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My DINC recently took a crap on me, and I'm currently looking around for a replacement. However, what I want to know if in the meantime it's possible to re-activate my old "dumb" phone (LG enVtouch or an old razor) without affecting/losing my plan (unlimited data).
~cheers
That depends on your carrier. In Germany it's not common to have a provision in your contract that forces you to stick to the phone given to you by the carrier... in fact I haven't heard about such a provision anywhere, but you might just want to check with them.
I sometimes switch to my old Palm Centro when I'm away from a charging station for more than 4 days because the battery life is better and I haven't gotten any complains yet
If you are with Verizon (EnV phones in US) then switching to a dumb phone will cause you to drop your unlimited plan and you wont be able to get it back. I would recommend switching to a different smart phone while you are looking. An old one from a friend maybe?
I've only had this phone for two days, today is day three. I recently dropped my LG Optimus G and broke the screen. Its expensive to repair and while I have the money, I want some breathing room in my accounts to spend the $160 it will cost to have it repaired.
This happen over last weekend (March 29), so I tried to come up with a plan. I could have pushed my Samsung Infuse 4G back into service, but there's some software related issue that resetting back to stock doesn't fix. I currently use it as a clock/radio/internet device in a AT&T Infuse dock.
I decided to check out some of these Go Prepaid phones since they were offering some low end Android phones. I was able to get the Radiant for $67.75 at Best Buys with a price match from Amazon. I guess I could have saved a bit more as it was $59.99 back in February.
Overall, I don't think I can do better without spending much more. It runs all the apps I use and does so fairly quickly. Its very light, lighter than the Infuse, G1 or Optimus G. Its about the same weight as my Pantech dumb phone.
The reason I posted this here is because I have a question(s).
I could easily access the Next Bus mobile website where it takes the data signal and pinpoints my location. Since I started using this phone its unable to get this data and using GPS would worsen battery life. I only use it if the cell signal is questionable, but even with (less than) two bars I can get the service and get bus times on my other phones, not this one.
I have checked all the settings and when I first used Google Chrome I allowed it to use location services. All data settings are checked, I really shouldn't have a problem.
What could be the cause here?
Multitasking doesn't work well. I was easily able to listen to a stream via bluetooth and use Chrome for browsing on the other phones, but not this one. I picked it because it has a Snapdragon Dual Core CPU, unlike the Avail 2 which is still single core.
When attempting to do what I'm accustom to doing, I find that tapping the home button closes the app completely (Beyond Pod) and it has to be restarted to continue listening to the stream. This doesn't happen on either of my other phones, if I am listening to local file or streaming it, it just keep working until I stop playback, the file/streaming has stopped or force the app to close.
Other than that, I can deal with the slowish refresh rate of the display and the phone works great for such a cheap device.
This is the second device because I had to return the first one. The first one refuse to log onto AT&T's network.
I would seriously consider using this over my Optimus G on a upcoming trip, but if these problems are sort of baked in, I will happily return to use my Optimus for all task once its fixed.
...I just hope I didn't shoot myself in the head. I ordered the shield LTE bundle from newegg. Came with the cover, controller, and "blue box" games for a total of $399. Also got $50 warranty. I thought I'd take the time to ask a few questions I've had a hard time finding the answers to.
First, I do hear that LTE signal can be spotty. That's fine since I would have to commute for an hour or better to even get to an LTE signal. How are the hspa+ speeds? 3g speeds? I suppose speed isn't so important, I prefer consistency. I know for a fact 3g/hspa+ signal is great here.
Second, I've been seeing vastly mixed takes on battery life. Some say 11 hours of YouTube, some say 7. I've heard 2 hours of gaming, and I've heard 5 hours. I'll use ppsspp as an example. Will I get at least 3.5-4.5 hours screen on time playing straight PSP in "optimized" mode?
Third and most importantly, what about all those problems I see on the WiFi models? Cracked corners, gentle screen presses cause LCD ripples, WiFi strength, and more. Do you guys think I'll have anything to worry about?
Sent from my XT830C using XDA Free mobile app
prichm1992 said:
...I just hope I didn't shoot myself in the head. I ordered the shield LTE bundle from newegg. Came with the cover, controller, and "blue box" games for a total of $399. Also got $50 warranty. I thought I'd take the time to ask a few questions I've had a hard time finding the answers to.
First, I do hear that LTE signal can be spotty. That's fine since I would have to commute for an hour or better to even get to an LTE signal. How are the hspa+ speeds? 3g speeds? I suppose speed isn't so important, I prefer consistency. I know for a fact 3g/hspa+ signal is great here.
Second, I've been seeing vastly mixed takes on battery life. Some say 11 hours of YouTube, some say 7. I've heard 2 hours of gaming, and I've heard 5 hours. I'll use ppsspp as an example. Will I get at least 3.5-4.5 hours screen on time playing straight PSP in "optimized" mode?
Third and most importantly, what about all those problems I see on the WiFi models? Cracked corners, gentle screen presses cause LCD ripples, WiFi strength, and more. Do you guys think I'll have anything to worry about?
Sent from my XT830C using XDA Free mobile app
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Just got mine from newegg today to replace my original Nexus 7. Updated fully and tried out some portal and reading. Performance has been good, but the battery looks pretty weak, currently at 59 percent and estimated only 4 hours left. I'm not seeing any screen deformation or glass issues yet, and WiFi does seem a bit flaky. Overall pretty happy for my first few hours. I'm looking forward to hooking it up to my TV and playing on the bug screen, but I'll need a HDMI cable first.
Looking at unlocking the bootloader and rooting, but that'll be a job for another day. Hope you like your new tablet.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app
I'm an hour and a half away from picking it up at the post office, and I'm pretty psyched! I'll keep posting here for awhile to tell people about how I like it and hopefully I can convince someone to take the jump with me
Sent from my XT830C using XDA Free mobile app
The tablet is great, just make sure you don't get angry if you get a defective or cracked one, just RMA it and get a new one if that happens (Not common now, it was on the first tablets, like mine).
If you are an android user with experience or some common sense, you'll love it.
likewise, just took the plunge. got a used one with the controller for £150. hopefully it won't have any issues.
I believe it'll be on lollipop. so what are the first things to do before setting up? unlock bootloader and root then set up? or am i missing something?
Well it took a lot longer than an hour and a half, but I finally have it. I'm loving every second of it, but I don't think I'll update to lollipop yet. I heard custom power profiles were gone
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If there are any updates, and you plan to install them, be sure to do so immediately and then factory reset
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Alright, I've been playing with it awhile, and here's what's happened so far. This thing is the fastest Android device I've ever used, but its far from perfect. About that, I didn't expect a miracle out of this battery, and neither should you. I don't have screens right now, but for people who care about screen on time, here's what I get: Tegra K1 games like half life 2 and trine 2= ~3 hours
Heavy but normal android games like real racing 3 and survival craft= ~5 hours
Heavy emulation gaming like ppsspp or drastic DS= ~5.5-6 hours
Light emulation like super Nintendo and 2d android games= ~8 hours
720p streaming videos= ~8 hours
Offline video and heavy web browsing (sites with lots of java artifacts )= Varies usually, but the general scope is 8-11 hours.
Lollipop, for me, sucked eggs when I first updated. The screen barely responded there was so much lag! So I panicked and immediately factory reset, coming to the same problem. More lag. So I pulled it off the charger to show a coworker, and lag was gone. The moral of the story? Being on charge makes the screen incredibly unresponsive, meaning I reset for nothing. No big deal now that I know what was going on.
Getting a net10 sim working was a pain in the butt. Showed no signal at first, so I called at&t thinking it was locked. They said no device with my imei was registered to their network. Awesome! So I got the run around from nvidia before getting a great guy named Alex who told me net10, while being compatible with at&t, does not have sim cards that support bands 4 and 7. I was told it would be impossible to get a sim from anybody that supported 4 and 7 and the ONLY carriers who did were at&t, T-Mobile, and Rogers. I was upset but believed him. Leaving my net10 sim in, I played with settings and turned roaming. Boom! Bars! But they had a "!" and it didn't work still. I just made the net10 APN twice and presto! All is well, and I'm loving the shield. I get good framerates in all games and I have battery fo' days as long as I keep the 3d stuff to a minimum.
It's worth noting I keep it on "optimised" mode.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app
So I've been waiting to get internet at my apartment, and have been using my one m8 tethered as home internet (thanks to the help on this forum getting a ROM running on it that lets me use the mobile hotspot).
Its working great. However, i'm at 120GB with 5 days to go. Being that this would be, under most carrier plans, an insane amount of data... I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this. I definitely haven't seen any throttling or slowdown. Runs PS4 games, streaming, whatever. I was actually at 60GB 5 days into the month and have made a concereted effort to slow down lol, otherwise I might be in the 300-400GB range. That said, it really isn't too bad.
I actually just ordered time warner cable for $40/mo, so I guess I'm moving on anyway. But I'm curious if anyone has been doing this for an extended period and if Verizon ever made a stink.
Someone I know does. He canceled all wired tv, phone, & internet service to his home and has been using his verizon S4 for it all for over a year now. He's on the old unlimited data plan. It is apparently working well for him but he had to get a special wifi card for his PC to use the hotspot from the phone. He uses a wifi capable "smart" bluray player to get all his TV programming from youtube, netflix, and amazon prime. He said it was a learning curve to find all the tv programming he used to watch on cable but he has been able to get it all, albeit, at a later release date then the mainstream networks' prime time debuts.
I do it, but with T-Mobile.
Just one thing though....constant wifi tethering will destroy your phone. Specifically the battery, but all that heat and energy use can't be good for the rest of it either. I ruined 2 batteries on my Galaxy Light in less than a year. Ruined 2 Motorola Razr Maxxes this way too. You don't want to be doing this with a phone like the M8 that is practically impossible to repair.
If you choose to go this route, pick up a cheap (rootable, obviously) phone with a removable battery, like a Galaxy S3 to use as your "home" phone.
The S4 is better then the S3 in that regard because it supports that newer faster LTE (aws?), the wifi hardware is quite a bit more advanced (faster), and the repairs (if ever necessary) are easier. Wifi tether does use a lot of power but you'll be plugged in for that most of the time, especially at home. The circuitry holds up just fine in the S4 as long as you're not aggravating the situation with over-volting / over-clocking.
I had been using my old Droid 4 as a home gateway/router before I got the One working. Perhaps I could just use that as my home router.. it worked well enough but would cut out occasionally (annoying during games... the One doesn't do that). If anything the Droid 4 seemed to have a stronger wifi signal when it worked though... better range, just as fast as the M8.
Do you know how much data your friend goes through?
The Droid 4 does/did get really hot while tethering. To the point I'd usually rest it on a cold can of soda or something while using it, lol. The One doesn't get nearly as hot.
Keep in mind that the power consumption and heat generation of the screen still dwarfs that of the wifi module. While using the phone as a home internet gateway the screen will likely be off most of the time.
I don't know about his data useage quantity but he's almost always got something streaming video of some kind. Its probably not ideal for serious gaming because the signal does drop out from time to time. Toggling airplane mode on and off again reestablishes a full-speed connection pretty quick but it would be disruptive in a game.
well. my signal on the One hasn't dropped and I've been logging a lot of Destiny this month. Sometimes you'll get a little lag but it isn't bad.
Just saw that VZW is hiking unlimited prices $20/mo... wonder if that'll get challenged by the FCC (like throttling etc): http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/08/tec...ted-plan-increase/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom
I have old UDP and use my phone hotspot to devices it in my motorhome. All was good until 2 months ago when I used 50-60gb and they throttled me since. No 4g at all from home tower. get 4g elsewhere .
How do I approach customer service to get un-throttled? New reports say they are not throttling anymore.
Thanks.
Try cycling airplane mode on/off to reestablish a 4G data connection.
0reo said:
Try cycling airplane mode on/off to reestablish a 4G data connection.
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Click to collapse
Tried that 50 million times. She a no work! Others get 4g at my place not me.
This is my SOLUTION
Verizon 4G LTE Broadband Router With Voice
Works like a charm.
Born<ICs said:
I have old UDP and use my phone hotspot to devices it in my motorhome. All was good until 2 months ago when I used 50-60gb and they throttled me since. No 4g at all from home tower. get 4g elsewhere .
How do I approach customer service to get un-throttled? New reports say they are not throttling anymore.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would just call them and explain your problem as you have here, and leave out the throttle part.
back up your data firs, they will likely have you factory reset at some point.
it could be a problem with your phone, or a problem with the towers in your area. they will determine which.
its very unlikely they are throttling. they wouldnt reduce the 4g signal output on an entire tower to do it, and they are actually prohibited from doing it by the fcc.
bweN diorD said:
i would just call them and explain your problem as you have here, and leave out the throttle part.
back up your data firs, they will likely have you factory reset at some point.
it could be a problem with your phone, or a problem with the towers in your area. they will determine which.
its very unlikely they are throttling. they wouldnt reduce the 4g signal output on an entire tower to do it, and they are actually prohibited from doing it by the fcc.
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Click to collapse
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Thank you. Ended up swapping Sim then got consistent signal a few days later. No idea what they did on their end. Swapped Sim to 6P and all is good now.
I did this when I was doing my internship. I mainly just streamed Netflix and only hit 256GB that month. There was a time Verizon was throttling my data even though they wouldn't admit it until I eventually got transferred to an engineer . None of their support tiers could answer my questions and kept telling me they didn't have the capability to throttle so the problem is my fault. I somehow eventually talked to an engineer at Verizon and the engineer didn't directly admit it but rather, he implied that they do have that capability and the support techs were lying. One tech blamed "tower service in the area" and another tech blamed the unlocked bootloader on my 2013 Moto X DEV for causing the connectivity issues even though I was running the stock ROM and even restored everything back to stock prior to calling. Hahaha.. The funny thing is that the connection went back to normal directly after that call ended. Weird how that works....
Until about last year, I trusted Android...
Then my mum bought me a present, a cheap Allview P7 Pro. Phone was looking fine, it was supposed to be Dual Mode 4G (FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE), Dual Sim as my old Allview V1 Viper...
She bought it in Romania and managed to send it to me in UK. Unpacked, plugged in both sim cards (Romanian Digi and UK Three). Been negatively impressed of the new interface looks, those devs really like to completely change interface from build to build, but it was very white-ish and I am a night person...
Impossible tethering. At the time, if I remember well, P7 Pro had Lollipop running, though now gsmarena says it's Marshmallow.
The phone was actually creating the wireless connection, but it was no tethering on it, as I presumed it was actually trying to tether internet from the Digi sim (which was disabled) instead of the one from the Three sim (which was enabled). I couldn't believe my eyes, there was no way to get tethering to work.
Then I just unmounted the Digi card and left just the Three. Finally tethering was working. But hey, we use dual sim phones for a reason.
Anyway, I've seen there were problems with connection. Even deep in the night towards morning when finally Three was working in the remote Highlands... (One of our colleagues had a Utok 400D, and I still think about buying that as a modem, he was shaming us with his phone, his girlfriend streaming a movie and he playing a game on the same connection during daytime, which was impossible for everyone else, but gladly I'm no longer there).
So I tried to download a movie. After about 2-3 minutes of download, it was actually going to stop. Pretty funny, Internet Download Manager, which didn't ever have any problem, before, or after that night, was becoming blocked into a "Connecting"/"Sending GET..." endless loop. Stop & resume. Did that more than 100 times in about 3 hours. Downloaded the movie, however, but I was determined to get rid of the phone. Packed the sims back on my old Allview V1 Viper, which I still use today and managed to sell the brand new P7 Pro...
Now I'd like to buy a new phone, but I'm really scared.
I don't know what's out there, I don't know how much devs possibly screwed Android builds, I don't wanna end with a defective flagship because some mofos talked to some networks in order to screw users tethering.
I still don't have good wireless in this location, but Three works very well. Still, I need to know which Android versions are to be trusted at least on this aspect of tethering.
TheEconomist said:
Until about last year, I trusted Android...
Then my mum bought me a present, a cheap Allview P7 Pro. Phone was looking fine, it was supposed to be Dual Mode 4G (FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE), Dual Sim as my old Allview V1 Viper...
She bought it in Romania and managed to send it to me in UK. Unpacked, plugged in both sim cards (Romanian Digi and UK Three). Been negatively impressed of the new interface looks, those devs really like to completely change interface from build to build, but it was very white-ish and I am a night person...
Impossible tethering. At the time, if I remember well, P7 Pro had Lollipop running, though now gsmarena says it's Marshmallow.
The phone was actually creating the wireless connection, but it was no tethering on it, as I presumed it was actually trying to tether internet from the Digi sim (which was disabled) instead of the one from the Three sim (which was enabled). I couldn't believe my eyes, there was no way to get tethering to work.
Then I just unmounted the Digi card and left just the Three. Finally tethering was working. But hey, we use dual sim phones for a reason.
Anyway, I've seen there were problems with connection. Even deep in the night towards morning when finally Three was working in the remote Highlands... (One of our colleagues had a Utok 400D, and I still think about buying that as a modem, he was shaming us with his phone, his girlfriend streaming a movie and he playing a game on the same connection during daytime, which was impossible for everyone else, but gladly I'm no longer there).
So I tried to download a movie. After about 2-3 minutes of download, it was actually going to stop. Pretty funny, Internet Download Manager, which didn't ever have any problem, before, or after that night, was becoming blocked into a "Connecting"/"Sending GET..." endless loop. Stop & resume. Did that more than 100 times in about 3 hours. Downloaded the movie, however, but I was determined to get rid of the phone. Packed the sims back on my old Allview V1 Viper, which I still use today and managed to sell the brand new P7 Pro...
Now I'd like to buy a new phone, but I'm really scared.
I don't know what's out there, I don't know how much devs possibly screwed Android builds, I don't wanna end with a defective flagship because some mofos talked to some networks in order to screw users tethering.
I still don't have good wireless in this location, but Three works very well. Still, I need to know which Android versions are to be trusted at least on this aspect of tethering.
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I think that would be more of an issue of the network involved instead of the device or android version.
Tethering should not be a problem if you root the device though. There is usually a mod or an app of some sort that can be used to enable hotspot/tethering on pretty much every device.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
Droidriven said:
I think that would be more of an issue of the network involved instead of the device or android version.
Tethering should not be a problem if you root the device though. There is usually a mod or an app of some sort that can be used to enable hotspot/tethering on pretty much every device.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
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Still, my old Viper V1 never had a problem to tether, it never needed root for that (I rooted it because I believed at some point the speeds were too low for that to be the network's fault, believed it to be a policy thing, but Three in Highlands is 2G basically).
I was 100% convinced it was a Lollipop bug, that some developer addressed a wrong object, trying to get the internet from a wrong sim. I could not swap the sims, cause they were different sizes, however it could tether when only the Three sim was physically inserted in the phone. Still, there was the other bug, connection not actually working after a few minutes.
I mean the surprise was too much. You don't expect that kinda issue with a brand new phone and a supposedly newer version of Android. (I remember when Ice Cream Sandwich came out, I couldn't even find the internet settings, in 5 minutes I was flashing back Gingerbread, but Gingerbread was working fine on my Galaxy S at the time). Hate those interface changes they dish out on every new version.
Still, my question is: are the new versions having the same Lollipop bug on dual sim phones ? Can I safely buy a new phone now ?