41–50 of 195 posts
Price is not competitive with T-Mobile 5GB @ $30/mo plan. I guess the only interesting use case is for low-bandwidth use on data-only plan just to get a device connected.
I was initially quite intrigued, They have some great nice to have features but are missing some useful must haves when compared to Google Fi such as 1. WiFi calling, Extremely useful, Many places that I go to have terrible reception and calling and texting via WiFi has saved me many times. 2. Simple international calling / travel plans. I use this a lot and again WiFi calling + international roaming on Google Fi has…
The fact that Google has worked on Hangouts for so long makes #1 and #3 possible. Unless you're talking about native carrier WiFi calling in #1, in which case see my previous point.
We have the engineering background to build all those things, but we're limited by our carrier partners (currently just Sprint) for some. They haven't enabled WiFi calling on any wholesale accounts for instance, and have said that won't happen until 2017 at the earliest.
At this point our best feature is that you get the simple pricing of Google's Fi, on an iPhone or any other Sprint-compatible device.
Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that. Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me. Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on yo…
... takes offence at being called a geek ... calls out the company for using Go instead of Erlang Just sayin'. :)
nerd: a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious.
geek: an unfashionable or socially inept person.
Aaaand they are a Sprint MVNO. Sprint has a pretty bad network in most of the US. Maybe they'll pull a Google-Fi and make themselves available on more networks.
Just wondering.. Can an app pull off the carrier switching function of Fi or is it an OS level functionality?
It requires a very specific part of LTE-A implemented, connecting to multiple networks simultaneously (not merely multiple towers actively simultaneously, which I'm pretty sure LTE added, not LTE-A).
Only Nexus phones after the 5 support it, which leaves me out because I have a 5. 5x, 6, 6p all support it.
Also, obviously, the radio needs to support all the bands that all the carriers you want to access support, and support them under the base protocols you want to use. Case in point, Sprint is CDMA, T-Mobile are GSM.
Modern LTE chips are supposed to support a wide range of channels (ie, all present and future channels used by the major four networks should work today on a brand new phone; should).
Eventually, all future phones will support it else get locked out of next generation MVNOs. Google-Fi is the first, won't be the last.
Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that. Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me. Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on yo…
And I will accept your sarcastic congratulations on "basic" SSL best practices with pride. I think you'll find that HPKP implementations are currently still very rare, and I do not consider it "basic".
Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…
How about forwarding to a landline (that will ring and ring) after a few rings.
Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…
Charge CEO here. We can definitely disable voicemail for you. I actually have it disabled myself. Just send us an email to get it removed. We should probably just add a checkbox for it in the management UI though now that I think about it.
The only catches are a weirdly structured sign up fee (minimum top up for most plans, and now they have member+ only plans, which costs $120 for lifetime, but was different in the past), and their radio program, which replaces the outgoing ring tone with ads/music/news/etc (you can configure it a bit).
I've been using it for months and there's no other catches, which is great.
The future of phone service is free.
Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that. Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me. Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on yo…
I think your reaction is relatively rare these days. More and more I see lots of people in tech and gaming communities embracing the words 'nerd' and 'geek' as a way of describing their social subgroup. For example, 'geeky' has come to be desirable in lots of fashion (just google 'geeky guy' and it's all about how desirable they are! okay, maybe those search results are tailored to me?), and it's a thing people would…
Haha you can also kind of see a difference if you compare Google Images results for "geeky guy" vs. "nerdy guy". At least in my results, "nerdy" fares quite a lot worse.
Bottom line, I don't appreciate it when "business guys" call us the "nerds" they get to build their startups. And I also don't like it when family members refer to me as a nerd or a geek because I "work in IT". Because it's always followed by a laugh.
This seems pretty expensive actually. $13/GB + $20 per month versus my Verizon plan that's ~$120/mo for 12GB of data. This plan would turn into $170. I usually go to about 60-80% of my data plan (tethering and such), which at the lower bound still doesn't make sense.
You can't perfectly predict how much you'll use beforehand. And some people prefer to know they'll always pay for what they use, rather than signing up to be part of a system where they're occasionally subsidizing heavier data users.