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The answer to those rural areas is 600MHZ or Band 71 wireless service. This requires some cooperation between providers and those previous users who are abandoning the bands.

OF course there is money involved, as

Note some glitches:

NYC will not get a realistic Band 71 deployment until WRNN-TV abandons the band, and now they plan to move in 2023, though that is not easily independently confirmed.

There is a perception that the money allocated to assist stations in moving won;t cover the expenses for the next 2-3 years. The cell providers are constant pressure to pay more and more to 'force' these existing users off the bands.

T-Mobile was the big winner in the auction, but they may have financial constraints also in deployment.

If you think fiber is expensive in rural areas, however, that dark fiber in metro areas is a valuable asset, and the owners, many being legacy telcos, are reluctant to even rent it. They may be waiting for the government to step in and pay gobs of money to use what has already been paid for.

LEO satellite service is the other option, but it will take time even for Elon to launch all those birds.

I had the Nokia flip phone that implemented it back in 2006-2007. The Wi-Fi calling worked great in my experience, seamless handoff back and forth with the macro cellular network; it would even roam between different APs (my employer needed four APs to cover our entire building) without dropping calls. The problem was that Nokia was prone to crashing for other reasons, even with the Wi-Fi turned off, it had very buggy software and I eventually tired of it shutting down for no reason. They had two other phones that supported it, one of them a Blackberry, but I never got around to experimenting with them.

My favorite T-Mobile phone was the Motorola v195s; that thing had a radio in it that could hold the weakest signal without dropping calls (always a consideration for T-Mobile customers in suburban/rural markets), as well as an eight hour talk time with the factory battery. It was just a phone, didn't even have a camera, but it was and in some ways still is my favorite cell phone out of the dozens that I've owned over the years.

I really liked T-Mobile, they introduced me to the awesomeness of GSM, amongst other things, and it was with a heavy heart that I switched back to Verizon when my job took me to a city where T-Mobile had no coverage. If Verizon ever yanks my unlimited data plan I'll be back on T-Mobile in a New York Minute; I've thought about doing it anyway but their coverage is grossly inferior around these parts, which would be worth putting up with if they could save me money, but with my grandfathered Verizon pricing + employee discount I'm paying less with Verizon than anything T-Mo can offer me. Hard to justify paying more for less, no matter how awesome they are or how much of an asshat Verizon can be.

You base American phone won't work on most overseas networks due to frequency lock downs.

That's not really the case these days. Even in yesteryear it was only the case some of the time; every dumb flip phone I owned whilst on T-Mobile was a quad-band global phone. 850/900/1800/1900 GSM.

Today it's SOP for American smartphones to include support for 900/1800 GSM and WCDMA, which makes them operable in most countries. Even the IS-95/IS-2000 (aka: CDMA) carriers have gotten on this bandwagon. My Moto X supports CDMA 850/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100, and LTE Bands 4 and 13. The latter is only useful in the US and Canada, so no LTE roaming if I go overseas, but I've got full access to the local GSM and WCDMA networks.

LTE roaming would be nice though probably moot at this juncture since there aren't too many international LTE roaming agreements just yet. I anticipate having that ability with my next phone though. :)

Phone Scoop's Phone Finder allows you to search for cell phones by feature (eg, hours of standby, hours of talk, OS, display resolution).

Set 'U.S. Carrier Availability' to 'Available' and 'Form Factor' to 'Slide', and you get:

• Alcatel Sparq II
• HTC Merge
• Kyocera Milano / Jitterbug Touch
• Kyocera Rise
• Kyocera Verve / Contact
• LG Cosmos 2 / Cosmos 3
• LG Enact
• LG Enlighten / Optimus Slider / Optimus Zip
• LG Extravert 2 / Freedom II
• LG LX-290 / 290c
• LG Mach
• LG Optimus F3Q
• LG Rumor Reflex S / Rumor Reflex / Freedom / Converse
• LG Xpression / Xpression 2
• Pantech Renue
• Pantech Vybe
• Samsung Array / Montage
• Samsung SGH-T301g
• Samsung Stratosphere / Galaxy Metrix 4G

Took me less than a minute, and I didn't even had to visit any stores. And if you turn off the 'US Carrier Availability' but require 'World Roaming', you can find other phones that you might be able to get. (as HP never released the Palm Pre3 in the US, so I had to get mine from other sources)

This is kind of a double post, but it's important enough to warrant a separate post.

Unfortunately, Congress has dilly dallied on this issue for too long. We're now past the point where mandating carriers unlock phones will help. There are still phones which will work across a broad range of carriers, but they are now few and far between. Most of the newer phones are limited in their frequencies so they'll only work fully with one carrier. Take it to another carrier and you'll either suffer degraded service, or even lack certain service like LTE. So even if you can unlock your phone from the carrier, it won't do you any good because you'll lose 4g or even 3g capability if you try to use it with another carrier.

The only thing that will help now is a law mandating that carriers must provide service to any phone a customer brings with them that's capable of operating on their network. That will open up the markets so that manufacturers begin selling multi-carrier and world phones directly to customers (bypassing the carriers). You can still buy a phone from Verizon if you really want, and it'll be crippled so as not to work with any other carrier even if unlocked. But the smarter person would buy the version of the phone sold by the manufacturer at Best Buy or Amazon which supports enough frequencies that it'll work with any carrier. That's actually what Google did with the Nexus 5 - it supports enough frequencies to work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a bunch of other international carriers. It's technically capable of working on Verizon (with LTE in areas where Verizon provides band 4 - New York and Los Angeles from what I hear), but Verizon blacklists it so you can't use it on their network. What we need is a law making it illegal for Verizon to do that.

The "retarded" Verizon specific phones are actually some of the most compatible phones you can buy today. Not only do they work on the Verizon CDMA and "bastardized" LTE networks, but they include full functionality for GSM and HSPA networks. I have two Verizon phones, right at this moment, that I'm using full time on other networks with full capability. My Verizon iPhone 5S is currently being used on an AT&T postpaid plan. All LTE, HSPA, and GSM functions work with 100% compatibility. My Verizon LG G2 is being used on T-Mobile with full LTE, HSPA, and GSM services. Nearly every phone worth having today is fully compatible with the GSM/WCDMA (HSPA) network technology. Phones are becoming more compatible, not less.

That's not quite true. CDMA phones with LTE have GSM SIM cards because the LTE spec requires it. Most of them also have GSM capability, while the GSM-only versions don't have CDMA capability. So that respect you're right that Verizon and Sprint phones have better global compatibility than GSM-only phones.

However, a lot of newer phones are limited in which frequencies they support. Your Verizon G2 for example only supports LTE at 750 and 1700 MHz. Verizon's LTE bands are at 700 and 1700 Mhz. T-Mobile's and AT&T's are at 1700 Mhz. Sprint's however are at 800, 1900, and 2500 MHz. So your phone won't get LTE with Sprint.

Unfortunately, Congress has dilly dallied on this issue for too long. We're now past the point where mandating carriers unlock phones will help. There are still phones which will work across a broad range of carriers like your G2, but they are now few and far between. Most of the newer phones are restricted in their frequencies so they'll only work fully with one carrier. Take it to another carrier and you'll either suffer degraded service, or even lack certain service (like no LTE on your Verizon G2 with Sprint). So even if you can unlock your phone from the carrier, it won't do you any good because you'll lose 4g or even 3g capability if you try to use it with another carrier.

The only thing that will help now a law mandating that carriers must provide service to any phone a customer brings with them that's capable of operating on their network. That will open up the markets so that manufacturers begin selling multi-carrier and world phones directly to customers (bypassing the carriers). You can still buy a phone from Verizon if you really want, and it'll be crippled so as not to work with any other carrier even if unlocked. But the smarter person would buy the version of the phone sold by the manufacturer at Best Buy or Amazon which supports enough frequencies that it'll work with any carrier. That's actually what Google did with the Nexus 5 - it supports enough frequencies to work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a bunch of other international carriers. It's technically capable of working on Verizon, but Verizon blacklists it so you can't use it on their network at all. What we need is a law making it illegal for Verizon to do that.

Incidentally, for anyone cursing CDMA in the U.S. complicating matters, don't. CDMA won the standards war. Your GSM phone uses CDMA - most HSPA implementations are wideband CDMA. It's only because the U.S. didn't mandate GSM and allowed carriers to try out different technologies that a superior tech - CDMA - was able to prove itself in the market and was eventually incorporated into the GSM spec. If CDMA hadn't been around, we'd probably be stuck with 1 Mbps or slower data speeds today. (LTE works very similarly to CDMA, except in the frequency domain instead of the code domain. Each phone is assigned an orthogonal set of frequencies, while in CDMA they're assigned an orthogonal set of codes.)

The "retarded" Verizon specific phones are actually some of the most compatible phones you can buy today. Not only do they work on the Verizon CDMA and "bastardized" LTE networks, but they include full functionality for GSM and HSPA networks. I have two Verizon phones, right at this moment, that I'm using full time on other networks with full capability. My Verizon iPhone 5S is currently being used on an AT&T postpaid plan. All LTE, HSPA, and GSM functions work with 100% compatibility. My Verizon LG G2 is being used on T-Mobile with full LTE, HSPA, and GSM services. Nearly every phone worth having today is fully compatible with the GSM/WCDMA (HSPA) network technology. Phones are becoming more compatible, not less.

That's not quite true. CDMA phones with LTE have GSM SIM cards because the LTE spec requires it. Most of them also have GSM capability, while the GSM-only versions don't have CDMA capability. So that respect you're right that Verizon and Sprint phones have better global compatibility than GSM-only phones.

However, a lot of newer phones are limited in which frequencies they support. Your Verizon G2 for example only supports LTE at 750 and 1700 MHz. Verizon's LTE bands are at 700 and 1700 Mhz. T-Mobile's and AT&T's are at 1700 Mhz. Sprint's however are at 800, 1900, and 2500 MHz. So your phone won't get LTE with Sprint.

Unfortunately, Congress has dilly dallied on this issue for too long. We're now past the point where mandating carriers unlock phones will help. There are still phones which will work across a broad range of carriers like your G2, but they are now few and far between. Most of the newer phones are restricted in their frequencies so they'll only work fully with one carrier. Take it to another carrier and you'll either suffer degraded service, or even lack certain service (like no LTE on your Verizon G2 with Sprint). So even if you can unlock your phone from the carrier, it won't do you any good because you'll lose 4g or even 3g capability if you try to use it with another carrier.

The only thing that will help now a law mandating that carriers must provide service to any phone a customer brings with them that's capable of operating on their network. That will open up the markets so that manufacturers begin selling multi-carrier and world phones directly to customers (bypassing the carriers). You can still buy a phone from Verizon if you really want, and it'll be crippled so as not to work with any other carrier even if unlocked. But the smarter person would buy the version of the phone sold by the manufacturer at Best Buy or Amazon which supports enough frequencies that it'll work with any carrier. That's actually what Google did with the Nexus 5 - it supports enough frequencies to work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a bunch of other international carriers. It's technically capable of working on Verizon, but Verizon blacklists it so you can't use it on their network at all. What we need is a law making it illegal for Verizon to do that.

Incidentally, for anyone cursing CDMA in the U.S. complicating matters, don't. CDMA won the standards war. Your GSM phone uses CDMA - most HSPA implementations are wideband CDMA. It's only because the U.S. didn't mandate GSM and allowed carriers to try out different technologies that a superior tech - CDMA - was able to prove itself in the market and was eventually incorporated into the GSM spec. If CDMA hadn't been around, we'd probably be stuck with 1 Mbps or slower data speeds today. (LTE works very similarly to CDMA, except in the frequency domain instead of the code domain. Each phone is assigned an orthogonal set of frequencies, while in CDMA they're assigned an orthogonal set of codes.)

The "retarded" Verizon specific phones are actually some of the most compatible phones you can buy today. Not only do they work on the Verizon CDMA and "bastardized" LTE networks, but they include full functionality for GSM and HSPA networks. I have two Verizon phones, right at this moment, that I'm using full time on other networks with full capability. My Verizon iPhone 5S is currently being used on an AT&T postpaid plan. All LTE, HSPA, and GSM functions work with 100% compatibility. My Verizon LG G2 is being used on T-Mobile with full LTE, HSPA, and GSM services. Nearly every phone worth having today is fully compatible with the GSM/WCDMA (HSPA) network technology. Phones are becoming more compatible, not less.

That's not quite true. CDMA phones with LTE have GSM SIM cards because the LTE spec requires it. Most of them also have GSM capability, while the GSM-only versions don't have CDMA capability. So that respect you're right that Verizon and Sprint phones have better global compatibility than GSM-only phones.

However, a lot of newer phones are limited in which frequencies they support. Your Verizon G2 for example only supports LTE at 750 and 1700 MHz. Verizon's LTE bands are at 700 and 1700 Mhz. T-Mobile's and AT&T's are at 1700 Mhz. Sprint's however are at 800, 1900, and 2500 MHz. So your phone won't get LTE with Sprint.

Unfortunately, Congress has dilly dallied on this issue for too long. We're now past the point where mandating carriers unlock phones will help. There are still phones which will work across a broad range of carriers like your G2, but they are now few and far between. Most of the newer phones are restricted in their frequencies so they'll only work fully with one carrier. Take it to another carrier and you'll either suffer degraded service, or even lack certain service (like no LTE on your Verizon G2 with Sprint). So even if you can unlock your phone from the carrier, it won't do you any good because you'll lose 4g or even 3g capability if you try to use it with another carrier.

The only thing that will help now a law mandating that carriers must provide service to any phone a customer brings with them that's capable of operating on their network. That will open up the markets so that manufacturers begin selling multi-carrier and world phones directly to customers (bypassing the carriers). You can still buy a phone from Verizon if you really want, and it'll be crippled so as not to work with any other carrier even if unlocked. But the smarter person would buy the version of the phone sold by the manufacturer at Best Buy or Amazon which supports enough frequencies that it'll work with any carrier. That's actually what Google did with the Nexus 5 - it supports enough frequencies to work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and a bunch of other international carriers. It's technically capable of working on Verizon, but Verizon blacklists it so you can't use it on their network at all. What we need is a law making it illegal for Verizon to do that.

Incidentally, for anyone cursing CDMA in the U.S. complicating matters, don't. CDMA won the standards war. Your GSM phone uses CDMA - most HSPA implementations are wideband CDMA. It's only because the U.S. didn't mandate GSM and allowed carriers to try out different technologies that a superior tech - CDMA - was able to prove itself in the market and was eventually incorporated into the GSM spec. If CDMA hadn't been around, we'd probably be stuck with 1 Mbps or slower data speeds today. (LTE works very similarly to CDMA, except in the frequency domain instead of the code domain. Each phone is assigned an orthogonal set of frequencies, while in CDMA they're assigned an orthogonal set of codes.)

What dumb phone provides tethering?

I haven't been paying attention to the current crop of dumb phones, but back when I was using them, it was pretty much a standard feature. E.g., Nokia 8290 had a v.32 modem and an IR port, and IR was pretty common on laptops of the day. Point the two at each other, and you can start a PPP connection to your dialup ISP. Then when GPRS data became popular, I had a Siemens M46, which didn't have an IR port, but if you got the data cable, you could plug it into a serial port and tether by setting up a PPP connection that dialed a special phone number (*99# or something like that). And my last dumb phone was a Motorola V195, which showed up as a serial port when you plugged in the USB cable, and again, you could tether by setting up a PPP connection. Actually, I think you could also tether over Bluetooth DUN, although I may be thinking of another phone.

What dumb phone provides tethering?

I haven't been paying attention to the current crop of dumb phones, but back when I was using them, it was pretty much a standard feature. E.g., Nokia 8290 had a v.32 modem and an IR port, and IR was pretty common on laptops of the day. Point the two at each other, and you can start a PPP connection to your dialup ISP. Then when GPRS data became popular, I had a Siemens M46, which didn't have an IR port, but if you got the data cable, you could plug it into a serial port and tether by setting up a PPP connection that dialed a special phone number (*99# or something like that). And my last dumb phone was a Motorola V195, which showed up as a serial port when you plugged in the USB cable, and again, you could tether by setting up a PPP connection. Actually, I think you could also tether over Bluetooth DUN, although I may be thinking of another phone.

I couple of months back, I picked up an unlocked GSM Pre3, and I haven't had a chance yet to really dig into which of the pre-paid companies offer good terms for smartphones for my usage pattern.

I know that Phone Scoop has a list, but it doesn't mention the 4 virtual carriers mentioned in the article summary.

I've been recently looking at http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2011/02/best-prepaid-voice-plans.html and http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2011/02/best-prepaid-data-carriers-and-plans.html

I couple of months back, I picked up an unlocked GSM Pre3, and I haven't had a chance yet to really dig into which of the pre-paid companies offer good terms for smartphones for my usage pattern.

I know that Phone Scoop has a list, but it doesn't mention the 4 virtual carriers mentioned in the article summary.

The recognition issue could be remedied by partnering with a big name or manufacturer. Nobody's heard of Tizen, either, but say 'Samsung' and and they'll say, 'Oh, right'.

HTC has been struggling with identity issues. They used to lead smartphone manufacturing, now they're becoming just another 'me too' in the increasingly saturated Android/WinMo/iPhone landscape. Hell, they make a Windows phone that's a design ripoff of the N9:

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=3902

And here's a reason why a company like HTC might want to back someone other than Android:

"Microsoft is demanding that Samsung pay it $15 in royalties for every Android phone it sells, Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Wednesday. While Samsung is attempting to negotiate the royalty fee lower, it does indicate that Microsoft plans to become more aggressive in pursuing Android manufacturers over use of technologies within Android that it says it has rights to.

The Redmond company is already receiving $5 for every HTC phone sold with the Android operating system, and that has made the company some $150 million, according to reports. With Microsoft asking three times that from Samsung, the potential is there for the company to make much more from this licensing deal."

http://betanews.com/2011/07/06/microsoft-wants-15-for-every-samsung-android-device-sold/

Keep in mind that the article is 2 years old, and HTC's payout to Microsoft is certainly several times $150 million by now.

Now, add the fact that Sailfish can run any Android application out there, but does not have an equivalent to the Play Store yet. HTC could create their own app store and offer both native and Android apps, and actually see a cut of profits added to their device sales instead of money subtracted for licensing fees.

I want to get HTC and Sailfish in a room together and tell them to kiss. And make me a device.

http://www.phonescoop.com/ Great site for comparing phones and carriers. We used it a lot when I worked customer service for various carriers.

The Samsung Replenish has a solid keyboard.

I do agree though. The thing about my Galaxy S that I hate the most is the lack of a hardware keyboard. I loved my LG Lotus to death because of the keyboard on it as well as my ancient Hitachi G1000's keyboard.

When I had this behemoth I got stares, laughs, and jokes about the sheer size of the thing. Many of my colleagues called it my "Tricorder", others would gawk at it, then pull out a Blackberry of some sort, a Palm Treo or Centro, or an Audiovox PPC 6700/6800/6900.

My current Samsung Galaxy S 4G is pretty close to the size of this thing, though considerably thinner and I've seen some of the latest phones coming out and I think it's ridiculous at how close they're getting to the size of my old monster phone... and many still don't have a physical keyboard which, to me, is something I miss dearly (Samsung's Replenish is a modern dead-ringer for the G1000, and if I were still on Sprint I'd own one now).

Windows phone is an immature OS

10 years is immature?

> hell YES!!! Just because I have a "smart" phone, which I only do non-call
> things where wifi is present, yet they insist on a fucking data package.

I have 2 (count-em; TWO) cellphones.

1) An el-cheapo pre-paid voice plan on an old Nokia 6015i. http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=514

2) An HTC Desire HD http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_desire_hd-3468.php I bought 2nd-hand. I use it as an FM radio, camera, ebook reader, and wifi-based web browser. I haven't bothered getting a SIM card and connecting to a carrier.

http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=62&p=1095&g=1256&h=14868

This pic is from 2006. Notice the red and black slider/switch on the side of the phone.

Umm... I tried to do a comparison of manufacturer rated battery life, but no Apple product ranks in the top twenty phones currently available. Fourteen of the twenty are android phones. The iPhones range from 5-8 hours of talk time, which is pretty mediocre. (I'm assuming you're contrasting Android phones and the iPhone, but RIM's and Nokia's smartphones aren't in that list either.)

Of course, "shitty battery life" aside, no smartphone can bear active use all day (or for the entirety of a long flight). For example, the last 30 hour (on-site) call I did I simply charged my extra battery and swapped once, whereas my fellow sufferers with iPhones had to leave them plugged into USB ports over half the night. One minute of downtime for a reboot is better than several hours of the phone being left unattended, IMHO. Plus, at $5 each with free shipping from the phone manufacturer, why wouldn't you want a spare or two?

There's currently an unveiling going on covering Sony Ericsson's new products , seems to be Android phones loaded with Gingerbread, the "PlayStation Phone" included.

The graphic in this article explains why pretty clearly. 2100 is for communication from tower to phone, 1700 is phone to tower.

The Droid Incredible appears to be more powerful while weighing half as much and fitting in a pocket comfortably. Just add a game controller...

What I want is an inexpensive basic phone that I can use to tether my existing devices.

Use something like this to search for discontinued phones your carrier has offered which support the DUN bluetooth profile and whatever other criteria you are looking for. Then check eBay for that model. Even if you want to use it for internet access on a device that only supports wifi and not bluetooth or USB, then you should be able to find a phone for under $100 running WinCE where you can find custom software to use it as a wifi access point. I've never needed it myself, but I've heard the HTC Mogul/XV6800 is a pretty cheap device which can serve that purpose well.

"many Android apps don't run on lower-end Android phones Again, not relevant, as this isn't a lower-end Android phone."

Very relevant. Sure the Nexus is fast today, but what about tomorrow? This is like gaming consoles vs PCs. Consoles you don't have to worry about your ram or CPU or GPU or anything being fast enough, any game you buy for that console will run the way the developers intended. The iPhone is much like that thanks to the App Store approval process. Sure the camera resolution gets better and newer iPhones have GPS, but all apps run on all iPhones.

With PCs you're constantly upgrading to keep pace with the latest game. Sounds like Android works the same way. You could buy a phone today, and 6 months from now a new model come out with a faster CPU or GPU or whatever and suddenly the new apps don't work on your phone or worse, you buy them thinking they will and they don't. This happened a lot with Pocket PC and Windows Mobile smartphones. Motorola Q didn't have a touchscreen so many applications simply didn't work and many developers didn't label their software as touchscreen only so it was very common to download the software only to find out it didn't work or the CPU wasn't really fast enough to run it.

I had a Motorola Q and HTC Touch and didn't enjoy having to search for software compatible with my phones. Even the Blackberry was like this, with older java software designed for older Blackberries not working with the Curve's rollerball.

I'm not a Apple fan by any means but they sure seem like they have their stuff together when it comes to offering secure, capable cellphones with the largest number of applications. If Google, Microsoft or Palm want to compete they either need to offer more apps or much cheaper prices than the iPhone.

It's ironic that now Apple offers the device with lots of cheap software that is easy to find and Microsoft and Google offer devices with very few apps that are more difficult to find.

The reason why the Nokia will never sell in the US mainstream market is that they (Nokia) will only target the GSM market. They pulled out of the CDMA market three years ago. See here http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1787 what that article doesnt explain is that one of the reasons they pulled out was due to a patent squabble with Qualcomm. Most of the Nokia phones on sale in the US arent made by Nokia themselves anymore, they are sub-contracted. The main reason the iPhone isnt as big as it is now in the US is because they didn't go with a CDMA carrier (and probably because most of the rest of the world uses GSM as well). Imagine if the iPhone was with Verizon, it would be a much stronger phone (although Verizon stinks). Its the old format game again, CDMA is technically superior in every way to GSM, but isnt the world standard. Shame really.

Which is pretty interesting, since most manufacturers will go with AT&T's 850/1900 UMTS mix. Nokia does release a "North America" version for its high end phones with these bands... it's weird to see it already on a phone. If you want a little farther explanation, Phone Scoop has a visual guide.

We discussed this issue back in 2006, though for a different continent. But if South Korea and China can do it, why not the rest of the world? Seems like it would be a win-win for manufacturing, if nothing else.

In five years an OLED screen may well be a couple of bucks.

fyi-- oled screens are quite common for phones these days. a quick google search yields this: http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1873
so the first phone with an oled screen in the US was in 2006. im too lazy to search all the current phones with it - but if you are curious i'd highly recommend you check if your phone is (it'll make you feel super cool if it does)

A town 70 miles from a larger city could have several thousand people and no transmitter. If 50 of them have these gadgets, yeah, it could be a problem.

Pulling the rug out from an established mechanism is like deciding that a few people should be sterilized for the good of the general population, and we haven't done that since.. wait.. 1981?!?

There were lots of beautiful spaces for this (like these), but the fattest ones netted a small payout in the reallocation auctions recently. All your wireless handsets are.. well, belong to them.

Google promises to fix the A2DP issue in a firmware update...

..the initial version does not support the A2DP profile for stereo Bluetooth, although that is promised for a future software update.

I've yet to see a Windows Mobile device come close to it.

You'll probably be waiting to see that for quite a while...

I have had an HTC 3125 Windows Smartphone for a couple years now and it totally sucks. It hangs at odd times, reboots itself pretty often, and arbitrarily changes the date and time to odd things like 3:10a 10/5/2002 sometimes. If I wasn't getting free mobile phone service with it, and required to use this particular phone, I would have bought something else long ago. Hell, even my old-school Moto Razr was better.

Some phones have voice recognition. I have an older LG VX5200 on Verison that has this feature, I press a button easily found on the side, and it asks for a command. The phone itself is otherwise not fat-thumb friendly. Lookup "Voice Dialing (Speaker-independent (automatic))" http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/

That technical challenge looks like it was cleared... five years ago.

From the link: "posted Oct 22, 2003, 9:47 PM"

"The FCC today approved the Samsung SCH-A790, the world's first phone compatible with both North American CDMA networks and GSM networks overseas. "

Or you can always use MMS

Yes, MMS is what I was thinking of. Thanks.

AT&T and Verizon both have one 25 MHz 850 MHz Cellular license: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/west.html Verizon has a single 10 MHz PCS 1900 block: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/vzw_pcs_block.html AT&T has the PCS B3 and D blocks. The D block came from old AT&T Wireless, while the B3 block came from Cingular/Pac Bell Wireless. On the AWS side, AT&T won a 10 MHz block covering the west region, plus a 20 MHz block for the LA area, making 30 MHz, while Verizon got nothing: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/aws/index.php?p=m Then in the 700 MHz auction, AT&T got an additional 12 MHz, and Verizon got 46 MHz: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=231 http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=230

AT&T and Verizon both have one 25 MHz 850 MHz Cellular license: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/west.html Verizon has a single 10 MHz PCS 1900 block: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/vzw_pcs_block.html AT&T has the PCS B3 and D blocks. The D block came from old AT&T Wireless, while the B3 block came from Cingular/Pac Bell Wireless. On the AWS side, AT&T won a 10 MHz block covering the west region, plus a 20 MHz block for the LA area, making 30 MHz, while Verizon got nothing: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/aws/index.php?p=m Then in the 700 MHz auction, AT&T got an additional 12 MHz, and Verizon got 46 MHz: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=231 http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=230

AT&T and Verizon both have one 25 MHz 850 MHz Cellular license: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/west.html Verizon has a single 10 MHz PCS 1900 block: http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/vzw_pcs_block.html AT&T has the PCS B3 and D blocks. The D block came from old AT&T Wireless, while the B3 block came from Cingular/Pac Bell Wireless. On the AWS side, AT&T won a 10 MHz block covering the west region, plus a 20 MHz block for the LA area, making 30 MHz, while Verizon got nothing: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/aws/index.php?p=m Then in the 700 MHz auction, AT&T got an additional 12 MHz, and Verizon got 46 MHz: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=231 http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=187&p=230

Which cellphone are you using that's limited to half a watt? Most handsets are capable of transmitting at the maximum allowed power for the PCS 1900mhz band (1 watt) and can either max out or come close to maxing out the power allowed on the 850mhz cellular band (2 watts).

Go to phonescoop and look up the FCC filings for your phone. Mine maxes out at 32.5dBm (1.7 watts) on cellular and 30dBm (1 watt) on PCS.

Note: This doesn't mean that everything else you said doesn't hold true. Even with full power there's still a limit to how far your cell phone will reach -- particularly on the PCS band which tends not to work as well inside structures (lower frequencies penetrate obstructions easier). If you can manage to get a clear line of sight (hilltop to hilltop) though it's actually kind of amazing how far that lousy watt will reach. I've made GSM phone calls at 25km from the tower before whilst hiking up in the hills.

Which cellphone are you using that's limited to half a watt? Most handsets are capable of transmitting at the maximum allowed power for the PCS 1900mhz band (1 watt) and can either max out or come close to maxing out the power allowed on the 850mhz cellular band (2 watts).

Go to phonescoop and look up the FCC filings for your phone. Mine maxes out at 32.5dBm (1.7 watts) on cellular and 30dBm (1 watt) on PCS.

Note: This doesn't mean that everything else you said doesn't hold true. Even with full power there's still a limit to how far your cell phone will reach -- particularly on the PCS band which tends not to work as well inside structures (lower frequencies penetrate obstructions easier). If you can manage to get a clear line of sight (hilltop to hilltop) though it's actually kind of amazing how far that lousy watt will reach. I've made GSM phone calls at 25km from the tower before whilst hiking up in the hills.

The good news is that Google will make all cellphones better if they get into the race. The reason? Openness. From the beginning of time it seems the US carriers have locked down there phones so you can't do things like load MP3 songs and java applets to them without buying them online. They have the java networking locked down so you cannot connect to everything or use regular sockets (IE not web).

Right now companies like Verizon are panicking and racing to open there networks (IE http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=2552), if google gets spectrum it will be good for all because google will have lots of cool applications and programs on there phones, and the other carriers to even compete will have to open up there phones for development to everyone.

Also the 700mhz spectrum is a great place to be for a new network as you can get better coverage and need less cell density when your starting out.

-M

http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=2462

T-Mobile's First 3G Phone On Sale ...took 'em long enough.

I'd kill for a clamshell or slider phone that runs Palm applications.

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=173

My ex-wife's address is.... ;-)

Simple phone with bluetooth, good reception and decent battery life. Really cheap too. Offered by Sprint.

I have one and I love it. I was really wary about replacing my 5 year-old Touchpoint 1100, but after the hinge broke, I was forced to. I tried out the LX 150, and was really impressed with the responsiveness of the interface and the reception.

Check out the reviews here.

For your reaseach use this site http://www.phonescoop.com/ Search for a phone, click on the deatils and pay close attention to the "Mode", that'll indicate what networks and countries your desired phone will work in. THEN to to ebay and bid on one....

GSM coverage is definitely not excellent in the central U.S. plains or the Rocky Mountains. There is coverage now on interstate highways and in cities and larger towns, but smaller towns and highway routes have spotty coverage or none at all. There were a handful of small telephone companies that sprung up to fill the void in the past few years. Two of the largest such have been recently acquired.

Western Wireless was acquired by Alltel.

AT&T recently acquired Dobson Communications (which was the largest vendor licensing the Cellular One brand). I think that the "new AT&T" realizes that Verizon will kick their ass if they don't start competing on the coverage front. Nobody can touch Verizon in the U.S. for actually getting a wireless signal in more places.

The AT&T coverage map is, ahem, optimistic, regarding its coverage in the plains states. The Dobson/Cellular One acquisition helps with this, but not with the rocky mountain states.

Here is a relatively honest assessment of GSM coverage in the western US: Cellular One coverage map (includes the Dobson network and all the other mom-and-pop licensees of the Cellular One brand).

The Alltel coverage map is also a little deceptive, because it mixes their GSM network in with their other network, but they provide much better GSM coverage in the west than anybody else, thanks to their acquisition of Western Wireless. Both T-Mobile and AT&T were asleep at the wheel and either should have acquired Western Wireless. It will be more difficult for AT&T to assemble a network which can rival Alltel or Verizon in the west. Fortunately, they are able to lease time on the Alltel network for their customers, as does T-Mobil. Oddly enough, Alltel does not provide GSM service to its own customers.

It's not clear that AT&T can fix this problem via acquisitions. Alltel already bought the company that AT&T should have acquired. What's left now is a whole bunch of relatively small players. AT&T will need to go on a major buying and building spree if they are really serious about providing nationwide cellular GSM coverage. They have been cherry picking the best (highest population density) markets for years, but they'll need to get serious about providing coverage to the rest of the country if they don't want the "I can't get an iPhone because AT&T doesn't offer service in my area" blogger chorus to drown out their efforts to promote the iPhone beyond the initial product launch. The stock valuations of AT&T and Alltel are interesting, too. AT&T has brand recognition, but they are themselves possibly an acquisition candidate.

I went through two Nokia phones, and though the batteries were replaceable they cost almost as much as a new phone, so I never replaced the battery in either of them. Currently I have a Sanyo phone, and it also has a replaceable battery - but the battery is still good for a week in standby mode, and when it dies I am far more likely to just buy a new phone, given the prices and all.

What I care about is reception range/quality and battery life

An oft unappreciated phone (and the one I use on a day to day basis) is the Motorola V195. It's offered by T-Mobile and Cellular One, but it's GSM, so you can get it unlocked and use it with anyone.

It has the highest RF output of any non-brick phone I've ever seen (1.7 watts on GSM850/900 and 1.0 on GSM1800/1900), the best reception, an insanely long battery life (rated for 10.5 hours of talk time -- I tend to get six or seven, depending on signal strength), class 1 (long range) bluetooth, plus it's a quad-band phone and will work in any country with a GSM network.

Yeah, it has no camera (who cares?) and is slim on features. But if all you want is a phone, I'm hard pressed to think of a better GSM one. And the full retail price is only $120.00 ($20 with contract) from T-Mobile. I'll cry a lot less when my $120 phone goes into the swimming pool/toilet/stolen then I will when something happens to my $600 iPhone. And that's with contract -- wonder what they'll charge you to get one at "full price" once you are already under contract?

Here you go. I paid $50 for it, but now that I think about it, that price included an extra discount you can't get as a new customer - but $129 is still a lot cheaper than the iPhone.

Right, you want to see what the US cellphones don't want you to know.

http://www.phonescoop.com/

You'll see how Verizon hamstrung the Chocolate(LG 8500).
Buy your GSM phone direct then use Tmobile.