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HTC Does What Google Wouldn't: Sell an LTE Phone That Sidesteps AT&T
schwit1 writes "You won't see it advertised on billboards or television, you won't hear it mentioned in a carrier store, and your less technologically-savvy friends most certainly won't know about it — but quietly, HTC's done something extraordinarily important this month: it's broken AT&T's stranglehold on its nationwide LTE network. It's a move that even Google, for all its money, power, and influence, didn't make with the Nexus 4. HTC is shipping both 32GB and 64GB versions of the One — an early contender for the best phone of 2013 — in a carrier- and bootloader-unlocked version that supports both T-Mobile and AT&T LTE. No strings attached."
company dears to do something in the US (under cover of darkness) which is standard practice everywhere else on this planet. Welcome to the 21th century!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I doubt google had anything to do with the Nexus lacking AT&T LTE support and a lot more to do with LG cutting everything it could while optimizing for flagship performance. There is a reason LTE is disabled on the Nexus 4 now
Looks great except for One thing: No SD card slot, so screw it. I'm not buying into the "stream everything" BS. "Always online" is a disease. Lack of this basic feature is a huge "Fuck You" to me and anyone else who shuffles a lot of data -- The power users -- The people who would by the thing -- The target demographic...
I mean, even my cunting Sansa Clip+ has a fucking SD card reader -- Loaded with a 64 gig micro SD... Which is more than this damn thing can store (the full 64GB of the 64GB version isn't fully usable for data) -- And I have a 8 of these cards (in a CD jewel case holder). It takes me 10 seconds to swap cards -- That's 384 GB/sec... For the price they're changing for this thing, it should be as feature complete as a $30 music player.
What is it going to take? Wait until software defined radio gets cheap enough before I can have a damn SD card slot back? Ugh.
Wait a sec..
...bootloader-unlocked version that supports both T-Mobile and AT&T LTE.
What does the summary mean by AT&T LTE?
Does it mean that AT&T LTE is different from Other carrier's LTE? Why would a manufacturer make a phone that works only on a single carrier? Isn't LTE supposed to be a standard as opposed to a propreitary tech?
I don't live in the USA, so I wouldn't know.. Everyhere else in the world, people would practically boycott the carrier which sold locked down phones like that..
According to Google’s Andy Rubin, the reason Google didn't include LTE support on the Nexus 4 was because “A lot of the networks that have deployed LTE haven’t scaled completely yet — they’re hybrid networks [...] which means the devices need both radios built into them [] When we did the Galaxy Nexus with LTE we had to do just that, and it just wasn’t a great user experience.” Whatever the reasons, after getting skewered for the decision, Google is backtracking and seems poised to release a LTE Nexus 4 sometime next month.
The lack of SD Card reader and easily removable batter kill it though for me. I like easy access to the battery for changes and want flexibility for my storage offline.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
The best phone in 2013 is from 2009. The N900 is still unmatched. In 2013, the N900 screen is crap, the CPU is a joke, it doesn't do LTE and it is still more useful than any other phone. I'm still waiting for a replacement with better spec but I don't see that coming in the near future. This phone is the Amiga of the 21th century. They can up all the specs in their phone, they won't match the N900 until a decade or more.
Believe it or not, people care about different things.
I use the hell out of my smartphones, but I've yet to need more than a few gig of local storage. I just don't use my phones to hold my entire music and movie collections, even if I have the option.
And given how many smartphones do not have card slots, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it isn't necessarily a make-or-break feature.
I'm all for local storage options, but it's hard to accuse a cell-phone company of being "diseased" for expecting you to always have network access. That is rather the point of their device. If you're looking for something that doesn't expect always-on connectivity you should probably not be looking at cell phones; other portable computing systems exist.
I agree with this.
I've never had a recent phone that I've come anywhere close to filling the storage on,
It's simply not an issue for me
It's not about always-online requirements. I'd be perfectly happy to stream my music from "the cloud" if I didn't have a 200MB (yes, 0.2GB) data cap. I just about exceed that cap simply browsing the web and checking facebook now and then, without even getting into streaming.
What is it, exactly, that Google didn't do? Offer 32/64GB capacities? LTE?
Oh, wait: https://www.google.com/search?q=Nexus+4+lte
I'm going with: whoopdedoo. Is it even possible to actually take advantage of LTE with SoC mobile hardware or typical network congestion? Even it is, what's the point if you hit your data cap after 5 minutes and get wallet-raped by your carrier?
I'm aware of exactly one regional carrier in all of Canada, and maybe one in the US that actually offer unlimited data in only specific areas, not nation wide (subject to arbitrary "excessive use policies" of course ... so it's not really unlimited so much as it's "unlimited"). Everyone else makes a big fucking deal about one whole gigabyte and it's absolutely hilarious how anyone thinks that is any real amount of data in 2013.
No, it most certainly was Google who started upsetting the status quo. The Nexus line has always been available unlocked straight from Google, and for an extremely palatable price. Pop in your SIM card, no plan restrictions*, no contract, it just goes.
I will admit that HTC's One is proportionately well priced. They also get kudos for a big fuck-you plainly directed at AT&T.
* I have my Nexus 4 on a voice & text plan (no data) because I can wait until the next available wifi signal or until I get home to check this or that and I don't need to post every damn meal I eat on shitsagram. Yes, I'm aware that some carriers will automatically tack on charges to your bill for features you never even used when they detect your phone model from the IEMI. Fortunately, the government here still seems to give a modicum of shit about us, as we have specific laws disallowing any carrier from adding adding features or changing plans without a customer's explicit consent.
I honestly don't care about that, but I can imagine some people need it. What angers me most with todays phones is no LED notify on the phone, so we have to use some weird applications that either blink camera flash, buttons or actually turn on screen. I had very nice LED notify on my G1, as well as trackball (worked as mouse cursor in some webbrowsers) and hardware keyboard. If I could switch internals from my SGS2, then I would be happy to do it, even if it was more bulky.
Also, it seems like battery is NOT removable (in the spec) - WTF?
that's what is great about this. Check out T-mobile data plans.
I am seriously considering switching to t-mobile in the fall when my current AT&T contract is up. I presently get a crappy signal in my current location and anything will be better than AT&T
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I had a quick look, and their base 500MB plan costs nearly double what I'm paying now (ignoring the fact I don't live in USA). Choosing between using my existing microSD card or paying $30 extra per month for enough data to support streaming? It's a no-brainer.
I'd rather see someone side-step Verizon. They seem to have the LTE network to beat. Good for HTC though, every little bit to weaken carrier grip is welcome, be it from HTC, Apple, Google, or whoever.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
My $2 citrus squeezer juices lemons, limes, oranges, and all kinds of fruits/vegetables. For the price they're changing for this thing, it should be as feature complete as a $2 citrus squeezer!
Subsidizes phones is a business model from the past.
It's so heavily broken that I can't even understant :
- Why (we) the people accepted this ? (Okay, GSM phones were VERY expensive in 1996...)
- Why did the banksters allowed the carriers to steal their favourite business (small consumer credits with huge interests) !?
Since past year, here in France, one carrier (and then... every other) bagan to sell "low cost" subscription. It's in fact the same service, without the cost of the "subsidized" phone. Minus 30€ a month (or more).
24 months later, you have 24*30=720€ to buy the unlocked phone of your choice.
For people who prefer to pay 25-30€ a month to pay their handset, banks are back in the dance, with credit offers to buy your unkocked phone on a 24 months credit.
Ditto. I've had no issue with 32GB phones. For me it typically 10GB of music 5-10GB apps, 10GB photos. I empty the photos whenever it gets close to full which is THOUSANDS.
It is for me. Not only that my 16gb MicroSD card is almost full (offline navigation data, music), the micro USB port of my phone is broken. I can neither recharge it nor copy data through USB.
If I had one of the many smartphones without a card slot or a changeable battery, I'd be screwed. As the things are right now, I can continue to use the phone - a top of the line device few years ago - until something else fails. I can even still update the firmware without much hassle.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It's not about always-online requirements. I'd be perfectly happy to stream my music from "the cloud" if I didn't have a 200MB (yes, 0.2GB) data cap. I just about exceed that cap simply browsing the web and checking facebook now and then, without even getting into streaming.
wow.. that is quite some cap, my 4G data plan has 3GB/month included for free (I'm not in US). But, still what I do (with the new data plan more out of habit than need) is to do all the heavy syncing on WiFi. All my favorite Spotify playlists fx are synced to the phone for local offline playback. And as several others have said as well, even doing that and syncing quite a lot of other data, I've never needed to use the microSD that my phone supports.
And to hell with convergence? How much extra would it cost to put in an sd slot? The alternative is to carry around 2 devices in that world. With just a little extra we can have all the local storage we want. I love my nexus 4, but I really wish it had an sd slot. Poor network in areas, download limits and the like means I can only carry about a 10th of my music collection with me reliably - about 4gig ish. I'd like to carry it all, or at least a more significant proportion. A 64gb card would allow that.
It's not about cost, it's about philosophy. Cloud storage means beign tied to one service. I want my files local, audio and video. I don't want to stream what I already downloaded. That's repeat downloading - what about efficiency?
This is why I like HTC. Their hardware is comparable, if not better, than most others on the market. They don't take c@rp from other companies. Add this to the mix, and it's why I have them at the top of my list when looking at phones. I'll take "not quite as sparkly" as phones from Apple and Samsung. I want durable, solid, functioning equipment, and HTC continues to deliver on that.
How did this get up to 5 insightful????
What you are saying is "Please strip away features that add pennies to the phones cost, rob users of a ton of functionality and convenience because I have not yet hit the memory limit on my phone."
Maybe also you should Google the top selling smart phones (hint they have 'Galaxy' in the title) and see how many come WITHOUT an SD slot.
Now Google iPhone or HTC and look at the sales slump these two companies are facing. Guess their flagship phones don't come with an SD slot.
Interesting coincidence.
I suppose you would also advocate non-removable batteries as you've never run out of battery and needed to swap one out?
You, even by power user standard, are an edge case. I'm technology inclined / power user and the 64GB model is good enough for me without need for SD card.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
Dude, backup when things are working, don't bitch when they break.
removable batteries and sd cards are nice, but not mandatory by any stretch.
The HTC One has a LED notification light.
The non-removable battery is a bit of a head scratcher alright.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
1999 called and they want their pissing and moaning back, You also forgot your rant about not being able to easily remove the battery. (Another red herring that has been a non issue for over 5 years now.)
You are in a very small minority, because the large majority of smartphone users do not care at all about a microSD card slot in the age of 32gig phones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
a huge "Fuck You"
that pretty much sums up the telco industry right there.
So the gist of what you're saying is, it makes sense if a modern, portable multimedia computer lacks something as simple and basic (not to mention ridiculously cheap and easy to implement) as removable storage?! Because you, personally, don't have need for such a feature?? Let's be glad you're not a smartphone designer... wait, are you?! :p
"the micro USB port of my phone is broken. I can neither recharge it nor copy data through USB."
Hello use the 802.11n wireless works just fine for copying data back and forth.
Because my incredibly old and out of date Google Nexus HSPA+ (the galaxy nexus GSM as sold in europe.) has 802.11n.. and Wireless data access works fantastic, I just connect to the phone as it sits else where in the house. I can ssh into it, access files, etc... no problems at all.
Oh and a tip moving foreward, be more careful with your stuff that connector is incredibly easy to break, why cellphones have such an inferior connector on them I'll never understand.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Or you could have been less of a cheapskate and bought the 16gig version...
So you prefer buying a new phone instead of a second battery and an external charger in a case like mine? Well, be my guest, I prefer to spend the money on my bike.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
No, what they are saying is that maybe some people are okay with things like this. And some are not. And they'll buy a different phone. And that's okay, too. Calm down.
No, he's saying that the market doesn't give a damn. Are you also crying for your floppy drive & serial port?
That works fine if you need to copy stuff only when you are at home. And yes, my even older HTC HD2 with the broken USB port has got 802.11n as well.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Why? your laptop doesnt have wireless? Wierd.... Because I do this at work, home, in my car, woods, secret bunker under the whitehouse....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Even though they mention T-Mobile support for LTE, if you look closer at the frequency support on the phone's specs at HTC's site, there is something important to note.
HSPA/WCDMA: 850/1900/2100 MHz
This will not support T-Mobile 3G in a number of areas where they haven't converted AWS from HSPA+ use to LTE use. For people considering this phone for T-Mobile, you may get stuck on 2G depending on where you live.
VortexCortex, please sit down, as it might come as a shock to you. No matter what your GPS display shows, you are not the center of the world, and the world does not pivot around you when you make that right turn from Lincoln Ave to Water St. Your use case is so extreme, supporting your needs produces so little marginal revenue for so much of pain, they will happily ignore you. If your needs are met, it would be purely an unintended side benefit happening because of supporting some more mainstream use case.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My PC at work does not. There is no need because it is connected to the company LAN through gigabit ethernet.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But I am not so sure. Verizon has a huge cash cow, in the form of FiOS. It can use that revenue stream to undercut t-mobile and try to kill it instead of competing with it on a level ground. AT&T has inertia and corporate support helping it. I just hope T-Mobile succeeds just to bring sanity to this market.
T-mobile got the best deal in the failed merger with AT&T. Apparently that contract gave T-mobile 2 billion dollars if the deal was rejected by the Govt, and more importantly bandwidth in the edge network for T-mobile in some 50 markets. If it plays this hand of cards well, things should shake up in the mobile market in USA.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
land of the free my ass.
People value a smaller, prettier phone over an easily removed battery.
And, frankly, I owned a Nexus One for three years and the only time I ever removed the battery was when I dropped it and the battery cover and battery went flying across the floor. So, screw it, I'll cross that off my list of features I care about, too.
Really, you are getting unlimited text, voice and 500MB of highspeed (10 Mbps) data for 25$ a month? That is the normal price in Europe?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes I cry for the missing serial port, anything USB needs drivers and these are not always easily available.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Dumbshits, Google left LTE out of the Nexus 4 because a) it's 100% unnecessary for a cell phone to have LTE and b) an LTE modem costs 3x as much as an HSPA 21 modem and c) LTE uses a lot more power and drains batteries faster.
It had nothing to do with AT&T.
Now Google iPhone or HTC and look at the sales slump these two companies are facing. Guess their flagship phones don't come with an SD slot.
I Googled iPhone sales and saw that they've sold more this last quarter than they did in the same quarter last year. Isn't that odd?
Then I Googled iPhone 5 v Samsung Galaxy S3 sales and these were the top 3 results:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/iphone-5-overtakes-samsung-galaxy-1798091
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57570235-37/iphone-5-beats-galaxy-s3-as-top-seller-says-report/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/02/20/apples-iphone-5-passes-samsung-galaxy-s3-in-q4-global-sales
I'm trying hard to see your point but the figures just don't back it up. If the iPhone is in a slump what does that say about the Galaxy S3?
The SD card slot is a feature that appeals to a very small demographic. You may be in it, but just because its part of your decision making process doesn't mean that its part of everyone else's. Personally I don't care. I don't want to micro manage storage in this century.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Do any other carriers offer LTE? If not you are still stuck with taking what AT&T will give you as a package. All you have done is saved the trouble of their preinstalled software
that all phones are unlocked and consumers have a choice that may result in less profit for the greedy companies. Companies don't have a right to profit or to lock in customers. I'm still waiting for a more European-like attitude to companies on the consumers' behalf here in the US.
I switched to T-Mobile back in January and couldn't be happier. I do month to month $70 all you can eat data, text, call. Works like a charm. Not having wi-fi calling anymore is a minor inconvenience all things considered. BTW, what I pay now for the above plan is $30 less a month than Verizon and their data plans are not generous.
Data costs the carriers almost nothing as all of them do peering anyway. It's pure profit. Shame on them... Look at what South Koreans get for the price. We should be ashamed.
Things that are basic needs should be heavily subsidized by the government:
- Petrol/Diesel
- Healthcare
- Internet services
- Mobile services
"They realized that to be in power, you didn't need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't. After a while, they come into power and then they come after Soze."
I hear you brother! On my phone, not only is my USB socket broken, but also my screen, digitiser, speaker, microphone, GPS receiver and WiFi radio. If I couldn't plug in a mouse, external headset, bluetooth GPS antenna, WiFi dongle and HDMI monitor, I'd be screwed - and I won't even consider a new phone that can't do that.
Did the thought that you are a statistical one-off actually cross your mind when composing that post? Or do you genuinely believe that mobile device manufacturers need to seriously consider the eventuality of broken USB ports on their devices?
plex + home nas. Since when is streaming an issue?
I pay 10 euros for 400 sms/minutes and 200mb of traffic. for 17 euros you get 500 sms/min and 500mb.
When your traffic is over, they limit your speed to 64kbps, but they don't cut it or charge extra.
And in Europe calling party pays (so it is free to receive calls/sms).
Most people don't need the feature. Most people will never fill up the local 32GB. What are you keeping on your damn phone?
T-Mobile has the most affordable service in the US.
It also has the worst coverage. If you're in urban areas all the time, this won't effect you much, but if you travel outside urban areas, dropped calls and areas of no coverage at all are common.
I drive along interstate 94 through western Wisconsin fairly frequently and while I can place calls along the way, I can't keep a call going more than a couple minutes until I get into the MSP metro area. 94 down to Madison is even worse.
"Can't talk on phone while driving on interstate" is a pretty big negative for me.
paintball
Looks great except for One thing: No parallel port, so screw it.
FTFY
What you really want is a phone with magsafe-style usb port so it doesn't break. As do I.
Or you get a phone with Qi support, and you don't need a working USB port to charge, even with a non-removable battery. More than one way to skin a cat.
"And given how many smartphones do not have card slots, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it isn't necessarily a make-or-break feature."
That or the phone manufacturers have run the numbers and worked out that they make more money through market segmentation and charging a large markup for larger amounts of onboard memory then they lose from people who refuse to buy the phone.
Eg: I imagine if their 16GB and 32GB phones both had sdcard slots, more people would buy the 16GB and use the sdcard slot as a hedge. Without a sdcard slot, more people buy the 32GB model because they don't know how much space is needed.
It's not about the ample storage. It's about the ability to pull all my data off the phone and put it into a different one instantaneously. In addition, no removable battery is a deal breaker.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Google's own Nexus 4 doesn't have an SD slot, which leads me to believe that even Google would rather deprecate SD card support. I have an Android phone with an SD slot and as far as the Apps I use are concerned I might as well not have it. Besides I don't really need to carry more than 64 GB of data anyway and I doubt the majority of the users need to either.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
T-Mo is unlikely to be better than for you than AT&T in terms of coverage.
That said, I've had T-Mo for a few years now. I have been happy with the service and innovative features, am thrilled with the new cheaper plans, and would never consider going back to AT&T with their nickle-and-diming (and once or twice Benjamin-ing with roaming charges).
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
The reason it supports both AT&T and T-Mobile LTE is because it's available on both carriers in LTE trim. And as a point of fact, the Galaxy S III developer edition also had both AT&T and T-Mobile bands although T-Mobile hadn't officially launched its LTE when the phone came out
It's not about the size of the internal storage. It's about the fact that it's internal. You can remove a SD card from a phone with a shattered screen. Your phone "might" work if you drop it in the tub, but you can't take the battery out to let it dry out. (And I know the battery doesn't need to dry out)
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
I'll bet there will soon be a battery replacement kit for the HTC One that the mechanically and electronically inclined individuals can purchase.
Besides, while your mileage may vary, I'm still using my original user-replaceable battery on my four year old Android phone. It's not like they are the unreliable Ni-Cad batteries of the previous decade.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
just saying...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I'm afraid to look at the rest of the specs to see which non-negotiable spec ended up getting gimped this time, since it seems to be a grand tradition among manufacturers that the closer they get to perfection, the more horribly they have to ruin at least one specific thing.
Please, sweet baby Jesus, fierce Xenu, and most noodly FSM, let this phone have a removable battery whose stock capacity exceeds 2500mAH, microSD, and a 5" display having a minimum of 1920x1080 resolution. With abundant ram and DVI (possibly via MLH), of course.
Even if a carrier didn't lock its phones, it'd still be earning money either by continuing to sell service to the customer or by collecting the ETF from the customer.
Considering that one COULD peel the content off of the device and put it on via the Media Player filesystem interface or via something like adbfs on Linux, the only issue I've seen with not having a microSD slot is one of getting the data off the device when I change phones.
You might care about this (I was...somewhat...of your opinion with the Galaxy Nexus I'm using right now, but that changed...) but it's nothing of the big deal that you're making of it- especially since it's not all the way you're making it out to be.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I should hope so, it _is_ a mobile phone, right?
Shut up, power users. The sheep have spoken. Everyone, just go back to your grazing.
Uh...you keep trying to justify all of this and you keep missing.
If you don't have WiFi on your desktop, one should question whether you should be keeping anything on the phone- it's not a thumb drive, dude...
Seriously. Get a thumb drive.
Seriously. Get a thumb drive.
You appear to recommend using a USB MSC device to move files between a phone and a PC. That won't work so well on an Android device without USB OTG MSC host support, which a lot of Android devices appear to be leaving out in order to get around paying Microsoft a royalty for FAT.
Or do you genuinely believe that mobile device manufacturers need to seriously consider the eventuality of broken USB ports on their devices?
Yes. Phone manufacturers need to either consider that eventuality or provide a hardware warranty at least as long as a typical carrier subsidy.
I Googled iPhone sales and saw that they've sold more this last quarter than they did in the same quarter last year. Isn't that odd? [...] If the iPhone is in a slump what does that say about the Galaxy S3?
By iPhone do you mean just the product called "iPhone", which was first sold in 2007 and ran only on 2G GSM networks, or all versions of the iPhone put together? If the latter, then you should be comparing the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 put together to the Galaxy S2, S3, and S4 put together.
The SD card slot is a feature that appeals to a very small demographic. You may be in it, but just because its part of your decision making process doesn't mean that its part of everyone else's.
Does the fact that a demographic happens not to be the majority mean that nobody should sell an affordable product to that demographic?
Personally I don't care. I don't want to micro manage storage in this century.
So it would appear that instead, you prefer to micro-manage cellular download caps in this century. Or what am I missing?
Most people will never fill up the local 32GB.
Not all phones have 32 GB. A lot of phone manufacturers sell 8 GB and 16 GB versions at a deep discount. I'm also aware of a mobile device whose operating system occupies half the included storage. Do most people know years in advance how much storage they plan to use by the time they retire a device?
What are you keeping on your damn phone?
Movies for offline viewing, TV series for offline viewing, and games eat up gigabytes fast.
Logic would say that the expected S4 by the end of the month would be a huge contributer to less sales for the S3. That's just logic though, and this is slashdot...
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The accusation is that smartpphone manufacturers leave off a microSD card slot precisely so that they can overcharge for the 16 GB version.
How much extra would it cost to put in an sd slot?
That depends on A. how much they want to pay Microsoft for a FAT file system royalty, or B. how many support calls they get when a computer that runs Windows or Mac OS X doesn't take an SD card formatted for Ext3 and "helpfully" offers to erase all data on the card.
If you're looking for something that doesn't expect always-on connectivity you should probably not be looking at cell phones; other portable computing systems exist.
For one thing, I am aware that people who prefer iOS might be happy with an iPod touch. But for people who prefer something other than iOS, what 4 to 5 inch tablets that run Android should I be looking at?
For another thing, most cellular carriers cap downloads. Once one has used all of one's monthly megabytes, a smartphone becomes a tablet and a dumbphone in one device.
You can remove a SD card from a phone with a shattered screen.
And you can restore the backup that you had made of the internal storage of a phone with a shattered screen before its screen shattered. You can make this backup to a PC, or if you choose to be "post-PC", you can lease backup space on a server and make the backup by carrying the phone to any restaurant or library that offers free Wi-Fi to customers.
So you are suggesting that I create some data on the phone, then put the data through wifi on my PC at home, then put it to a thumbdrive and bring it to work instead of just pulling the MicroSD card from the phone and put it into the card reader on my work PC? I am not quite sure I see the sense of this excercise.
In fact, I don't see the sense of many of "helpful" posts here. People suggest that I buy a phone lacking certain functionality, then jump through hoops to emulate the lacking functionality. Are you guys business consultants or what?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
plex + home nas. Since when is streaming an issue?
Since carriers instituted data caps.
People who have taken their unlocked phones to some of these other carriers, and wanted to keep their phone number - how quick was it?
I am thinking of moving, and I assume I can take my number with me... is it "instant" or does it take hours or days?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It isn't like (at least in Canada) there is an extra "phone charge" when you're stuck in-contract. Their monthly bill is the same as it would be otherwise
T-Mobile recently changed its plan structure to add the extra "phone charge" that you describe, and prepaid MVNOs generally have lower monthly rates to make up for having to buy the phone up front.
A Samsung Galaxy Note released a year ago offered superior network optionis
I don't have a cap, I have unlimited LTE.
What fraction of the population of the United States and Canada lives within the coverage area of a carrier that offers affordable unlimited LTE?
I bet most, depending on how you define affordable.
Affordable is a sliding scale. For each use case, there are price thresholds over the service life of a device at which offline becomes more cost-effective than cellular data. Expressing prices in annual rather than monthly rates helps at least me figure out what these thresholds are.
Mine is a grandfathered Verizon plan.
I'd prefer to exclude no-longer-available, non-transferable offers.
T-mobile covers probably 80% of US residents with either very fast 3G HSDPA+ or LTE.
The unlimited plan costs $840 per year in addition to what one already pays for home phone and home Internet. There is a $360 per year plan with only 100 minutes that appears to be designed for people who also have a home phone, but it drops to EDGE after 5 GB in a month.
There will always be corner cases, but so far it seems a good solution for most.
I guess I disagree with some people's estimates on how many people are willing to move their families into an area with coverage just to become no longer a corner case.
I'd have agreed with you easily years ago when this was a big deal and phones only came with 8GB onboard memory. A 64GB phone is more than enough. I have a ~9TB media collection at home, so the idea that you need to come up with 10 SD cards to fit what may be your entire collection on you at all times strikes me as some sort of crippling problem that you have to realize most people do not have. If I tried to do that, I might as well carry around a backpack with hard drives. Ugh. I sync all my music with Spotify these days and it's great. I think I have around 50hrs worth of music, which will be more than enough to keep me occupied, and I can just go ahead and make a new playlist and snyc wirelessly any time any where if I get an urge to listen to anything, even if I don't own it at home. It's really nice, you should try it before being so angry at things you don't use that are really quite good. I'm quite a power user. However, I've learned to make technology my bitch, rather than being a slave to concepts that were essential 5 years ago but are increasingly obsolete today. You should try it. It's fun. I can stream anything from my media server to any of my devices instantly. The absolute last thing I want is to put it on tiny non-redundant memory chips and carry it around waiting to get lost or stolen.
Considering how many high-end Android phones there are, if the Samsung Galaxy is even in the same ballpark sales-wise to the iPhone, that's doing pretty well.
Have you seen the teardown of the HTC One? I'd guess not. It is damn difficult to open up and get to the battery. No consumers will be replacing it themselves.
having moto's razr maxx phone has proven to me that you don't need a removable battery, its just got to be big enough to last all day, plus a little, i don't really use my phone that heavily any more, i got a nexus 7 when they were released almost a year ago and almost everything that would be considered heavy lifting is done on it (web browsing, movies, games and whatnot) email i have on both. My phone is basically back to being a phone, and a wireless hotspot and thats about it, so my point is that a good long lasting battery like mine is enough to last all day with heavy lifting, but since i don't it last 2 days, sometimes i change it at night out of habit but if i fall asleep and forget to plug it in, it seems to always get me through the next day as well. I realize not all phones have these batteries, but i think i would rather see them push big batteries into the phone the have to have two batteries on me all the time, just in case. I had a droidx before my razr maxx and had the extended battery, if i had to stay late at work i would almost always have to switch batteries, now i don't even have to think about it. So for me battery size is a lot more important than if its replaceable. For the record i also was pretty evangelical about cd cards too, but i have a 16gb nexus7 and still have 10 gb free all my music is on google play with an account i share with my wife so we have access to all our music and if we are going someplace without good connection we simply pin the music we want to the device so its there if we don't have a connection and we live in montana, so this happens a lot, but hasn't been an issue yet, i still like the idea of an sd card but for me its not a deal breaker anymore.
I'm still waiting for that shake up. Most of t-mobile's services have degraded to the point where it's nearly unusable 50% of the time (This has all been in the past year, it's only gotten worse). I can't even make or receive calls with t-mobile most of the time. Their cell towers are so over capacity that it's mostly useless in supposedly wealthy areas. It's more like T-mobile executives gave themselves a bonus and are ditching the sinking ship. As much as I like T-Mobiles friendlier attitude and more fairer plan deals, AT&T and Verizon still offer the best service despite their lousiness.
Verizon is too entrenched to need to undercut T-Mobile. It's Bell South errm, I mean AT&T who might have to do this, and they don't have other revenue streams.
Not that they need to right now. Verizon and AT&T currently offer far better coverage than T-Mobile. Verizon is still tons better than AT&T, mostly because they're on CDMA instead of GSM, so that should tell you where T-Mobile is in comparison with Verizon.
The other thing is, FiOS is not as big of a revenue maker as you might think. The cost of rolling out the infrastructure is not being offset by the revenue from people switching over. In fact, it's gotten so bad they've stopped rolling it out completely.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I just looked it up on iFixit. You are correct this is practically a disposable phone. I'm pretty sure any repair involves getting a refurbished unit in exchange.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Oh and a tip moving foreward, be more careful with your stuff that connector is incredibly easy to break, why cellphones have such an inferior connector on them I'll never understand.
I thought micro-USB was supposed to be more rugged than full-size USB. Is that merely that it is designed to handle plug/unplug cycles, but easier to damage physically? I don't know since I'm nice to hardware and never broken one, but micro-USB is rated for 10K plug/unplug cycles, whereas full-size USB is only rated for 1K. Being nice to hardware also means phone tend to last distinctly more than 2 years, so I rate a replaceable battery as a necessity.
The Texas Transportation Institute ran an experiment this week with the same result - hands-free devices significantly reduce safety, almost as much as hands-on.
Taking to passengers is irrelevant. It's exactly like saying "since I can chop off my left hand, I should chop off my foot."
What would really change economics on the cell phone industry is to have a major brand not only sell unlocked phones, but dual or triple sim unlocked android phones.
LF does that in Brasil and move from 7 to number 1 in less than 6 months.
Some things don't belong in the cloud.
I agree, and devices containing information that truly doesn't belong in the cloud can be backed up to a PC or NAS on the local network. But then the question becomes how many home users store things on their phones that truly don't belong in the cloud.
No sale.
[POTS at home] seems unnecessary unless you have very small children.
I'm not sure what you mean by "very small", but quite a few households in my survey sample do have children who aren't yet 18. How would they pay the cell phone bill? In addition, many households have long-standing relationships with businesses that have the home phone as the primary method for more than one member of the household, and an existing home phone's number can't be local-number-ported to both parents' phones at once.
I am also not sure how having home services changes the affordability of cellular service.
The mentality is a different kind of pay-as-you-go: "We already pay enough per month for utilities. If we get one more service, we'll have to cut one." I've got this when trying to explain Netflix to people. They think they can't afford $96 per year for Netflix unless they pay for it by canceling something else such as cable TV, and they won't cancel cable TV because Netflix doesn't have live sports or live political talk shows, or because the cable company's discount on Internet service for also having TV is so great that TV is nearly free of charge.
I tend to agree with the notion that Google would prefer to see SD cards go away. I upgraded from an EVO 3D with all kinds of bugs related to its micro-SD card. It was constantly running "out of storage space" despite the fact that it's 32GB card was only half full. The problem would crop up constantly when updating apps. Some apps would update happily, including games of more than 1GB in size. But other apps, including newer apps designed specifically to run on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), would throw up the out of storage space error. (Facebook for example had to be uninstalled and reinstalled with every update once I'd installed more than a few dozen apps.)
Then I upgraded to Google’s own Nexus 4 and all those bugs went away. I now have half the storage of my old phone but none of the headaches. I have a installed a hundred or more apps and my new phone has never once complained about being low on storage. I can't store my entire music collection on my phone but I can stream it with Google Music. And it's so much faster than my old phone! I've yet to experience a moment of lag despite having loaded up my phone with apps. Would I like to have have the option to install extra storage space via an SD or micro-SD slot? Of course! But I'd rather not return to the headaches of my old phone's highly flawed expansion card support.
Does this
People value a smaller, prettier phone over an easily removed battery.
People who keep their small, pretty phone in a bulky, ugly case.
Posting from my Nexus 4 for the irony.
Does this
I own an Archos 43. It has a resistive touch screen, which is good for some applications (the stylus from a Nintendo DS Lite gives more precision than a finger) but not for games that require multitouch. When Archos made it, Google wasn't letting tablets use what is now Google Play Store. Instead, it came with AppsLib (and with the option to install Amazon), but a lot of developers appear unwilling to upload their applications to AppsLib or Amazon, so a lot of people ended up having to pirate the Google Play Store app using ArcTools. And it's still (officially) stuck on ancient Android 2.2, while iPod touch models back to the 4th generation still get updates.
pulling the MicroSD card from the phone and put it into the card reader on my work PC
And watch your work PC "helpfully" suggest to reformat the card from Ext3 to a Microsoft proprietary format such as FAT32 or NTFS or ExFAT.
Ext4 actually, but only the second partition. The first partition is FAT32. No "helpful" suggestions, though, everything works as intended.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The first partition is FAT32
I thought the maker of devices using file systems in the FAT family had to pay patent royalties to Microsoft, and that was one of the reasons for eliminating microSD slots from Android devices. On your particular device, is most of the data on the FAT32 partition or on the Ext4 partition?