Roku is great. Subtitle support plus really easy to use. My parents are in their late 70's and they can easily manage it....and they are the farthest thing from tech-savvy. I have the Apple TV 2 but have never used it for Netflix. I would think it would deliver virtually equivalent functionality. The benefit of the Roku 3 is that the remote has a headphone jack, so one person could watch movies without disturbing the other who was sleeping, reading the newspaper, or yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
The bands for 2G (GSM/EDGE) and 3G (W-CDMA) are different, so you can have a phone that is "quad-band" for 2G but is single-band for 3G. The radio designs for W-CDMA are MUCH more complex than GSM/EDGE, thus having a phone that supports multiple W-CDMA bands significantly increases the BOM cost and the radio footprint compared with a single W-CDMA band design. Such phones are definitely being made, but at least it makes sense why a phone targeted for T-Mobile would only support their frequency bands.
FYI, in the States, AT&T uses bands II and V while T-Mobile uses band IV. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS_frequency_bands
Now if Apple bought a fab it would get interesting This will NEVER happen. Even large semiconductor companies like NXP & Freescale are moving towards a fabless model. It requires too much investment, and the technology would be obsolete way before they came close to making a return on it.
Poor receive sensitivity? Maybe. Phones only have to do better than -104dB to pass FTA testing, per 3GPP TS 45.005 . But the best performing phones can achieve up to -111dB for low bands and maybe 1dB worse for high bands.
Low transmit power? Not likely. 3GPP specs in link above (see section 4.1.1) dictate that handsets must be within 2dB of target output power under normal conditions (room temp, nominal battery voltage) and 2.5dB under all conditions. All handsets are calibrated on the manufacturing line to meet output power targets, and manufacturers typically calibrate each power level to [target - 0.5dB].
I presume you're speaking of the BlackBerry 8830, which has a dual-band GSM radio for the EGSM/DCS bands only. This means it doesn't work in America where they use GSM850/PCS bands. So, unfortunately, you can't pop in a T-Mobile or AT&T sim card and use it on their networks.
But, as I work for a company that has standardized on Verizon as their corporate wireless provider, it's the only option if you want to have a single handset that works most everywhere.
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Roku is great. Subtitle support plus really easy to use. My parents are in their late 70's and they can easily manage it....and they are the farthest thing from tech-savvy. I have the Apple TV 2 but have never used it for Netflix. I would think it would deliver virtually equivalent functionality. The benefit of the Roku 3 is that the remote has a headphone jack, so one person could watch movies without disturbing the other who was sleeping, reading the newspaper, or yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
Skydrive has a 100MB limitation per file. Dealbreaker.
The bands for 2G (GSM/EDGE) and 3G (W-CDMA) are different, so you can have a phone that is "quad-band" for 2G but is single-band for 3G. The radio designs for W-CDMA are MUCH more complex than GSM/EDGE, thus having a phone that supports multiple W-CDMA bands significantly increases the BOM cost and the radio footprint compared with a single W-CDMA band design. Such phones are definitely being made, but at least it makes sense why a phone targeted for T-Mobile would only support their frequency bands. FYI, in the States, AT&T uses bands II and V while T-Mobile uses band IV. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS_frequency_bands
Anyone else find it ironic that they had to frickin' kill the oldest animal in existence just to determine its age?
Poor receive sensitivity? Maybe. Phones only have to do better than -104dB to pass FTA testing, per 3GPP TS 45.005 . But the best performing phones can achieve up to -111dB for low bands and maybe 1dB worse for high bands.
Low transmit power? Not likely. 3GPP specs in link above (see section 4.1.1) dictate that handsets must be within 2dB of target output power under normal conditions (room temp, nominal battery voltage) and 2.5dB under all conditions. All handsets are calibrated on the manufacturing line to meet output power targets, and manufacturers typically calibrate each power level to [target - 0.5dB].
Nice, a Fight Club reference...
I presume you're speaking of the BlackBerry 8830, which has a dual-band GSM radio for the EGSM/DCS bands only. This means it doesn't work in America where they use GSM850/PCS bands. So, unfortunately, you can't pop in a T-Mobile or AT&T sim card and use it on their networks. But, as I work for a company that has standardized on Verizon as their corporate wireless provider, it's the only option if you want to have a single handset that works most everywhere.
My VCR just blinks "12:00." What's that about?
Heh. "Retarted" [sic]. Insert Pot/Kettle comment here.
Nice try. How about RIMjob?