Cell phones, amirite?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yesterday my phone started doing a thing, and it just did it again. I called a number and it went off into la-la land (note: this is not the same as Laa-Laa land.) I hit End to try to cancel the call and start again. The button went from red to grey to indicate it received my input, but after a minute, it hasn't hung up. The status bar is still glowing and has a phone icon to indicate it's connected to the network for a call or whatever the precise meaning is.

    I had to restart it. I wonder if a factory wipe will fix that or not; I've still got about 6 months on my contract.



  • My old phone (which I keep using as a music player and an alarm on airplane mode because damn does SGS3 eat the battery fast), on the other hand, started to fail to ring an alarm in the morning. About three times now I've set it to wake me up at 7AM, then woke up at 7:30 by myself, unlocked the screen, and then it starts ringing. Well fuck you, now I'm awake anyway.



  • Yeah, I've had issues with the clock recently. Nothing that bad, but the clock on the unlock screen will show the last time that I had the screen on.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    Nothing that bad, but the clock on the unlock screen will show the last time that I had the screen on.

    I had an HTC Inspire 4G/Desire HD, and it had this goofy Sense clock that pretended to be one of those old-school ones that flip the numbers on little cards, and every time you turned the screen on it would come up showing the clock flipping from what was never the last time the screen was on to the current time.

    You might have to read that a couple of times.


  • kills Dumbledore

    I had that widget on my HTC Hero (Droid Eris in the US), which was far too slow in the processor department for the version of Android and Sense they put on it. That animation got pretty damn stuttery if the phone was doing something else like, say, running


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @jaloopa said:

    far too slow in the processor department for the version of Android and Sense they put on it.

    That seems to be a theme.

    Actually, the proc in the Desire HD (what they called the Inspire everywhere else in the world) was just strong enough for Froyo, and nearly strong enough for Gingerbread, but not strong enough for ICS.


  • FoxDev

    i had the Galaxy Note 2 and towards the end of my contract i noticed it starting to act very weird, powering down unexpectedly, burning battery, getting sluggish.

    i did some investigation and eventually rooted the phone and disabled the hotspot detector app thingie. the one that puts a paywall in front of the hotspot functionality that's unlimited in AOSP.

    turns out that they had turned off the phone home server for that app and the app was totally freaking out because it couldn't phone home.

    and of course its alternate servers were long decomissioned and there was never going to be an update because the phone (which was like 18 months from launch) was considered EOL by my carrier....

    bastards. and they wondered why i left.


  • kills Dumbledore

    At least it had enough storage for Gingerbread, unlike the Desire which eventually got a severely stripped down, developers only version after much complaining


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @accalia said:

    bastards. and they wondered why i left.

    Which carrier?

    I left because I got a SIGNIFICANTLY better plan in terms of bang for the buck from Sprint, even though it cost quite a bit more. That, and because AT&T took away my unlimited plan for tethering.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @jaloopa said:

    At least it had enough storage for Gingerbread, unlike the Desire which eventually got a severely stripped down, developers only version after much complaining

    Which Desire? The Desire HD had enough storage. Plus my version came with an 8GB μSD card.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Which carrier?

    I left because I got a SIGNIFICANTLY better plan in terms of bang for the buck from Sprint, even though it cost quite a bit more. That, and because AT&T took away my unlimited plan for tethering.

    I have Sprint and my wife has AT&T. She keeps making fun of the fact that 4G LTE is only half rolled out in our city ("3G is still a thing?"), then I point out that she has 300MB/month, while I have unlimited.


  • FoxDev

    US Cellular, if we're naming and shaming.


  • kills Dumbledore

    The original Desire, which quite possibly had a different name in the States because who would want to discuss the same hardware between countries without massive confusion?

    SD cards are all very well, but can't be used for OS storage. When the Desire first came out there was no non-root support for storing apps on SD, so it was only useful for photos and music. The Desire on 2.1 could only have a handful of apps unless you had the hack that made it see the SD card as part of internal storage


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    I have Sprint and my wife has AT&T. She keeps making fun of the fact that 4G LTE is only half rolled out in our city ("3G is still a thing?"), then I point out that she has 300MB/month, while I have unlimited.

    LOL. That's one of the reasons. I went from something like "2 lines, one with 5gb and the other with 300mb, and 700 minutes, for $150 or so", to "three lines with 1500 minutes and unlimited data on all three for $210", which was another.

    Plus Sprint's 4GLTE in Dallas is much faster than AT&T's HSDPA was, and another key factor was the fact that Sprint actually has service in my office, whereas AT&T almost doesn't. The people with AT&T literally to lean against windows to use their phones.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @accalia said:

    US Cellular, if we're naming and shaming.

    That's always a thing.



  • @FrostCat said:

    LOL. That's one of the reasons. I went from something like "2 lines, one with 5gb and the other with 300mb, and 700 minutes, for $150 or so", to "three lines with 1500 minutes and unlimited data on all three for $210", which was another.

    Plus Sprint's 4GLTE in Dallas is much faster than AT&T's HSDPA was, and another key factor was the fact that Sprint actually has service in my office, whereas AT&T almost doesn't. The people with AT&T literally to lean against windows to use their phones.

    That's pretty spot on for my experience with both providers. When I can get LTE here, it's pretty quick.


  • FoxDev

    i'm on StraightTalk right now (AT&T network reseller)

    i'm happy enough, but could be persuaded to move if a carrier offers me a good enough deal and lets me keep my unlocked phone.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    When I can get LTE here, it's pretty quick.

    I have gotten up to 26Mbps down--better than my cable, tested via speed test and verified via timed downloads--next to the interstate, in the teens in a bunch of other places, and 5-10 at work and home. I don't think I ever got over 7 with AT&T, and 1-3 was typical.



  • @FrostCat said:

    I have gotten up to 26Mbps down--better than my cable, tested via speed test and verified via timed downloads--next to the interstate, in the teens in a bunch of other places, and 5-10 at work and home. I don't think I ever got over 7 with AT&T, and 1-3 was typical.

    Yup, I've hit 25, just did a test at my desk and got 15.



  • @FrostCat said:

    goofy Sense clock that pretended to be one of those old-school ones that flip the numbers on little cards, and every time you turned the screen on it would come up showing the clock flipping from what

    They've had variations of this since the Windows Mobile days. When my HTC Touch started doing it, I had to find another rom that didn't have the awful clock that would only be correct after waiting for the stupid animation to finish.


  • FoxDev

    @FrostCat said:

    2 lines, one with 5gb and the other with 300mb, and 700 minutes, for $150 or so", to "three lines with 1500 minutes and unlimited data on all three for $210

    i'm on $45/mo + tax

    1 line 3GB at 3G+ speed unlimited at 2G speed after that (if i'm on a 2G connection for any reason my data usage doesn't count, even if i havent hit the cap)

    that's plenty for me, even with unlimited data i average about 500MB/mo


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @hungrier said:

    When my HTC Touch started doing it, I had to find another rom that didn't have the awful clock that would only be correct after waiting for the stupid animation to finish.

    Aw, you're bring back flashbacks. You remember the carousel? I eventually switched to Cyanogenmod, even though I actually sort of like the Sense theming.



  • @hungrier said:

    They've had variations of this since the Windows Mobile days. When my HTC Touch started doing it, I had to find another rom that didn't have the awful clock that would only be correct after waiting for the stupid animation to finish.

    I'm honestly surprised at how many clocks/alarms cause battery issues.

    I once had an issue where a fault in the OS' built-in alarm was causing a battery drain, it was draining faster than I could charge it. Found out the issue by using a logger, removed the alarm, added it back in, and that fixed the problem.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @accalia said:

    1 line 3GB at 3G+ speed unlimited at 2G speed after that (if i'm on a 2G connection for any reason my data usage doesn't count, even if i havent hit the cap)

    that's plenty for me, even with unlimited data i average about 500MB/mo

    Yeah, your 2G usage doesn't count because they only meter 3G usage.

    I use up to 5GB a month, somehow, and that's about the point where the price curve hits its inflection point.


  • FoxDev

    oh, sorry for the confusing.

    stratighttalk only meters 3g. my phone records all of it.

    those measurements were off of my phone and inclusive of the data over wifi as well (which is turned off about 80% of the time


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    2GB limit for all cell data (2/3/4G) on mine - rarely go over about 400MB 1GB.



  • @loopback0 said:

    2GB limit for all cell data (2/3/4G) on mine - rarely go over about 400MB.

    I'm up to 3.11 GB this month.

    Used 7.64 GB last month.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    I'm up to 3.11 GB this month.

    Used 7.64 GB last month.

    Currently my wife and I use roughly 8GB/mo, partly because Samsung phones seem to (occasionally in absolute terms, regularly if not constantly for us) decide they don't want to connect to our home router without rebooting the router.

    Actually, I'm not sure who's at fault: my old HTC phone does the same thing, and we've had at least two different routers, all of which were made by different companies.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    What uses that much?!

    Having said that though, my phone is on wifi quite a lot so suspect I'd be a lot closer to the limit if that wasn't the case.
    I've also just checked and while my phone reports 200MB used for the current billing period, my network (O2) are showing just under 900MB.

    I also have unlimited calls and texts, and made a grand total of 3 calls last month and sent 45 texts.
    I tend to use Whatsapp or Facebook for messages, and my work mobile for phone calls.

    EDIT- have discovered some *ahem* user error - I use about 1GB a month.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @loopback0 said:

    What uses that much?!

    Web + video, probably.



  • @loopback0 said:

    What uses that much?!

    Having said that though, my phone is on wifi quite a lot so suspect I'd be a lot closer to the limit if that wasn't the case.
    <s>I've also just checked and while my phone reports 200MB used for the current billing period, my network (O2) are showing just under 900MB.</s>

    I also have unlimited calls and texts, and made a grand total of 3 calls last month and sent 45 texts.
    I tend to use Whatsapp or Facebook for messages, and my work mobile for phone calls.

    EDIT- have discovered some *ahem* user error - I use about 1GB a month.

    Mostly this.

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nprpodcastplayer.app&hl=en


  • FoxDev

    i listen to google play all access like..... math math math 10/6/365 and i barely get to 500MB/month..... what crazy quality of audio does that send?!

    it's not like you'd notice the drop in quality over an A2DP connection if they used a tighter encoding than whatever it is they use....



  • It's more the insane number of files, polling for updates, etc.


  • FoxDev

    ... riiiiight. I'm sure they could get it down to 800mb/mo if they tried...


  • The app isn't the source, is the issue. I subscribe to nearly 20 podcasts, so YCMV.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    The biggest single app which uses my data is Spotify, which uses 300-400MB a month despite the playlists I listen to being offline playlists, and it only downloading songs newly added to those playlists when I'm on wifi.
    I have no idea what it's doing with that much data. I'd put it in offline mode and stop it, but I'm so far away from my limit that it doesn't matter at the moment.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    At the moment I'm OK with a 500MB/month allowance (really cheap!) and usually only use 300–400 of that. The phone's on Wifi most of the time anyway, and the coverage very spotty the rest (damn topography!) so I don't stream much.



  • I get at least HSPA+ whereever I go and 4G LTE most of the time but only have a 1.25GB quota and don't listen to internet radio.


Log in to reply