Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

itweakios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 128 posts

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#101

Post by rayiner »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #44

It really sucks that carriers do this, but I think it's important to realize that the issue is transparency, not that they do it. Verizon and AT&T have a problem with scaling. They should be honest and upfront about what speeds you're realistically going to attain, but I don't think they have an obligation not to throttle people. It's honestly hard to exist without it. I don't know if Verizon and AT&T could operate s…

Do AT&T even advertise specific speeds? Their advertising is "4x faster than HSPA+."

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#102

Post by zachlatta »

enraged_camel wrote: post #76

Funny, I have been thinking about this just today. I'm currently paying $200+ a month for my iPhone on AT&T. How does T-Mobile compare, and how good are they in Southern California?

I have them and live in Los Angeles. Coverage is pretty fantastic, except for in brick buildings. On a good day I get 25mbps down on their HSDPA+ network.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#103

Post by skittles »

kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

Be careful with T-Mobile. I live in a fairly small town (about 12,000 people) that is practically a suburb of a bigger town (over 200,000). I have 18 MBps Internet from AT&T Uverse, and the local cable company just started offering a much faster connection. T-Mobile? I can't even get a signal at my home. No signal.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#106

Post by Spooky23 »

kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

TMobile is great until it isn't. I had them for years with a $19.99/4ever plan grandfathered from Omnipoint many years ago.

Unfortunately for you, that means that you can't make a phone call 30 miles from your city center (or in remote locations like Brooklyn, NY or the state of Maine) , or in the back of your home, or 1000 ft from the interstate, etc.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#107

Post by xur17 »

eropple wrote: post #80
nivla wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, din't know it was uncommon. Could they be targeting certain areas, maybe the ones with high data usage? It happened to me when I moved to NYC and found myself stuck in an apt with no internet for the first few days.

I had the same thing happen when I moved, after I racked up around 800MB of data on my tethering (easier than you think). I didn't get a text, but I'd get redirected to an "upgrade now!" page. I spoofed my user agent on my laptop for the next couple days (because, shit, I'm paying for it, I'm going to use it), and had to do the same when I tethered for about a month or it'd redirect me. Since then, nothing.

I've noticed that it redirects when I use a largish amount of data (100mb?) with a desktop useragent. It redirects me to the "upgrade now" page for the rest of the month.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#108

Post by czhiddy »

interpol_p wrote: post #99
sneak wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame here lies squarely with Apple for allowing the carriers to pull this sort of bullshit with their customers. They're the ones who implemented this whole carrier profile mess on their platform. They could take a lesson from Tron.

I'm sure if Apple didn't agree to those terms they wouldn't be selling the iPhone at all. They probably had to fight pretty hard just to avoid carrier branding on their phones. Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?

> Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?

Studies have shown that iPhone user use far more data on average than Android users. Carriers would naturally throttle iOS devices first.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#109

Post by dylz »

dangrossman wrote: post #92
anonymoushn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't actually tried using the opt-out, but I did think it was impossible for it to work as described. I tried it just now, and it just replaces the ads with a 404. So it would be more correct to say "There is no opt-out for the DNS hijacking."

Sure there's an opt-out -- don't use their DNS servers. Throw Google's or OpenDNS's into your device's settings.

All port 53/80 traffic is proxied through Harmony anyways...

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#110

Post by anonymoushn »

30thElement wrote: post #94
TylerE wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, how exactly do you propose they store such a user preference? And keep in mind cellphones don't have stable IPs.

Unless you're telling me the text message, minutes, and data usage numbers on my bill are all made up, I'm pretty sure the carriers have a way to track whose phone belongs to who. Or, if they can't provide a working opt-out, it should be opt-in only (using the cookie).

It can't really be opt-in using the cookie, as nobody should be touching any cookies in the process of a DNS lookup. Otherwise I agree completely; the carrier obviously knows that this is my phone or they couldn't tell me how much data I'm using.
Post reply on HN