Surface Pro 3 doesn't come with a SIM slot?
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What's up with that?
I wonder if the Pro 4 will. I want a Surface, but I want to put the damned thing on my mobile data plan so it's just always online everywhere without me having to burn cell batteries with tethering nonsense.
Am I crazy, or is Microsoft?
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Maybe they consider the full size USB port to be a good enough option?
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The Surface 3 (non-Pro) apparently does(*). So, if you can live with the Intel Atom and the slightly lower specs overall...
(*) Or there's a plan to release a model with this (according to Wikipedia). Don't know if it's available yet anywhere.
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Maybe they consider the full size USB port to be a good enough option?
I don't want a dongle stickin' out, that sucks.
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Am I crazy, or is Microsoft?
Missing option : bothAlso, maybe they plan on giving the buyers a WinPhone to act as an access point, since nobody is buying them anyway ;)
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I really wish M$ fixed bluetooth tethering so that it's not as fiddly to set up. Once it's connected it works a treat but getting it connected is fiddly and tedious (particularly when you miss a step and have to start over from step 1.
yes maximum speed is slower than wifi or corded tether, but since the surface has BT4le and so does most phones these days you can BT tether and not noticably increase the battery drain on your phone.
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Also, maybe they plan on giving the buyers a WinPhone to act as an access point, since nobody is buying them anyway
I already have a WinPhone I can use for tethering, but I'd like to avoid blowing its battery for this. The Surface battery's like 50 times bigger.
Also my WinPhone gets physically hot when it's running both communication chips simultaneously.
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I don't think my carrier even allows tethering on WinPhone. It's probably one of those things they do to force people into iPhones.
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Also my WinPhone gets physically hot when it's running both communication chips simultaneously.
That's a pretty common thing on Android phones as well. Not sure if iPhone handles the battery drain any better.
I always love it when I can feel my battery getting drained...
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I don't think my carrier even allows tethering on WinPhone.
My understanding is that in WinPhone 8.1, carriers can't turn off tethering anymore. But I heard that second-hand and I could be wrong... I just know when I had WinPhone 7, AT&T disabled tethering, and now that I have WinPhone 8.1 I have tethering-- and I can guarantee AT&T didn't do that by choice, that ain't a charity.
yes maximum speed is slower than wifi or corded tether, but since the surface has BT4le and so does most phones these days you can BT tether and not noticably increase the battery drain on your phone.
I've never used Bluetooth for anything other than hooking my phone up to my car. Does tethering work better over it? (Better defined as "less battery drain"?)
I'd still much rather have a SIM slot on Surface when I buy a Surface Pro 4 after it comes out.
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Ah well my carrier doesn't even have 8.1 yet, I'm still on 8.0. I think I could update it myself by putting it in developer mode or something, but I haven't had it very long and I'd hate to brick it.
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A quick bit of research indicates carriers can still prevent tethering, but there are apps that can work around it
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Really? I'm really shocked that AT&T allows it by default now without paying them $10 or whatever it was.
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Does tethering work better over it?
well...
Better defined as "less battery drain"?
oh. then using that definition, absolutely. the bluetooth connection is significantly lower wattage so the phone does not need as much power to use it as it does to act as a wifi hotspot.
setting up the connection is fiddly as heck and worse of the three win8.1 tablets i've used it on each one has had a different sequence of steps required to get it to talk to the phone.
all of them were aces once connected but the initial set up was annoying.
that might be better with a winphone to windows though, i was using a nexus 5 as the phone.
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Huh. I think my Acer has Bluetooth, maybe I'll give that a try on the bus this morning.
Most of what I know about Bluetooth comes from this Mitchell and Webb skit where the annoying co-worker tries to "tooth a number from his cell" instead of just reading it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVPZAXMCasI
CONTAINS BONUS USE OF THE WORD "DEMONSTRABLY".
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I'd be shocked if it didn't have bluetooth. It's been a standard feature on phones (not just smartphones) for years.
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let me know how it works, the process isn't that complicated and windows should have all the right drivers for it, but the settings get hidden in weird places and you usually have to poke them in the right order.
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It's been a standard feature on phones
unless i'm misreading things Blakey's referring to an Acer Laptop...
if i'm misreading things i blame the lack of caffeine this morning.
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I'd be shocked if it didn't have bluetooth.
My Acer is a laptop.
My phone is a Lumia. I already know my phone has Bluetooth, I just said like 3 posts above that I connect it to my car that way. PAY ATTENTION!
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where the annoying co-worker tries to "tooth a number from his cell" instead of just reading it:
We've fixed that now:
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Turns out Lumia 9xx and 10xx phones don't support Internet sharing over Bluetooth, so. Suck.
Well hopefully the Surface Pro 4 will have a SIM slot. Otherwise, I'm in dongle-land. Ugh.
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Damn it... is "high-phoning" going to be a thing the kids do now?
On a more serious note, I never played with NFC yet. How's the compatibility on that thing? As in, does WinPhone <=> Android <=> iPhone work well enough?
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Other than Mobile World Conference, I can practically guarantee nobody ever has-- or will-- use that feature.
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Turns out Lumia 9xx and 10xx phones don't support Internet sharing over Bluetooth, so. Suck.
Lumia 920:
Looks supported to meβ¦
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Turns out Lumia 9xx and 10xx phones don't support Internet sharing over Bluetooth, so. Suck.
WTF ?
Get a real phone. Internet sharing over bluetooth is a feature available on every damn phone.
Even my "shitty OS" Linux laptop can do that !
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Your carrier does not have the fucking right to restrict your tethering, or anything you do with your phone.
It's like selling you milk, but banning you from putting it in your coffee.
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Carriers do lots they aren't supposed to. I don't even have group texting anymore on WP8, yet that was supported on WP7 by the exact same carrier!
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It's like selling you milk, but banning you from putting it in your coffee.
Coffee is better with cream anyway :p
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The fuck?
My phone doesn't have that, and when I Googled it I found a bunch of posts that says Lumia phones don't support it.
How'd you get that?
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I went to Settings > Internet Sharing, and selected Bluetooth from the dropdown
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Maybe it was just a software update thing and @RaceProUK has a newer version than @blakeyrat?
Any online reference is likely to show the capabilities of the SW version the phone originally came with.
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Mine's OS version 8.10.14219.341
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I'm on "Lumia Cyan", I have no idea if there's a version number that corresponds with that.
If I click the I next to Lumia Cyan, it takes me to a page talking about Lumia Denim, so maybe I'm a version behind?
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Settings > About, then hit More Information; the OS version number will be listed there
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Oh hm, mine is 8.10.12393, so I am behind. Damn.
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Damn it... is "high-phoning" going to be a thing the kids do now?
No, because by the time there's market saturation of the capability, no one will market it because it's "old" and "not popular", so it's yet another feature that will miss out on network effect due to missing out on network effect.@Onyx said:On a more serious note, I never played with NFC yet. How's the compatibility on that thing? As in, does WinPhone β Android β iPhone work well enough?
Windows Phone to/from Android works perfectly in my experience, on handsets that have the feature at all. Windows Phone and Android to EFTPOS also works perfectly on terminals that support it, thanks to EMV standards. Nothing works with iPhone, since their NFC implementation has been intentionally damaged to only work with Apple Pay.
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Nothing works with iPhone, since their NFC implementation has been intentionally damaged to only work with Apple Pay.
:mst3k_dull_surprise.mov:
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AT&T has only approved Denim for the Lumia 1520. The rest of the phones are on Cyan, except for the two that are on Black or Amber.
This is the same AT&T that at end-of-life of Windows Phone 7.8 last year still hadn't approved Mango for half its handsets, leaving them at Windows Phone 7.0, which is one of the reasons why Microsoft threatened to end-run around them.
You can bypass their stupidity with Preview for Developers, or use Deutsche Telekom instead.
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So my phone DOESN'T support it or... I'm so confused.
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Your phone does physically support it. Your phone also supports the OS update that enables it. Your carrier has not given their permission to Microsoft to make the update available to you, because "we still need to do compatibility testing with our network." If you're a developer, you can get the update despite them, and turn it on.
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It's not a phone? Closed NOT_A_WTF.
Then people mentioned that the non-Pro did, so
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Oh.
Well if that situation still exists when I buy the Surface I'll look into it.
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It's not a phone?
It's marketed as a go-anywhere productivity fondleslab; why wouldn't it have mobile Internet?
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It's marketed as a go-anywhere productivity fondleslab; why wouldn't it have mobile Internet?
Right.
It's weird for a device like that not to have it, IMO. That's why I was surprised when I actually looked it up and also why I posted here.
Hell, my goddamned Sony Vita has a SIM slot.
Is this some new thing where tech companies just assume free wifi is literally everywhere, so there's no need to support anything else?
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Other than Mobile World Conference, I can practically guarantee nobody ever has-- or will-- use that feature.
Unless it's implemented better in Windows than in Android, that's for sure.
When I got an Android phone a couple years ago with NFC I tried it out, and it's finicky as hell. Also, it doesn't seem to work properly between phone makers, because they're all assholes who have to customize it.
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Your carrier does not have the fucking right to restrict your tethering, or anything you do with your phone
I have unlimited internet for Β£15 a month. My carrier doesn't want me abusing that by using it to download full games on my PC or whatever, so cuts off my 3G connection when they detect tethering. I'm fine with that, even though it would be nice to have a separate pot of tethering data for when I need it
On bundles with limited internet, tethering is fine and just uses MBs from your normal allowaance
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I know, I know stupid question but ...
What prevents you from downloading games on a rooted phone?