **Posted:** Thu Oct 25, 2012 12:29 pm

Alrighty then! Good to hear you got your phone back Mike.

But now you've got me looking into the StraightTalk deal.

We've been on Verizon for a longgg time, started out as Alltel customers. Wife and I are on a family plan with 2 Droid X2 phones that we've had about 1.5 years. The plan we have is ~700 shared minutes, NO texts, I have unlimited data, she has the basic data plan which I think is ~$30/month. Our monthly bill is ~$135, which seems ridiculously high to me, but we've looked into lowering our minute allocation, or switching to a different VZ plan, but nothing comes out any lower in price without seriously dropping our minutes and putting us into danger of running over.

A couple of the sales people at work are on Straight Talk, and they love it, but they don't use their phones for much other than talk/text.

I'm seriously looking into switching to something else once our contract is up. From the research I've done online, I couldn't find anyone who has successfully switched a Verizon Droid over to Straight Talk. I have no problem buying a compatible phone from a friend or from CL or whatever, but IF it were possible to use my VZ Droid, it would just make things alot simpler (especially since we would avoid having to buy 2 "new" phones).

So, can one of you give a simple explanation of the compatibility between VZ/ATT, etc phones?? And if anyone knows for sure that it's possible to use a Verizon Droid on Straight Talk, I'd love to hear more.

Thanks!

:thumbsup:

clinehall · **Posted:** Thu Oct 25, 2012 12:33 pm

I'm thinking of switching to Verizion due to the hot chick in leather riding a Ducati.

shawnwhipple · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:28 pm **Posts:** 603

Quote:

I'm thinking of switching to Verizion due to the hot chick in leather riding a Ducati.

Dude that's T-mobile. Of course I can't say much I thought about buying a Fiat 500 Abarth based on the commercial with the Super model it.

clinehall · **Posted:** Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:00 pm

shawnwhipple wrote:

Quote:

I'm thinking of switching to Verizion due to the hot chick in leather riding a Ducati.

Dude that's T-mobile. Of course I can't say much I thought about buying a Fiat 500 Abarth based on the commercial with the Super model it.

Well I guess you can tell what I was paying attention to. the Italian girl is hot but it is an insult to compare her to the fiat 500. Here is a picture of a girl I meet while in Italy that is more like the fiat:

MikeWhitney · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 9:15 pm **Posts:** 4724

BretLuter wrote:

So, can one of you give a simple explanation of the compatibility between VZ/ATT, etc phones?? And if anyone knows for sure that it's possible to use a Verizon Droid on Straight Talk, I'd love to hear more.
:thumbsup:

Quick pass explanation (I know there are some exceptions to this but it's 90% accurate)

- There are 2 kinds of phones: CDMA and GSM. They are mutually incompatible
- CDMA has a hard-coded ESN (electronic serial number) and usually the carrier has you by the balls on switching
- GSM uses a pluggable SIM which can be swapped to different carriers (unless the phone has been "sim locked" by a carrier)
- AT&T and T-Mo are GSM
- Sprint and Verizon are CDMA

MVNOs are Mobile Virtual Network Operators
- these are companies that license bandwidth from the big 4
- all of the big 4 have some MVNO presence
- Most MVNOs sell prepaid bundled phones
- Some MVNOs are now doing BYOS "Bring your own SIM" (which is GSM only)
- Straight Talk does BYOS on T-mo and AT&T only

It gets worse
- Even though AT&T and T-Mo are both GSM, you can't go swapping between providers. They use different frequencies
- Phones are carrier locked, which can be worked around

So, that's why the Gnex is great ... it's pentaband so it works on both ATT and T-mo MVNOs. I wish the world didn't have CDMA phones (which is a US only thing for the most part) so we could have more options for switching.

Here's a great summary page of MVNOs available. Again, it will be difficult if not impossible to change your CDMA phone over to a CDMA MVNO:
http://www.howardforums.com/showwiki.ph ... Comparison

So my suggestion - if you want to go with StraightTalk, either buy a used ATT / T-mo Samsung Galaxy S2 and get a BYOP Straighttalk card, or buy a carrier unlocked pentaband GSM phone like the Gnex.

I am happy with Straight talk for the mot part. Just don't plan to stream a lot of data (vidoes), they will call you for breack of TOS. I watched 3 shows in 3 days and got the call. They throttled me for a month now I'm back to normal. Regular usage, including some TOS-violating stuff (music, tethering) has not been noticed. For the $30/month per phone savings I'm quite happy to live a bit constrained.

Fyi I put my mom on the $12/month PagePlus 250min/250txt/10mbdata plan and she loves how much money she's saving.

Was that all clear? I would be surprised if it was. The mobile phone market in the US sucks!

Dustin Fredrickson · **Posted:** Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:23 pm

One comment, something that has me seriously concerned about moving to one of these plans, is that these MVNO plans do NOT roam. Period. If your service provider doesn't have local tower access, you are out of bars and out of luck.

Maybe this concerns me mostly because I currently use Sprint and am OFTEN roaming (presumably to Verizon towers), and Maybe this isn't such a big deal on an ATT-based MVNO, but it gives me pause, nonetheless.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:43 pm

Dustin Fredrickson wrote:

One comment, something that has me seriously concerned about moving to one of these plans, is that these MVNO plans do NOT roam. Period. If your service provider doesn't have local tower access, you are out of bars and out of luck.

Maybe this concerns me mostly because I currently use Sprint and am OFTEN roaming (presumably to Verizon towers), and Maybe this isn't such a big deal on an ATT-based MVNO, but it gives me pause, nonetheless.

My experience, too, is that if you're in *rural* NC a lot, you'll be a LOT less happy with ATT coverage than Verizon. This is obviously not the case everywhere, but if you find yourself on NC backroads a lot, I'd stay with Verizon.

--Donnie

Ryan Holton · **Posted:** Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:59 pm

Donnie Barnes wrote:

My experience, too, is that if you're in *rural* NC a lot, you'll be a LOT less happy with ATT coverage than Verizon. This is obviously not the case everywhere, but if you find yourself on NC backroads a lot, I'd stay with Verizon.

--Donnie

This x eleventy billion.

MarekRozanski · **Posted:** Fri Oct 26, 2012 6:26 pm

Donnie Barnes wrote:

My experience, too, is that if you're in *rural* NC a lot, you'll be a LOT less happy with ATT coverage than Verizon. This is obviously not the case everywhere, but if you find yourself on NC backroads a lot, I'd stay with Verizon.

--Donnie

This must be a recent thing because back in 2010, before my wife switched from Verizon to AT&T we found the opposite to be true. Maybe it's where we travel, but any time we drove to the outer banks, mountains, or up to Virginia, her Verizon coverage would be very spotty, constantly dropping calls, whereas my AT&T phone stayed connected in those same spots. This was one of the reasons she switched to my AT&T plan, rather than the other way around.

I know Verizon has better coverage in most of the continental US, but I wonder if people automatically assume this must be true everywhere. And maybe it is true nowadays, for all I know...

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Fri Oct 26, 2012 10:15 pm

MarekRozanski wrote:

Donnie Barnes wrote:

My experience, too, is that if you're in *rural* NC a lot, you'll be a LOT less happy with ATT coverage than Verizon. This is obviously not the case everywhere, but if you find yourself on NC backroads a lot, I'd stay with Verizon.

This must be a recent thing because back in 2010, before my wife switched from Verizon to AT&T we found the opposite to be true. Maybe it's where we travel, but any time we drove to the outer banks, mountains, or up to Virginia, her Verizon coverage would be very spotty, constantly dropping calls, whereas my AT&T phone stayed connected in those same spots. This was one of the reasons she switched to my AT&T plan, rather than the other way around.

I know Verizon has better coverage in most of the continental US, but I wonder if people automatically assume this must be true everywhere. And maybe it is true nowadays, for all I know...

Wha?

I had ATT simply *because* of the iPhone for a couple years until I could go Verizon (with Verizon and Sprint before the switch to ATT to get the iPhone). I found exactly the opposite to be true, INCLUDING down east. The mountains was definitely Verizon or nothing for the most part, but I always had better coverage on the way to Nags Head and down at Hatteras Village on Verizon than ATT. I'll admit, ATT was OKAY down there, but Verizon seemed better. But west of here? ATT only seems to exist on the major roads. Same with much of Virginia and South Carolina.

--Donnie

MikeWhitney · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 9:15 pm **Posts:** 4724

Based on my experience (and looking at coverage maps, which I actually believe are pretty accurate), coverage goes like this:

Verizon > ATT > Sprint > T-mo

No huge gaps between the 4, but all seem to have relative strengths and weaknesses. ATT and Sprint seem to have a good compromise. T-mo speeds and coverage are insanely good when you're near towers, and Verizon, while they have impressive coverage, seems a little unreliable in connection speed compared to the others.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:14 am

MikeWhitney wrote:

Based on my experience (and looking at coverage maps, which I actually believe are pretty accurate), coverage goes like this:

Verizon > ATT > Sprint > T-mo

No huge gaps between the 4, but all seem to have relative strengths and weaknesses. ATT and Sprint seem to have a good compromise. T-mo speeds and coverage are insanely good when you're near towers, and Verizon, while they have impressive coverage, seems a little unreliable in connection speed compared to the others.

I only have ATT to compare to, but I will agree with the data thing. For several years now I've owned some kind of ATT *and* Verizon data device for travel purposes. It's only recently with the addition of LTE that Verizon data speeds compete with ATT, but WHEN BOTH HAVE GOOD COVERAGE, the ATT data is still usually more reliable. I was using USB dongles with a Cradlepoint router for a long time, but have recently moved to mifi devices on both carriers. With LTE, if I have good Verizon coverage then Verizon is now faster, but it's still not quite as reliable...but it really seems more like underlying problems with Verizon's network, *not* inherent problems with the cell technology. That is to say I think it would be fairly easy for those chumps to fix it.

Sporting events will kill data on either carrier until LTE (as in if you're in a HUGE crowd data goes to nil on both), but I wonder if that's only because there aren't nearly as many people with LTE devices *yet*. Or if it is that much better in terms of the overall load it can handle in one place. (Before the iPhone5 I would carry my Verizon mifi that was LTE with me to sporting events because I could pocket it just fine and yet with it on I'd get data to my phone with no trouble...without it on "3G" I would get *zero* data in a huge crowd.)

--Donnie

RobLupella · **Posted:** Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:04 am

MikeWhitney wrote:

Based on my experience (and looking at coverage maps, which I actually believe are pretty accurate), coverage goes like this:

Verizon > ATT > Sprint > T-mo

No huge gaps between the 4, but all seem to have relative strengths and weaknesses. ATT and Sprint seem to have a good compromise. T-mo speeds and coverage are insanely good when you're near towers, and Verizon, while they have impressive coverage, seems a little unreliable in connection speed compared to the others.

That list is in the right order here but the gaps between the first two and the last are more pronounced. For me customer service is about the opposite with TMob first (My dad has TMob) and then AT&T and Verizon tied for next (last) depending on which one I am talking to .

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Sat Oct 27, 2012 7:53 pm

My sample size is pretty small but the only place I had no Verizon access in our wanderings around SCCA Tours and Pros this summer was Grissom Airbase near Peru, IN. Could barely even get phone service. It shows as a hole on the Verizon map with service maybe a mile further south. Fortunately we could SEE the very nasty thunderstorms coming our way (not that any of us paid attention when trying to walk the next day's course :roll:

)

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