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My Very Own Protocol Droid

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Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#21

Post by whichdan »

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk"

Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though).

I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPhone, but $550/yr is nothing to laugh at.

Edit: For comparison,

T-Mobile http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

$30/mo: 100 minutes, Unlimited text/web (first 5gb at 4g)

$70/mo: Unlimited everything

Verizon http://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/consumer/shop/share-ever...

$100/mo: Unlimited minutes/text, 2gb data ($10/mo per 2gb data extra)

AT&T http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans-new.html#fbid=hfBE29q...

$70/mo: 450 minutes, 1000 texts (plan not listed), 300mb

$90/mo: 450 minutes, unlimited texts, 3gb data

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#22

Post by myko »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #15
parfe wrote: post #7

> Twenty years of using Macs conditioned me to think, “well, that’s the Apple way.” It’s such a small price to pay for such a user-friendly device. Another Stockholm-syndrome patient cured! I recently took over a prototype project targeting the Mac. XCode is garbage. OS X itself actively works against improving your workflow. It's Apple's way or, well Apple's way. iOS is built to keep the user in a padded cell (aka W…

Can you give examples of good stuff you've seen from Google Now that have been a real help to you? Stuff that's genuinely useful rather than just "look at that" cool. EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.

One thing I thought was awesome recently, had a business trip, Google Now knew about my flight information and popped up a notification telling me when to leave to be at the airport an hour early - even offered to navigate!

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#23

Post by myko »

timrichard wrote: post #19

I've been true to the Droid since the G1, and recently offloaded certain duties from my Galaxy Nexus to an iPod Touch 5 (needed for Facetime, popular with the family). When using iOS, I really miss the Intent subsystem. It seems like every app seems to offer different and restricted sharing choices (implicitly asking why I possibly wouldn't be using Instapaper...) [1] I wouldn't be surprised if this is the next Andro…

Any chance to convince your family to move to Google+ Hangouts? They work great on iOS devices and having multiple people in the chat is great.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#24

Post by dragontamer »

whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

I use Ting, and hit ~$23 / month with my Android. I rarely go over 100 minutes / 100 texts / 100MB however, which is why I pay so little. They serve LTE phones now, and my area is serviced.

Realistically, since Ting doesn't do weekends / nights, you'll probably fall into the 1000 minutes / 1000 texts / 500 MB bucket, which is still only $42/month. If you ever do a month with less minutes through, Ting will refund your money for the month you didn't use all of it. (IMO, better than "rollover". Its like if rollover minutes gave you money instead of minutes...)

My friend uses a Nexus 4 on T-Mobile. He's doing fine on the $30/month plan as far as I can tell, with exception of the lack of LTE on the Nexus 4. He still gets HPSA+ however, and the first 5GB are not throttled. The 100 minutes / month is a problem for me however... their next plan is $50/month for unlimited minutes, but only 100MB of unthrottled data. After that is $60 / month for unlimited minutes / texts / 2GB throttled.

I strongly recommend both Ting and T-Mobile. They're good services.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#25

Post by southpolesteve »

whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

I have been on that t-mobile plan for the last year with an unlocked Galaxy Nexus. It has been awesome. Speed is actually better than it was on AT&T.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#26

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

myko wrote: post #22
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of good stuff you've seen from Google Now that have been a real help to you? Stuff that's genuinely useful rather than just "look at that" cool. EDIT: So far I'm seeing a lot of reasons why Apple wanted to get into maps. A lot of the value add here seems to be navigation related.

One thing I thought was awesome recently, had a business trip, Google Now knew about my flight information and popped up a notification telling me when to leave to be at the airport an hour early - even offered to navigate!

Any idea on how it knew? An entry you'd made in your calendar? Scanning your e-mail?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#27

Post by mberning »

They are still in the honeymoon phase. I've been through it twice before with Android phones.

Also, in regards to point #1, I never have this problem with my car. Sounds like more of an integration issue with the headunit in the car rather than the phone.

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#28

Post by Irregardless »

There's no doubt Apple is playing catch-up with Android these days. Siri was their only real innovation in the last 3 iPhones, and Google leapfrogged it within months.

Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to implement a decent notification system, their auto-correct is garbage, there's no file manager, you can't set a default browser (or default anything, for that matter), there are no widgets, no app shortcuts, no custom keyboards, managing settings is a nightmare, and you can't side-load apps without jailbreaking. That last one is especially bad thanks to their cryptic app approval rules and the fact that their app store is the least intuitive to navigate -- if what you want isn't in the top 10 and you don't know the exact name, forget about it.

But hey, at least you get the privilege of spending a fortune on chargers and adapters. And other people with iPhones will think you're cool for owning one, right?

Re: My Very Own Protocol Droid

#30

Post by jrajav »

whichdan wrote: post #21

"With Android (and T-Mobile) I killed my contract. Now I pay just $30/month. For $30/month I have unlimited texts, unlimited data, free tethering, and 100 minutes of talk" Anyone else have experience doing this? My monthly bill for an iPhone with AT&T is $76.40 which includes 300MB of data, 1000 messages, and a whopping 450 minutes (I do have ~2700 rollover minutes though). I don't feel strongly about Android vs iPho…

I have had the same T-Mobile plan for a while. I'm not sure what kind of information you want about it, but it pretty much works as advertised. The coverage and uptime is not as great as Verizon, but it's faster than AT&T (AT&T's network has been saturated since the iPhone lock-in). It's definitely not the worst choice for 4G data, and the price is obviously very competitive.

Note that unlimited data is, as you probably suspected, not actually unlimited. The $30/month plan gives you 5gb free over 3G or 4G, and then it downgrades to 2G for the remainder of the month unless you refill. It never actually cuts off data, but 2G is too slow for pretty much anything but (slowly) getting your HN fix.

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