Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Deal Limits Verizon MP3 Phones
An anonymous reader writes "PCSIntel is reporting that the new VCast music system by Verizon may not be quite as positive as users were led to believe. Claims were made that the new software for this service would disable the ability to play MP3s on these phones. It turns out that the ability to play MP3s still exists but only because the software first converts it to the WMA format. This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s."
Um, just a question, have you actually LIVED in other countries and the US? I have lived in the US, Japan, and Germany and the US system is the cheapest(esp. if you want to use it as your only phone). It costs me 65 euro cents a minute to call on my mobile phone, it costs 20 cents a minute to call a mobile phone from a land line(which costs 20 euros a month just for basic service, it's cheaper to call across the globe than to call a cell phone across the street). You can get a good plan in the US for about $40 a month including taxes with more minutes than you could ever use(yeah, incoming calls aren't free, but with the amount of non-metered time and minutes they give you a month it isn't really a big deal). Not to mention it cost my mother $13 for a 4 minute call to my cellphone from the US. Yeah, there aren't cheap mp3 services, but honestly I don't give a fuck, I have an iPod for music, I don't need it on my phone.
Monstar L
"It's not that one system is better - ours works well for the US consumer based on their phone use habits."
/me glances at his moto v710 with crippled bluetooth
no, more like the phone companies here know how far they can turn the screws on their customers before too many customers will leave. And they're always looking for more screws to turn. Verizon is probably the most notorious.
In Bob we trust.
Maybe you haven't been to Finland. We have such prices that calls cost only 6.9 cents a minute and the monthly basic fee is a little over than half a euro.
In addition to that, there are no obligations about using the phone provided by the operator. Just simple and understandable pricing without any "plans" as they're called in the US. In fact it is even forbidden by law sell operator-locked cellulars here. (However, they're trying to make it possible for 3G phones soon.)
hapo
You're quite correct. The big problem is caused by the fact that MP3 uses more than just simple compression, it takes advantage of various psychoaccoustic phenomena to (in a sense) trick the brain into hearing soemthing that isn't quite what it seems to be. The conversion to WMA isn't a particularly intelligent process - in fact, I'll go out on a limb and conjecture that the MP3 is first decompressed to a PCM stream, then the PCM stream is re-encoded as WMA. Since WMA is not prepared for the trickery (it's all still there, just without the compression), it parses it all like basic musical signal - totally oblivious of any existing pre/de-emphasis, phase shift, etc.
I've only experimented with convering a few MP3 to WMA, but the results always sounded odd and occasionally downright glitchy. To draw a comparison - I suspect that MP3->WMA to my ears would be very much like replicated sushi to my palate (USS Enterprise - Captain Kirk era, when transporters could still make evil twins).
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
It is still possible to just hook a USB cable and copy MP3s to the phone, and play them. At least it is for me and my Verizon LG-VX8100.
While it's true that European cell rates are probably slightly higher than US ones (at least in my experience), I find the service as such to be orders of magnitude better. It's only in recent years that the US has even begun to compare to Europe in terms of coverage, interoperability, and legal issues (for instance, simlock removal has been required to be free by the service provider here in Denmark for years).
maybe you would want to check out the price in hong kong
:p
landlines to mobile are free for landlines
mobile plans are like in the thousands minutes (incoming calls also use up minutes though) for 20 USD
my information were abit out-dated though
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
They retain the right to change services and costs as they feel fit. When they feel fit to do it.
Sounds like its time to choose another provider and vote with your pocketbook.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You obviously live in a big-ass city. 99% of everybody is NOT within a constant wi-fi signal.
Vote Quimby!
No, but I believe if you complain to them, they will give you a previous version of the phone... they don't advertise about that because it's in the deal with Microsoft.
So go to their (Verison's) website and/or talk to a service rep or something about it. Tell them your phone is broken; it won't play mp3s anymore. They'll probly fix you right up, but who knows?
Shop around.
.025 USD per minute, and .000488037109 USD per kilobyte. Both of these are substantially cheaper than any plan I've found in Europe (just got back for a 2 month Europe trip, visted France, UK, Netherlands, and Spain).
:(
There are great mobile deals to be had in the U.S., but they require you to shop around, and they require you to sign contracts.
My current deal?
I just signed up with T-mobile for a Motorola V330. The phone was free, and they paid me a $100 sign-up bonus (Amazon.com). I'm on a $45.99 a month contract, with 1500 minutes included, nights/weekends free, and T-mobile to T-mobile free.
I pay an addition $19.99 for unlimited EDGE Gprs service. My monthly bill comes to about $70.00, which I feel is pretty good for the number of minutes, and the unlimited internet access. I use approximately 2000 minutes a month, with heavy emphasis on nights and mobile-to-mobile. I use ~40 megs per month of date transfer.
For me, that averages about
It's all about usage patterns. In Europe, you'll pay substantially less than an average American if you control your usage. In the U.S., you'll pay an incredible rate if you have a very high consumption level.
Where Europe generally shines is on the high-end services. The only 3G option we have here at the moment is EVDO, which is fairly expensive, and requires you to sign with Verizon, whom I hate. Given the European pricing structures, however, and government backed loans to the mobile operators, it makes financial sense for them to offer these services, while American operates attempt to make as much money off their existing equipment as possible.
The nice thing about this from our perspective is that we tend to get better tested systems when they finally do release them. Every EVDO subscriber I've talked to has been pretty thrilled, if mainly because the system was well worked over in Japan and S. Korea before it came over here.
I imagine that T-Mobile's European experiments with 3G will enable them to build a fantastic system over here when they get round to it.
The crappy part is the obvious part; Europeans (and S.E. Asians) get better equipment substantially faster, and have a wider diversity of phones avaliable.
Again, this makes sense; the American consumer expects their phone to be free, so we aren't gonna get the best phones, we're going to get the bottom of the barrel. I'm not particularly happy with my V330, but I didn't have a Nokia option avaliable with Bluetooth, EDGE, and a moderately okay camera. Someday, I will; and then I'll be paying less per minute and KByte than the average European phone customer. But I've got to wait longer
P.S. Oh, wanna tip for being able to transfer your American phones from carrier to carrier? At least with GSM?
Calll your carrier before you cancel. Tell them you are going to travel to Europe, and you want your phone SIM-unlocked for a Pay-as-You-Go plan for Europe. You'll read them your IMEI number, and they'll e-mail you within 48 hours the SIM unlock code. I've successfully done this with Cingular and T-mobile. If they give you any trouble, tell them your friend with whom you are travelling with did the same thing last week.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
When comparing per-minute prices for US and a country like, say, Finland, don't forget that in the US you pay per-minute prices also for incoming calls, which, if you terminate as many calls as you originate, means the actual cost is twice as high.
As for 1000-minute-per-month plans, who in their right minds spend that much time on a phone? If you do, and it's not for work (who'd pay for your phone anyhow), I'd say you have an abnormal unsatiated need for human contact, and might want to consider talking to someone professional. Face to face, that is.
Regards,
--
*Art