TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Or, "How good is your smartphone/cell provider, and is it your sole way of accessing the internet?"

I recently moved again, and the place I moved to has no internet access. Yet. Car repairs come first, after all. So I decided to take full advantage of my cell provider's unlimited access data plan. And to do so, I got a new phone: the LG Optimus Q. It's a nice little phone. Touchscreen, 3G data access, it's almost as good as my iPod.

The Samsung I had before this, while it had the ability to go online, was about as good at going online as a pocket calculator. Web pages would barely load, it didn't have much memory. One thing it did quite well, however, was getting signal at my new place(my old place was in a cell dead zone).

The smartphone, which according to the coverage maps, should get great signal. I should be able to watch tv, netflix, YouTube(I've even got an app for YouTube). Note I say should.

And as long as I'm sitting in the right spot, I can get just enough 3G signal to go online and visit websites. If I want to watch anything, I need to be in town.

Has anybody else run into anything like this? I really love the phone, especially the fact that I now have, once again, full mobile access to H2G2.com, which means wherever I go, I can access the Guide...... as long as I have signal.

I am fascinated myself, as addl was catapulted into the modern world when moving to china (telecom wise, mind)

In Germany I was satisfied with a mobile telephone... You know to be able to telephone mobile...

Here i bought an iPhone with 1,6GB traffic per month, not knowing that this was by far to much for my use (email for business and web browsing).

We still do not have an Internet access as we just moved into our new home after 6 weeks of hotel and so far I used this modern device as wireless router (hotspot) at home for my wife and me.

And we have a good 3G connection everywhere we go around shanghai.

This little device is cool! I come home and it synchronizes with my notebook and becomes a router for all notebooks.
As neither of us play games or watch movies over the net, one month of traffic for 2 people is roughly 1GB.

So the waiting for the FTTH 20MB fast Ethernet is not so bad. Hurray for the little phone.

Yeah, tethered to a computer, "mobile broadband" is occasionally useful during outages and on the move. It's gotten reasonably priced for basic mail and browsing -- but it may not be enough bandwidth to keep a machine up-to-date with security patches for software, which is why the approach of providers in not setting a hard limit (eg, T-Mobile will let you go over the bandwidth cap without further charge, but will reduce speeds to a rate that wouldn't support streaming media.)

Smartphone-wise I don't care enough about them even to have a model with a camera or colour screen... it's more convenient to just have something with excellent battery life.

Part of the problem is the fact that cell coverage around here, depending on where you are, is total rubbish. Lack of towers and environmental impact worries make it hard to get consistent signal.

My other problem is my cell provider didn't think about smartphones when they set their rates up. $45 is great for unlimited internet and texts. But when they came up with it, they didn't have any smartphones.

I am at china unicom here and pay about 50 $ each month for 2 years for unlimited calls, 1,6GB (including about 30$ for the iPhone).

As Denyer I do not care much for the smartphone features and would like an easy to use and high battery capacity.

I have not yet and do not intend to download an app.

I'm just not happy with the iPhone as it is much more hassle with everything... No Bluetooth to non Mac devices for example.

Nope... When I had my Blackberry and used the internet on it, I had a decent connection everywhere. Even in the middle of nowhere. Was also paying out the nose for it, but it worked perfectly.

When Hound came down here, we switched providers and I gave up smartphones altogether. I don't really miss the extra expense, but our new phone currently does experience periods where it doesn't have a signal, usually when we leave the city.