Rob's Rants

I recently announced that I retired my venerable Dash 3G phone from T-Mobile and upgraded to a new G2.I’ve had the new phone for several weeks now, and I’ve even taken it to Europe for a week. And I really like this phone. Here are my impressions after the first few weeks.

Hardware

You can find the official specs on the official G2 site. The phone is made my HTC and has all of the main features that I was looking for, including a decent display (doesn’t have to be iPhone 4, Retina quality), a slide-out keyboard, and reasonable speed. I also like the idea of removable memory cards so I can expand the memory as needed. The phone has a decent camera and the touch-screen is sensitive and smooth.

The slide-out keyboard is an interesting design. Rather than a traditional slide mechanism, this keyboard flips out using a “Z-hinge” design (this phone is also known as the ‘HTC Desire Z in other markets). This hinge has received a lot of bad early press because it tends to come from the factory very loose or quickly loosens once the phone is used. Just go to YouTube and search “G2 hinge” to see more than you want to, but here’s a representative video:

Based on my use, I don’t have a problem with the hinge. Is it loose? Yes. But I don’t wear the phone on a belt clip or type while lying on my back, so I don’t experience the problems that some people report. But I advise anyone thinking about this phone to take the issue into consideration just in case it will bother you.

One downside to this phone: it’s heavy. This is not a super-thin iPhone 4. Compared to an iPhone it feels like a brick, and it’s not easy to pocket. It definitely doesn’t fit easily in a pocket inside a suit jacket, and it can be a pain to carry in a pants pocket too. But I’ve eventually gotten used to it. If you are looking for something sleek though, this isn’t it.

The keyboard is great. I admit I love HTC phones, and this is my third in a row. I started with my beloved T-Mobile Wing (also known as the HTC Herald) and replaced that with my Dash 3G (also known as an HTC Maple).  And HTC keyboards have always been great. The keys are nicely domed so my fingers can find them easily, and they have a nice ‘clicky’ feel. As far as smartphones go, this is a great keyboard to type on.

The GPS is solid and the camera is decent. I am so happy to have a decent GPS because the GPS on my Dash 3G was perhaps the worst GPS implementation in the world.

So, for my uses, this is a solid device for daily use.

Software

The phone ships with a lightly customized Android 2.2 (Froyo) OS that implements most of the native features. When the phone originally shipped late last summer it did nit implement one key 2.2 feature, Wi-Fi tethering (portable hotspot functions). However, T-Mobile did make these features available in a November OTA (Over The Air) update, and my phone downloaded and enabled this within hours of activation.

A good and quick review of the 2.2 features is available at the Android Developers website.

T-Mobile has largely left this OS unadulterated. If you are interested in an experience that is as close to native Android as possible, as opposed to something like Motorola phones running ‘MotoBlur‘ then this is a good choice. In its raw form, I thin Android is an excellent, if slightly less polished alternative to the iPhone’s IOS. In fact, I prefer Android in many ways (more below). And the G2 implementation is solid and quick. No lags or performance issues in my version anyway.

And as always with Android, the OS integrates perfectly with Google services. My domain (havasy.net) runs e-mail and calendar on a Google Apps account. So the mail and calendar integration built into Android works fantastically.

Network

T-Mobile get a lot of shit for being a third class network, even behind Sprint in most people’s eyes. I have no idea why. I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for over 9 years now, from right after the Voicestream acquisition. I have never considered switching. Do I have fewer bars than my Verizon-owning friends? Yes. But I also pay a lot less for service and have many fewer restrictions. Case-in-point: T-Mobile still sells unlimited data plans and allows tethering for only an extra $15.00 per month on . That means that I pay $45.00 per month for unlimited data and unlimited tethering. Seriously. And legitimately. No cheating required. On Verizon, an equivalent plan isn’t possible. The best you can legitimately do is $70 per month for a 2GB smartphone cap and a 10GB mobile broadband cap. Pathetic.

For where I use my phone the most, the T-Mobile network works fine. And tethering is important to me. I commute by train for 3 hours every day, and tethering allows me to use my laptop during that time for things like graduate school classes.

And, on the G2, T-Mobile has released their version of Wi-Fi calling. Which allows the phone to connect to an available Wi-Fi network if the cell signal is low and make calls over Wi-Fi. This is not true VOIP like Skype, since T-Mobile still charges plan minutes at the normal rate, but can be useful in certain situations. Like if you live somewhere that has spotty coverage. Or, and this is critical for me, if you travel a lot. I took the G2 to Brussels, Belgium for 5 days on business and was able to use my hotel’s Wi-Fi connection to make and receive calls with no international roaming rates. That’s right. After being afraid to turn on my phone because of horror stories about thousand dollar bills from roaming charges, I set it to Wi-Fi only and it worked perfectly. Imagine that – a world-band phone that finally allows worldwide phone calling. Unbelievable. I love T-Mobile more and more all the time because of features like this.

Overall

I am extremely pleased with my G2. It’s fast, solid, and versatile. In fact, after several weeks I like it so much more than my iPhone 3GS, even with the new iOS 4 update.

Why I Like the G2 More Than my iPhone

• Hardware

1. Replaceable battery. I think it’s criminal that Apple requires you to have the phone repaired to get a new battery.
2. Physical keyboard. I’ve had my iPhone for more than a year and I still hate typing on it.
3. Dedicated camera button. Sometimes you want to take a quick picture.
4. Expandable memory. Want an extra 32 GB? Just pop in a new microSDHC card.

• Software

1. Widgets. Not everything should be forced into a tiny icon. Android lets you add display widgets right to your homescreen if you want. Weather forecast? Twitter stream? Sports scores? No problem. All displayed right there with no need to click into an app.
2. Tethering!
3. AppStore not policed by arbitrary policies. No need to wait for Apple to approve an app before downloading it.
4. Real multi-tasking with background processes. That means real notifications from apps for Facebook updates, Twitter updates, etc.
5. Integration with Google services. I get push e-mail without Exchange. For free. No Apple (Mobile Me) subscriptions required.
6. Wi-Fi calling. Worked great in Europe.
7. Real app integration. Like the way Skype integrates with your dialer so you don’t have to launch apps to use additional calling features.

Conclusion

So – if you’re in the market for an iPhone alternative that allows real data usage, I say you can’t go wrong with the G2. Both my wife and I have them and we simply love them. And despite its perception, I think of T-Mobile as a top-teir international carrier who I have nothing but praise for.

There will be more to come I’m sure as I have the phone for a while, but right now I highly recommend the G2.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I was one of the last holdouts using Windows Mobile on a smartphone. For about 18 months I have been using a T-Mobile Dash 3G phone as my primary personal device. I actually like the phone a lot. It was a great 3G performer and I like the form-factor. It was light and thin and easy to carry. The stock Windows Mobile operating system was terrible though – so I set about flashing a new operating system (still based on Windows Mobile though) that made the phone much better. All of that fun was chronicled in a series of posts and are among the most read posts on this site.

T-Mobile G2

But – it was finally time to upgrade the capabilities and move up to a real smartphone. I knew several things that would inform this decision:

1. I remain uninspired by my iPhone (my work phone). It works fine and there are great apps, but it’s just an OK phone with some quirks that I don’t really care for.
2. I was staying with T-Mobile as a carrier. I’ve been with them since around the time of the Voicestream acquisition and they have always been good to me. Their rates are reasonable (especially for data) and their customer service is the best.
3. I wanted a slide-out or other physical keyboard. One of the things I hate about my iPhone is that the on-screen keyboard is such a pain to use. I really like physical keys.

This really limited my choices. Basically, T-Mobile currently offers two phones with keyboards: the MyTouch 3G Slide, and the G2. Since the G2 is advertised as 4G (OK, 3.5 G on the HSPA+ network) guess which I chose.

That’s right – I went to my local T-Mobile store and the guy there hooked me up with a BOGO deal. With upgrade credits (my contract was up 6 months ago), loyalty credits, etc. I walked out of the store with two brand new G2s (one for me and one for my wife) for $200 with a new 2-year contract. How can you beat that.

I’ve had the phone for just over two weeks now and I’ve even traveled to Europe with it.

And I can say that this phone KICKS ASS. I love it. Expect more detailed information in the coming days, but if all you want is a basic recommendation, I say you cannot go wrong with this phone.

Over the holiday weekend my Dash 3G simply stopped connecting to the network. No data, no phone, no bars, no nothing. Don’t know exactly when it happened, but when I picked up my phone to go to work on Tuesday morning, I had nada for signal strength. And no matter how I tried to reboot, pull the battery, pull and reinstall the SIM, nothing helped. I began to suspect there was a widespread outage in the Northeast, but nope … it was just me.

I called T-Mobile to check and the phone tech was helpful. I was pleasantly surprised at their ability to troubleshoot a Windows Mobile phone. We tried to reset the network settings, but nothing helped. The phone tech was the one who suggested that perhaps the SIM had failed. This had never happened to me before – a bad SIM? A SIM failing for no apparent reason? I mean, it’s not like I remove it from my phone. I hadn’t opened the back in months – how the hell could it just fail?

I didn’t believe it. I searched the web and one of the first hits to come up was a thread on XDA-Developers by a couple of people running the same 3VOlution modified ROM that I am … uh-oh. Maybe a ROM problem? But the ROM shouldn’t affect the radio I reasoned – those are separate programs. But you never know … So like an idiot I hard-reset my phone and wiped everything to go back to a fresh ROM installation. It didn’t help.

When my wife returned home that night I finally got to test the SIM theory. Sure enough, my SIM was bad. If I swapped my wife’s SIM for mine (she has a Dash 3G also) she had no bars and my phone was fine. So I put them back and resigned myself to getting a new SIM first thing this morning.

When I got off the train I dropped into the T-Mobile store on Lincoln Street on Boston (near South Station). I walked in and someone asked if they could help. I told them I needed a new SIM. He asked if I was sure, I said yes, and he asked for my phone number and ID. Then he took one out from behind the counter, put the number into the computer, and told me I was good to go. Total time took less than 2 minutes from when I walked in the door. And there was no charge. I plugged it in while in the store and sure enough, my signal came right back.

After spending a couple of hours rebuilding my phone (because I had reset it like an idiot) I did notice one improvement. It seems that I now get a better signal in many places than I did. I’m not saying that I get a dramatic improvement in strength, just that I am able to hold a 3G signal in places where I used to drop to EDGE speeds. On my train ride home (thered to my MacBook where I am writing this) I’d say I’m seeing a 30% improvement. I drop out of 3G coverage less than I did. Who knew that the SIM itself could have such an effect on signal.

Anyway, T-Mobile Customer Service was very good to me again, reminding me why I stay with them as a carrier. And I’m glad my Dash is working again, even if I did have dreams of getting a new My Touch or HD2 if it was my phone that was dead. But I’m happy I saved the money.

Thanks T-Mobile.

Over the last nine or ten months I have tweaked, upgraded, and generally overhauled my T-Mobile Dash 3G smartphone. I’ve learned quite a bit along the way. And after my most recent upgrades I think I finally have a really solid phone that I love. So if you’ve recently picked up a Dash, or are thinking about it, here’s all the information I have in one place.

The Basics

To turn your new phone into a lean, mean, communications machine, I recommend ditching the Windows Mobile 6.1 that comes on the phone and upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5. Since neither T-Mobile or HTC has released an official 6.5 upgrade yet, you’re best bet is a custom “cooked” ROM. I use the latest version of ookba’s “3Volution” ROM. In the interest of full disclosure, modifying your phone with custom software will invalidate any warranty on the device, and most probably violates several copyrights. However, in defense of this practice, it has been well established that Microsoft is aware of, and its employees contributors to, the XDA-Developers community among others. And with all the resources at its disposal, Microsoft has not attempted to shut down the practice. So if you choose to do this, do so with an understanding of what you’re doing. (See sidebar for more info.)

To install it, follow these steps:

1. Install a \”hard SPL\” security fix, which allows non-official ROMs to be installed.
2. Install the latest version of ookba\’s ROM.

I’ve written a little about the upgraded ROM here and here.

Upgrade the Radio

Although I’m not sure upgrading the radio made a really dramatic improvement, it does seem to have helped a little. It certainly hasn’t hurt.

Install Some Useful Applications

I’ve made a couple of lists of useful software that I’ve installed. The main list is here and the second list is here.

Learn

There are many resources on the web for Dash 3G owners. Here are some good ones:

• XDA-Developers is the premiere forum for detailed inf0rmation about all HTC phones. The Maple forum is at: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=499
• The official T-Mobile upgrade information is: http://www.t-mobile.com/WMupgrade/
• The official HTC info is: http://www.htc.com/www/product/snap/overview.html and the HTC upgrade info is: http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownloadlist.aspx?p_id=262&act=sd&cat=all

The other day I flashed my phone to the latest version of the 3Volution ROM which Ookba had released on XDA-Developers. It’s been three days now and I’m very happy with it. It’s stable and fast and, so far, everything woks as expected. Even the Skyfire ALT key bug has been fixed.

There was really only one last thing to tackle on this device: the cellular radio itself. In a cellphone, there are really two sets of code that make things work, The Phone’s Operating System (OS) and the radio software. The OS controls all of the functions that you can see, while the radio software controls the way the phone communicates with the network. The OS and the radio can be installed separately.

Users on various message boards have reported that their phones seem to drop their 3G data connection back to EDGE speeds whenever they end a phone call. And a few people have complained that their ability to capture a 3G signal in the first place is suspect. Some people hope that an upgraded radio software package from the manufacturer will address some of these issues. In fact, it probably won’t, since connection speed decisions are made by the network and not the phone, but at any rate I figure that if HTC released a newer version of the radio software, there must be some improvement in it….

My Dash 3G originally shipped with radio version 3.44.25.30 (check yours by going to START/SETTINGS/ABOUT). The manufacturer (HTC) released a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade separately from the T-Mobile upgrade, and the HTC version had some updated radio code in it. Ookba managed to extract this package and build it into a stand-alone update, with version 3.47.25.29 in it. And that’s what I installed.

The Verdict

Well … the flash worked perfectly and everything installed in about a minute of work. Did it change the way my phone behaves? Not that much that I can see. It certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt anything, but there is no dramatic improvement either. I think that I am able to get better signal on my normal commute, but this could also very well be the result of T-Mobile’s ongoing network upgrades too. I don’t get any faster speeds when my laptop is tethered. I’m not sure yet whether actual phone performance is enhanced (I haven’t made enough calls).

So my recommendation is this: if you are comfortable flashing your phone, go for it. You might see some marginal improvements. But if flashing makes you nervous, then there’s no reason to suffer through this – the improvements aren’t dramatic.

Posted via web from robhavasy’s posterous

As I posted before, my current Dash 3G is a non-touchscreen, Windows Mobile Standard phone, so I don’t get to enjoy the really cool stuff made for the Windows Mobile Professional, touchscreen crowd. Like iDialer. And like another Google Voice dialer I ran across,One Dialer, which appears to be a full-featured Google Voice dialer with SMS and address book support. If anyone checks it out and cares to tell me how great it is, please do!

GVoice Dialer Issue

GVoice Dialer is a decent application, and probably the best bet for Windows Mobile Smartphone users. If it integrated better with the native dialer and address book and supported Google SMS I’d be completely sold. But there is one problem I’m having. About the only parameter you can configure on GVoice Dialer is the delay between when it initiates a call and when it begins dialing the string of numbers that tells Google that you want to dial a call. The help suggests that a delay of six to eight seconds is usually sufficient. But lately I’ve been having a terrible time getting the Google menu to recognize my calls and I’ve had to extend this delay to as long as ten seconds to make it work.

I believe that this is primarily related to T-Mobile and slow call connecting. But … I never had this problem when I was using the GV Dialer trial. If I listen when GVoice Dialer is trying to call, it sounds like it’s simply dialing all the numbers too fast, but additional delay seems to help. I just wish someone would make a decent Google Voice client for us smartphone users …

I swear that for the last few days my 3G signal has been getting better on my train ride home. I can hold a solid three or four bars of 3G from South Station all the way to West Natick. At least as far as I can tell. I’ll try to pay closer attention over the next few days to confirm.

The sub-title of this post should be “T-Mobile is (edit 10/13/2009) Possibly Screwed.”

Breaking news that I found on TechCrunch.com just now about a major screw-up between T-Mobile and Danger (maker of the Sidekick device and a subsidiary of Microsoft) affecting T-Mobile Sidekick customers. And if the reports are correct I think this could actually spell the end of at least one or both of these companies at least as they currently exist. There is simply NO EXCUSE for the report that Danger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft) has apparently lost nearly 100% of Sidekick customer’s data and has no backup. No backup … I’ll write that again: NO FUCKING BACKUP. [Edit: as of 10/13/2009the New York Times reports that T-Mobile says some data might be recovered after all.]

For those not aware of what the Sidekick is or does, it is a smartphone-light device in the same way that a netbook is a notebook-light device. Sidekicks are very popular among young people. And the Sidekick was one of the very first mainstream “cloud-computing” devices, because it relies almost entirely on the cloud to store information, keeping almost nothing locally. That means that users’ contact lists, e-mail stores, IM/SMS histories, etc. are entirely stored on Danger’s servers. And Danger apparently just lost almost all of it. Let the lawsuits begin.

To quote from a T-Mobile announcement (posted at http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Sidekick):

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick ). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

Sidekick LX

Why does this hit home for me right now? Well, I have moved a significant portion of my data to “the cloud.” All of the e-mail for my domain is handled by my Google Apps account. I use Google Docs — for moderately important documents like my resume and other similar things. And I am just now recovering from a major, major disaster with my laptop which made me appreciate the value of a good backup. (Short version — a mandatory encryption program upgrade at work fried the boot sector of my laptop, bricking it. But I had taken a complete full image of my hard drive the night before knowing failure was always a possibility, so recovery was possible and I have lost nothing except the time to restore the drive.)

I’d like to put some perspective on the potential impact of this but T-Mobile USA is a privately-held subsidiary of Deutche Telekom and so doesn’t report full numbers the way Verizon or AT&T do. But for a carrier already seeing very reduced growth, this isn’t going to end well.

For some context:

T-Mobile USA adds that 2.1 million 3G-capable converged devices, including the Android G1, the Sidekick LX and Samsung’s Behold and Memoir, were active on its network at the end of the second quarter.

Various other sources also note that T-Mobile is increasingly dependent on data charges, which I’m sure are partly due to Sidekick plans. Nope … this isn’t going to end well.

About the companies:

I was walking in by back yard the other day when I noticed the 3G icon in my taskbar. I never got 3G at my house. Sure enough, as I traveled over the weekend, I was seeing 3G in more places than usual. It’s possible that T-Mobile has recently added capacity in the Boston/Metro West area. That would be good news indeed. Stay tuned for updates to my coverage map.