Re: [PLUG] OT: Unlocked Cell Phones

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Mike DePaulo <mikedep333@gmail.com> wrote:

An extremely deep canyon ... now that is a use case for mobile phones
I hadn't thought of.

I personally would love to see Femtocells spread throughout the Grand Canyon.

Hurray for over-engineered solutions!

-Mike

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 9:20 AM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Mike. You are right.
>
> I guess in my travels I have sometimes found myself in places where 2G was
> all I could get, and so I tend to focus on that, and treat anything better
> than 2G as a bonus.
>
> Although not mundane to the topic, I will share an anecdote about a place in
> the continental US with no cell coverage. Some years ago, I was on vacation
> in the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with no cell coverage. I had turned on
> my BlackBerry in the morning to check, and found no signal. Then I forgot to
> turn it off when taking a half day mule-back trip into the canyon. On my
> return, I found it had downloaded a couple days' worth of e-mails.
>
> Regards
> -- Bhaskar
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 6:56 AM, Mike DePaulo <mikedep333@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Bhaskar,
>>
>> That is very good advice for feature phones. However, those 4 bands
>> are the 2G bands.
>>
>> Over the last 5 years or so, I have found that nearly every smartphone
>> supports all 4 bands for 2G. Definitely all new smartphones worth $150
>> USD+ nowadays support all 4 bands for 2G.
>>
>> It's the bands for 3G (HSPA) and 3.5G (HSPA+) where your $150 to $300
>> smartphone is likely to not support all the bands. There are 5
>> commonly used international bands instead of 4. Some of them overlap
>> with the 2G bands.
>>
>> And in terms of 4G (LTE), there are even more bands.
>>
>> If all you care about is making and receiving calls, sending and
>> receiving text messages, doing emails (either plaintext or html with
>> little to no images) and doing web browsing (with little images), then
>> 2G service will suffice. You can send and receive texts with Google
>> Voice also; because GV texts are merely tiny amounts of data. I am
>> speaking from experience using a 3.5G android phone (Motorola Moto G
>> 1st gen) with only 2G service abroad.
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 8:21 PM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:
>> > If you plan to travel, make sure that you get not just a GSM phone but a
>> > quad band GSM phone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands).
>> >
>> > Regards
>> > -- Bhaskar
>> >
>> > On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I'm planning to replace my smartphone, and I want to get one that is
>> >> unlocked.
>> >>
>> >> AS far as I know the only potential pitfalls to purchasing my own
>> >> unlocked
>> >> phone are compatibility with the 2 competing network standards, and a
>> >> potential lack of warranty for some unlocked phones (at least, for the
>> >> android
>> >> ones sold by Amazon)
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Are there other issues I should be aware of before spending $300 - $500
>> >> for a
>> >> new phone?
>> >> --
>> >> Casey Bralla
>> >>
>> >> Chief Nerd in Residence
>> >> The NerdWorld Organisation
>> >>
>> >>
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