Rob's Rants

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.

It’s been 1 month (as of tomorrow anyway) since I’ve owned my new T-Mobile Dash 3G. I figure that’s enough time to start to understand some of the ins and outs of the phone and give a decent summary of my thoughts so far.

Hardware

Hardware Summary

Parameter	Rating
Look & feel
Speed
Memory
Screen
Call quality
Battery
GPS
Camera

Overall, I’m impressed with the size, shape, and feel of the device. The keyboard is more compact than a blackberry or my previous T-Mobile Wing, but it didn’t take too long to get used to it. The phone feels solid — not plasticy. the keys press nicely, and for the most part the trackball rolls smoothly. I say for the most part because I did go through a period where it seemed like the trackball had some dirt in it and it would jam in the vertical axis. But that issue resolved itself after a couple of days and hasn’t come back since.

The processor is speedy and the data radio seems solid. I tether this phone all the time and run multiple applications while doing it and nothing seems to slow it down. I currently have my laptop tethered to the phone with GPSed, Google Maps, and Facebook running and I just sent and received a message like nothing is running at all. There is also plenty of memory, both program and storage. This is the first Windows device of this type that I actually believe could be run decently just with the built-in memory.

The screen is OK for what it is. And what it is a QVGA display. This is clearly designed to be functional rather than the selling point of the phone. It’s bright, and the color reproduction is good. But it’s small. There’s just no way around it — it’s 320×240. This is an iPod display, not an iPhone display. If there was anything I would improve about the hardware, it would be the screen.

As a phone, it works great. Call quality is clear, the speaker is loud and clear — the speakerphone works well. No complaints at all on the phone.

Battery life is pretty good — I’ve never been one to push the limits of a cellphone battery though. I usually charge each night and then plug in again at my desk at work. But on the few occasions where I’ve had to go a whole day without plugging in, the Dash 3G hasn’t run down below 55%, even with moderate use.

The GPS has me concerned though. Most of the time, and with most programs, I have a terrible time getting an initial satellite lock. Inside a vehicle it can take 10 minutes to lock, if you can get one at all. Under an open sky, it can take 2 to 3 minutes. But other times it gets a lock in 30 seconds. I’ve tried to be consistent in my use to narrow down what helps and what doesn’t, but I can’t seem to get any consistency out of it. This is an area I will continue to experiment with.

One thing that I find annoying, but may be a little too sensitive about, is the position of  the volume rocker versus the USB port cover. They are exactly opposite each other on the side of the screen and I can’t seem to do anything with the USB port without changing the volume. While this isn’t a big problem by any means, it is annoying.

The camera is decent for a 2 megapixel camera. It does an OK job taking pictures in decent light, but doesn’t stretch well when the conditions get tough. Cameras on most BlackBerries are definitely better. The camera controls are definitely lacking — the settings are few and difficult to find. The menus aren’t really easy to navigate and changing settings quickly just isn’t possible. But once set to some middle of the road settings, snapshots will turn out looking decent.

OS/ROM

Windows Mobile 6.1 is a decent operating system and T-Mobile’s implementation of it is solid. The phone isn’t loaded with too much crapware (aside from the obligatory Handango-in-hand app and T-Mobile’s TeleNav navigation app) and the apps that T-Mobile does provide are useful (like the account status app). Windows Mobile does certain things very well — it integrates with Exchange servers easily, it tethers to Windows computers easily, and has a decent implementation of Pocket Outlook for mobile e-mail. What it doesn’t do is look particularly good. The new sliding panel home screen helps, but there aren’t a lot of programs that integrate well with the sliding panels yet. So, it is what it is — a regular Windows Mobile implementation without a lot of bells and whistles.

I’ve mentioned the poor lock time of the Dash 3G GPS previously (see this and this). Here are some real-world times.

Yesterday, I was sitting in a window seat of my train home. I opened Google Maps and let the GPS search. The phone was right next to the glass. GPS lock time: NEVER. No satellite lock was achieved in 10 minutes of trying. (Google Maps appears to have a 5 minute timeout if no GPS signal is obtained. I waited two full timeout cycles before giving up.)

So, when I got to my train station, I stood in the middle of an empty parking lot. No trees or anything for 100+ yards in any direction and no tall buildings at all. Time to find a GPS lock: 3 minutes 50 seconds. To put it simply, that is pathetic. I might as well bring my topo map and compass.

I certainly hope that HTC or someone at XDA-Developers can help sort this out because a GPS with performance that poor borders on useless.