Database Info

ATT Edge Data Speed

Just like many others, I am a US ATT user with a Euro version --- so I am not getting 3G but....
My real problem is not just putting up with the lack of 3G. I got my TyTNII Kaiser back out today and started toying with what I suspected. In side by side comparisons the Edge data speed (thus Opera, OperaMini, etc etc) was 20 - 40% slower on the HTC Touch Pro compared with the TyTNII. I think it seems to me that it relates to radio differences (or maybe antenna). Since having the Touch Pro for several weeks I noticed that I dropped calls fairly regularly and I think the decreased receprtion in general is effecting my data speed.
Has anyone else experienced this? If so, I wonder if all our probelms will be solved even if the guys figure out out to "turn on" 3G for us

jcrompton said:
In side by side comparisons the Edge data speed (thus Opera, OperaMini, etc etc) was 20 - 40% slower on the HTC Touch Pro compared with the TyTNII...
... if the guys figure out out to "turn on" 3G for us ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it is real 20-40% then considered yourself are lucky. According to my benchmark via speedtest.net on Tilt, EGDE is about 60 - 140Kbps, meanwhile H is 700 - 1.4 Mbps. Hence, it must be 1,000% slower
Wait 'til the Fuze come out to see if it might availbale.

Not exactly what I meant -- I mean that if I force my TyTNII to Edge only (NO 3G) it still out performs the HTC Touch Pro
..... I believe it may be that it's reception is worse even at the same place ? worse radio ? worse antenna ???

That's odd, and quite troubling... Your EDGE speeds should be identical with both phones in the same location. Might it be that the Diamond just takes longer to render the web page, and the connection speed isn't actually slower? Try going to speedtest.net on both devices and see how they stack up against each other.

I actually ran www.dslreports.com mobile speed test form the Internet Explorer (PIE) on both devices. The numbers proved that the Edge (non 3G) speed was definitely less on the Touch Pro vs the Kaiser, which was obvious with just daily use ...
I am really surprised that no one else has noticed this ???
If I add this to the "fear" that we may not get 3G it's just really is disappointing . I've actually carried the Kaiser the last several days to see if I could go back to it after carrying the Touch Pro for several weeks - the speed issue ssure has made it easier.

[Q] Fuze 3G/HSDPA Speeds?

Hey guys,
What speeds do you get on your fuze?
I check on http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed
and it shows that i'm getting about 663 kbps
I did this test next to my coworker with an iPhone 3G and that darn thing returned double (1200 kbps) of what i got
are all of you getting about 600 or 1200(1.2mbps)?

is he doing the iphone test or the reg m test? i get a higher speed when i dl a bigger file. 1MB i got 928 with my fuze and i did the reg m test not the iphone test

I got 1660 on my fuze.

I'd just like to know who at at&t turned off the [H] speeds in the southwest Missouri area. Never had any problems with HSDPA (or whatever it is called).
On the fuze, every hack I've tried and it still refuses to pop up....just 3G.
Any ideas?

the iphone test was on testmyiphone.com
and i did the 1mb test on dslreports and got 663 ... is there anything on the fuze that would restrict the hsdpa speed?
... as for getting the H icon, just use schaps advanced config tool

First of all, the ROM on ATT's Fuze just has the 'H' icon disabled. There is a reg hack to enable it, try searching around.
That being said, I'm having major issues with the 3G speed on my Fuze.
I have a BlackJack II as well, and I can literally pop my SIM out, put it in that, and get normal decent 3G speeds. Go back to my Fuze, and it's so slow that pages often don't even load at all, and time out. I am testing with all the same websites. Even updating the weather in the TF3d panel often times out and when it does work it takes like 10 seconds per city.
Doesn't matter if I'm in Opera or IE, it's just slow as hell on the Fuze. Go back to the BlackJack, and again it's fine.
I am taking it back today, I'll try a replacement, but I am not willing to try a ROM flash because I'm afraid they won't take it back.

I'm getting 254 kbs... blazing.

814 kbps. Not bad, on HSDPA

speed issues
I am not sure if this has anything to do with it but I was looking at the connection settings that defaulted in my Fuze and the apn is ims.cingular
I am familiar with wap.cingular and I know isp.cingular ut I have never heard of ims.cingular. Would this even have any impact on this?

im getting 2600Kbps down 700Kbps up on full bars HSDPA

Im in NYC and when I dont have an active data connection it will show 2-3 bars 3G but as soon as I try and connect It'll revert to E. Is this happening to anyone else?

you know what... i'm not even using the default Fuze modem connection (the one called "MEdia Net" that has wap.cingular, username and password).
My boss and I created a new GPRS/3G modem connection without any settings on our Fuzes.... and its working for us. So i don't think that has anything to do with it. I think all it does is let AT&T know that you're authenticating onto their servers the the default username and password.
Go ahead and give it a shot, create a new GPRS/3G modem connection and name it whatever you want. Go through the steps and leave everything blank. The 3G/HSPDA will work fine, at least for us....

On my Fuze, forced to do the 1MB test, with 3G, I got:
1345 kbit/sec
0.32s latency
6.363s d/l time.again.

My FUZE with Romeos ROM is reaching HSDPA at pretty damn low speeds on AT&T 3G...
Avg between 300-700 on dslreports.com/mspeed. Usually somewhere around 500kbps.
If I swap out my SIM and put it into my X1i, I get between 800-1300kbps in the same location a minute later!
Absurd. Really, really absurd. Something is wrong here. Either the radio, or some software setting, or, even perhaps a hardware limitation is causing the FUZE to get much slower speeds than other HTC made phones...
I also have an I-Mate 9502 which gets the same range of speeds my X1i gets. Tested my buddys Tilt, and he was getting between 750-1000kbps...
Any ideas? Anyone have similar issues in the U.S.?

Thanks for confirming my suspicions that the G3/H on this phone is the same.
As for the Fuze, like my other HTC phones, I have trouble getting bars while other peeps with other phones on ATT get full bars. I wonder if it's the antenna? I wonder if HTC does a bad job with them?

Yesterday I had to revert to a 2 year old SonyEricsson K800 just to keep myself from dropping calls.
I'm beginning to think that it's the antenna, and not just some funky AT&T control. I used to regedit tweaks to enable HSDPA and its icon and the best result I've ever returned was around 660kb/s down. Also of note is that it didn't matter how many bars I had; one test with 1 bar returned a down speed 200kb/s faster than a test I did with four bars.
I really want to like this phone but it's getting too wonky for me.

Well, I went and exchanged my Fuze today for another one. I must admit it seems to be working a lot better. At first it wasn't, but after using it a while it is now reasonable. For now anyway. It's still not as fast as my BlackJack II, but it is at least working, which is more than I can say for the one I returned.
Earlier, I was trying to get a speed report on dslreports.com/mspeed, and it kept saying that it was invalid test on the 1MB because it was too quick (1.4 seconds), ironically.
I'm still not sure I trust this phone. I might try RomeOS now that I know I can flash back to stock ROM if I need to return.
Maybe the Epix will be OK for now until the X1 is out.
I'm going to do some dslreports testing and compare to the BlackJack II from the same spot, will post up.

Test Results
Well, here's the results of the testing. Unbelievable. This is with a "3G" connection. Granted it's in my apt, but my other phones work in here. I did a bunch of tests with each phone, my Fuze and a Blackjack II. These were all done within a few minutes of each other from the exact same location (my couch, LOL) using the same SIM. I'll try more tests tomorrow from a better location, maybe I'll go to Fullerton as another member here posted he got awesome HSDPA speeds there.
I did these from http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed and most did not work on 100k, they gave the error "unstable or too fast results" so I'd go up to 200k or 1MB.
First the Fuze (in succession):
100k:
74 kbit/sec
0.647s latency
11.41s d/l time
100k:
too fast- 1.99s
200k:
188 kbit/sec
0.703s latency
9.188s d/l time
100k:
48 kbit/sec
4.23s latency
17.215s d/l time
100k:
57 kbit/sec
0.762s latency
14.777s d/l time
100k:
72 kbit/sec
0.707s latency
11.804s d/l time
Then the Blackjack II (in succession):
100k:
too fast - 0.41s
200k:
too fast - 0.567s
1MB:
761 kbit/sec
0.103s latency
10.681s d/l time
1MB:
too fast - 1.484s
1MB:
411 kbit/sec
0.161s latency
19.977s d/l time
1MB:
unstable / too fast result
1MB:
unstable / too fast result
100k:
unstable / too fast a result
1MB:
unstable / too fast a result
So you can see that the Fuze is abysmal. For some reason I kept getting that weird error result. On the BJ it just stopped working after a while, but I was still able to browse to pages just fine. In fact on the Fuze, I can't even load Gmail usually at all, so I went to it on the BJ after these tests and it came up and loaded instantly.
I am not pleased. I think we should also post our ROM versions. Someone else thought maybe ATT imposed a limit of some kind (I can't see how they could limit it this bad, from a business point, but I wouldn't put it past them). Maybe the people with just fine connections have older ROMs, pre-limited. Just a thought.
Here's my info:
ROM: 1.95.502.5 WWE (10/20/2008)
Radio: 1.02.25.32
Protocol: 52.39c.25.22H
SPL: 1.95.00.00
I really really want to like this phone and make it work. But even though this replacement is better than the first one, it's still not usable as you can tell. It does happen to have all the same ROM versions as the prior one.
Please post up similar info guys, speed test results, and your phone ROM versions, etc. To find that info, you can look in the bottom right when you first boot up the phone, and also go into Start->Settings->Phone(?), somewhere in there you'll find it.
If anything, we will document this enough to force ATT to fix it.

I'm running NATF's rom and getting decent speeds here from my house, 1400, but I have noticed that I have less connection bars that my Tilt. I've always had 4 bars here at home on the tilt, but the Fuze will drop to 3 and 2 bars sometimes. I'm not getting anywhere near the reception with the Fuze as opposed to my Tilt, so I'm thinking it's got to be an antennae problem.

I'm getting approximately the same displayed bars from my house as I was getting on my 8525; however, the Fuze seems to be performing better with that displayed signal strength. That is, I frequently got drop-outs in certain parts of the house with the 8525; with the Fuze, I don't believe I have heard a drop-out in the five days I've had it.
I did a couple of speedtest runs this morning sitting in my car waiting for someone; one was 1260 kbps, the other 1450. I certainly can't complain about the speed.

3G data performance

Hi All
I changed from a SE p1i to a HTC Touch Pro. In terms of phone easiness and functionalities I lost a lot but in terms of HW I though I gained a lot. However I started to realise that although it has HSDPA and HSUPA the internet over 3G was very, very slow. I sent it to repair and come exactly the same. The best speed I can get is 61Kbps DL when 3G provides 384Kbps and HSDPA 7.2Mbps. Since the latency is very very high, I cannot get the complete rendering of a complex page if the http server gives time-out too early. Using the PC with the VPN is a nightmare.
A friend of mine that is a radio engineer in Nokia told me that this is a "well know problem of Windows Mobile that cannot cipher/decipher the 3G radio packets in real time". I searched on the internet and couldn't find nothing however I tried several HTC and Samsung phones with Windows Mobile, on several operators and countries and all are very very slow. And comparing them with the SE pi1 that worked like a clock... until it broke :-D
Henrique

I think you will find you are getting 61 kiloBYTES per second which equates to 488 Kbps, I use it with VPN and it's great, how are you connecting your PC to your phone, hopefully not via internet connection sharing or it will fail the VPN security check and boot you off quickly

Hi Everyone,
I too was noticing speed issues and they are for sure there. People on these boards have been seeing upto 2Mbit downloads speeds so it can be done. As my sig shows I got 1.7Mbit with 1-2 "H" bars.
I loaded a new radio on mine and that seemed to almost double my bandwidth, I was using the standard .32 radio and was getting around 600 to 700Kbit and then switched to the .28 radio and was getting 1100 to 1300Kbit. Only do your speed tests by tether unless you feel you have a good mobile website to do your testing. I was using www.dslreports.com/mspeed but the results are junk, theirs servers are not able to supply enough bandwidth for a good test.
Secondly I installed a new ROM, specifically I am using NATF's 2.3. This will make the phone way faster in terms of performance. It also allows me to tether via the USB and use my VPN without any problems.
I have an AT&T data card for my laptop (it's a work thing) and I get equal coverage/speed on the fuze as I do on this dedicated device, that is without the radio change that is.
Give the above items a try, the information for making the changes can be found in the ROM development area

Thanks All
Thanks for the feedback guys.
I used GoToMyHelp.com to make the test and provide me the results in both Kbps and KBps... 7.6KBps they said... GPRS speed.
With 3G only the results vary from 17Kbps to 60Kbps, when I turn HSDPA on I always get 61Kbps... looks like the phone cannot handle more than one major WCDMA code with the most robust and slowest modulation code...
But if people reported higher speeds then it means I really have an HW problem and so I have to insist with the service centre... I guess...
Henrique

But...
Although from the comments received looks like the problem is more acute on my device I tried a Samsung with Windos Mobile 6.1 and it is as slow as mine... I think it is too much coincidence.
Does anyone has any information regarding the so called "well known limitation of the cipher/deciphering in real time of windows mobile?
Thanks for any feedback...
Henrique

i get from 800kpb - 1000
never tested upload.
is tehre another test?

I only trust speedtest.net through a hardline tether (not bt) for speed test results. This moves as much processing power as possible from the phone to a full fledged computer, reducing such variables as screen drawing speed, free memory, cpu utilization, etc.
I find the fuze to perform almost exactly in line with my 881u (best speed ive seen on that is just over 2400 down, 900 up) - the only discernable difference is latency, slightly better on 881u (which is to be expected as there isnt ICS running as a proxy in such a situation)
As to the fastest speed you'll see on the device itself, I have not been able to clock over 1700 on speedtest.net running in flash lite 3.1 in opera mobile on my wifi, where i score 5500+ on the computer, so i think testing via phone's browser is not a very good measurement.

I don't know, I just switched my Settings > Phone > Band to GSM to see if it saves substantial battery, opposed to the 3G and even further "H" icon HSxPA I was using before.
The "E" icon GSM-Edge doesn't seem to slow down my Google Maps updates very much.

Thanks
Thank you all for sharing your experience.
The tests I made were using the phone as a modem via USB, so the processing on the phone was at a minimum.
The site I indicated before, GoToMyHelp.com, is used by a Firefox extension I have. After trying several sites this was the one that always gave me the best perceptible match between the browsing experience and the measured figures...
Now comes the hard part to convince the customer services that the phone has problems...
Henrique

I think I have the same problem. I am getting crazy low speeds on G and H, 30Kbit/sec and 60 Kbit/sec respectively. I have tried various tweaks found on the forums, I've flashed a couple of cooked roms and various radios but can't get it any higher. I've tried the SIM in the wifes iphone so I am sure that it's not a problem with that.
Let us know how you get on, are you going to call HTC direct or go through the company you bought it from?

chrisrich said:
I think I have the same problem. I am getting crazy low speeds on G and H, 30Kbit/sec and 60 Kbit/sec respectively. I have tried various tweaks found on the forums, I've flashed a couple of cooked roms and various radios but can't get it any higher. I've tried the SIM in the wifes iphone so I am sure that it's not a problem with that.
Let us know how you get on, are you going to call HTC direct or go through the company you bought it from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im getting 820kb/s in a suburaban area. It works great. Did you enable HSPDA. AT&T turns HSPDA by default (probobly to save bandwidth). All you have to do is fix it...im not sure how search the forum. I am using DA_G Clean fuze rom and it has it built into the ROM

OMG i just tethered my PC and I got some crazy speeds
And that was the lowest one. It went all the way up to 1900..obviously it flutuates a lot but it is still leveling off around 15k....which is crazy because I only have TWO bars!
this is my home
Its crazy that my phone gets speeds half as fast as my DSL and it only has two bars and im in the suburbs!

i tried iphonespeedtest.com on 1.07 proven and got about 400 at highest
tried it when i used his 1.08 i got 1200 kbps
its sick
Northern VA area

Is it possible that while tethered the phone is capable of more data throughput that isn't possible while browsing on the phone? Similar to the problem of encrypted WiFi being slow due to the processor load of encrypting and decrypting data.
From a technical standpoint when you're tethered all the phone does is pass data from the 3G connection to the USB port. The only processing needed is basic lower level networking to re-address the data packets to a new port, thus the processor has a low load and can dedicate more cycles to simply moving data. The phone can focus all of it's power on getting the fastest connection with the 3G tower.
But when you browse on the phone the processor needs to terminate the data packet and unload it into a program. On top of that even more processor power goes towards running the program itself that is using the data. Since the processor is busy multitasking by running a program, terminating data packets, and trying to maintain a connection with the 3G tower, it's more likely to drop packets or lose it's connection.
This would also explain why you lose that weak 3G connection and drop to EDGE when you open a program that has high processor demands.

Data speeds vs sprint

For $35 a month for technically sprint i will plunk down $300 for this beauty but how fast are the downloads?

Seems faster than my tmobile vibrant 3g was.
Sent from my MOTWX435KT using XDA App

it all depends on service and tower loads.. like at around 6pm i get 300kbps and at 6am i get 1400-1500 kbps... right now its 8:30am and im getting 850kbps... so it all depends sometimes i get 100kbps all the way down to 30kbps.. but the triumph was faster than my Buddy droid x and he had two bars i only had one.. at least 3 times faster ( both on 3g)

I was on SERO 500, and my Sprint phone died, so I want to upgrade to SEROP, but calling Sprint (5 times, they know what is SEROP but would not give it to me), email ecare (3 times, then no one reply anymore). So I am now on VM $25 plan w/ Triumph.
The phone itself is just like any other Android phone. At home, I get almost no Data. Phone and SMS go thru no problem. Google Map, Browser, Youtube 90% of the time would not load, and complaint no connection. When I walk out of the apartment building Data works.
The problem is, my old Sprint phone is Touch Pro, and it got perfect Data.
So does Sprint has any special rule for VM phone? Since I am new to VM and Android, I am reading now how to update PRL.

the main difference is that sprint plans allow roaming on verizon towers. otherwise, the data speeds are the same. any speed difference you're seeing is likely caused by device differences (e.g. antenna, radio, ...)

VM doesn't roam, so it will never have as good reception as a sprint (or AT&T or Verizon) phone. Part of that $80-$100 a month you are paying them is for roaming access fees between the carriers.
Long and short of it is if you want the bet reception and data speeds, you need to pay for it. You aren't going to get top notch network performance for $25 a month.

emkorial said:
VM doesn't roam, so it will never have as good reception as a sprint (or AT&T or Verizon) phone. Part of that $80-$100 a month you are paying them is for roaming access fees between the carriers.
Long and short of it is if you want the bet reception and data speeds, you need to pay for it. You aren't going to get top notch network performance for $25 a month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, but you can get get top notch service for $35 a month. In some areas the best signal for a Sprint phone will be from Sprint towers; in that case, a Virgin phone (using only Sprint towers) will get the same service as a Sprint phone unless the actual phones are different.

I disagree. I have the phone and the web browsing speed was horrible as well as the download speed for apps. You guys may have towers closer to you. I stay in washington, dc. I did the prl swap, now i feel as though my data speeds are much faster, possible 300% more faster. I browse facebook, zoom! check out a youtube vid and no buffering on a 6minute video. If you have slow data speeds do the prl swap! You will appreciate the phone much more!
http://androidforums.com/triumph-all-things-root/395533-big-difference-data-speeds.html

Which PRL did you use, hitsndc? 01115? 01119? 01120? These are the 3 PRL's I've seen mentioned across the forums.

MarkMcCoskey said:
Which PRL did you use, hitsndc? 01115? 01119? 01120? These are the 3 PRL's I've seen mentioned across the forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used 01115

I just swapped to 01115; will advise if it makes a difference. I also attempted to force the phone into EvDO-only mode in the build.prop file - that MAY make a significant difference in places where the radio "hunts", which mine DOES when mobile.
If it works I'll post a "how to" which is more-or-less like what's been posted, with one exception - there's an easy way to get the phone to ALWAYS have the diag enabled using "anycut".
Update: EVDO-only lock is NOT effective, however with 01115 the phone re-selects to 3G much more reliably and quickly than with the base PRL and is also connecting to towers it never did before (as shown in "Open Signal"), so at least here it appears to be an improvement.

I swapped to 01115 myself.
Speed test are about the same, which I understood would be the case. As long as my connection is more consistent, I'd be happy. I've had a couple dropped calls. Will have to wait and see with this PRL.
I should check Google maps to see if it detects me closer/more accurately. I've had times where it was miles off, when I know there are towers closer. So hopefully I have better access to the closer towers.
Would still like to know the difference between the PRL's (01115, 01119, 01120, or any others that would work with the Triumph).

Genesis3 said:
I just swapped to 01115; will advise if it makes a difference. I also attempted to force the phone into EvDO-only mode in the build.prop file - that MAY make a significant difference in places where the radio "hunts", which mine DOES when mobile.
If it works I'll post a "how to" which is more-or-less like what's been posted, with one exception - there's an easy way to get the phone to ALWAYS have the diag enabled using "anycut".
Update: EVDO-only lock is NOT effective, however with 01115 the phone re-selects to 3G much more reliably and quickly than with the base PRL and is also connecting to towers it never did before (as shown in "Open Signal"), so at least here it appears to be an improvement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for sharing, with regards to locking into 3G more reliably, do the phone signal decibel levels improve as well? And how about voice quality?

Voice quality was never an issue here - this phone is capable of holding a voice call and being stable when it shows ZERO bars, which none of my other handsets have ever done.
The big difference I see is that there are other towers that now appear in the neighbor list and the handset does connect to them where it didn't before, so I am definitely "seeing" connection sources that I didn't know existed in the past.
It hasn't made a material difference in data rate performance that I can see from my house - the real test will be whether it makes a difference of materiality when I'm in the car and such, which is where I've seen a lot of "hunting" down to 1x and "sticking" there. We'll see if that is gone or not.
I'm keeping 1115 for now but have the original PRL in the event I need to go back to it.

Once I swapped my prl and added the EvDo line my Data more than doubled in speed. Like hitsndc said I am now able to stream a whole 4 min video with no buffer. Once I removed that line it would stop every few seconds. Added the line, back to no Buffer. I tried this a few times before I came to the conclusion that it did make a difference.
Once I updated the PRL I used opensignal from the market to see my towers and now I was locked on to a tower close to me that wasnt even showing up on the map before.
Im alot happier with my phone now. Once we get 2.3 on here Ill be good

Where did you put the EVDO line? In build.prop? That's where I stuck it - it made no difference for me; I still occasionally "hunt" to 1x service, but the PRL change DID make a difference as I now "see" towers (and connect to them) that I wasn't before.

Look guys I only had one bar.
Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk

Losing data connection on Microcell

Hi All,
I seem to be losing data connectivity when on my Microcell at home.
Normally this wouldn't be an issue because I'd just hop on the Wi-Fi - but this leaves me unable to receive MMS messages.
Please see attached logcat for details. Note the issues that start happening at: 04-15 07:05:39.638

Nobody?
Is there another forum or category this should be placed into?

Your not the only one that has connectivity issues. There is a post here in the q and a for gsm settings if that what microcell uses u can give it a shot
Sent from my SM-N915P using XDA Free mobile app

I just searched the terms "apn" and "microcell"
Nothing of use came up.
Which device Q&A was it listed under?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-edge/help/samsung-galaxy-edge-network-drop-t3058208
here is the thread. i cant tell you it will work for you i use a cdma device and never tried it on mine

shadezero said:
Hi All,
I seem to be losing data connectivity when on my Microcell at home.
Normally this wouldn't be an issue because I'd just hop on the Wi-Fi - but this leaves me unable to receive MMS messages.
Please see attached logcat for details. Note the issues that start happening at: 04-15 07:05:39.638
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hello,
i was in ur boat for the last couple of months troubleshooting all types of reasoning why my mms and visual voicemail, would not go out thru the MCell. To make a long , long, story short, i swapped out my DPH153 ( the upside down "Y" white microcell) to the newer DPH154 ( Shorter, Black, and no PC port ). Being i have had the previous MCell for a couple of years, i had no warranty. Although, i disagreed that if AT&T made some change to the MCell on the backend or wherever, and screwed MMS, why should i have to pay anyway. After talking to enough reps that kept telling me i need to go buy a new one, ( make sure u have at least an hour of spare time before u get on the phone )they eventually sent me over to the Retention department. i have 6 lines on my account, so i guess i was worth saving. Retention was super nice, didnt even care what my reasoning was for the new MCell, just wanted me to be a happy customer, which after being on hold for so long, i greatly appreciated. the deal was for me to go purchase one at an AT&T store, and once activated, to call back , and they would credit my account. it was a little incovienient, but worth saving the $150.00. i went and got it, activated it, which took minutes, i was suprised at that, called back in, was on hold for another 30 minutes, finally credited my account the $150.00. Happy Customer.
Now, the real question.... did it work ?
yes.
yes, it did. The first thing i noticed when my old one wasnt working is that the data speeds were extremely S-L-O-W. i have 6 phones here, all different, so i knew it wasnt a phone issue, or a software problem, not on all 6. Smartphones are getting better n better cameras, the file sizes are getting bigger n bigger, even when it compresses. the compression is smaller, but its still a growing file size. Regardless, when i was in range of old MCell, i turned off wifi, and ran a speedtest. i mean it claims 3G, lets see. so minimum with full bars, id say about 1.3mb is acceptable. my speed was around .3mb , no 1 in front. Now normally, i would have never noticed this, cuz at home, most use wifi which is blazing, and it doesnt eat ur data. it then made sense why pics wouldnt send, im trying to send this huge file through this tiny hole, and it would just fail, bottom line. Ran a speedtest on new MCell, 3.40Mbps. very acceptable. sent multiple pics, no issues. Appears a little slower,about 10 seconds or so for sending to complete, only because of the data. When im out in the wild, and have LTE, pics send in seconds, but of course, its 54Mbps or more. i just realized my short story got kinda long, sorry. Hope that helps you.