Category: Phones

Phone Fun IV: A New hope.

Posted on by Forge77

In our last episode of phone fun I had got an HTC TOUCH , Well…… That didn’t work out so well. Exactly 360 or so days the HTC touch Starting having issues with the screen and Calls.  Now, from trials and tribulations with sprint I learned the last thing you want to do is call *2 on your phone.  Doing that is like crank calling the deathstar while its in orbit around your planet.  Sprint Over the phone support basically told me I had to buy a new phone. Which I don’t have money I can magically pull out of my ass.   So I did the next best thing, I headed down to a sprint corporate store.  Since I pay my phone bill locally by walking into these stores I figured I’d get a better idea of what to do. After a short talk they sent us down to Boxboro Massachusetts.  They have a repair depot up that way, anyways  after a 30minute drive and a 30 minute wait they told me the phone was shot(radio was damaged).  After a short wait they sent me on the way with another HTC Touch(#2), After getting that home with-in a few hours the audio on that phone sounded like a cat barfing in your ear.   Called *2 and sprint offered to send out yet another HTC touch(#3). They shipped it overnight which was very nice and it arrived on monday.

I had that phone no more than 48hours when the phone would just lock and gave a screen of death, Now I am fairly careful with phones and use screen protectors and such. After wasting 3 of them I was not exactly happy.  That Phone went back to sprint. To make a long story short, I’ve gone through alot of HTC touches and as Far as my last post about this phone in 2008 . How does the phone rate up?

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Well… After a year with one phone and 1 to 2 months on 4 others.

1 The phone defiantly passes on. For a refurbished HTC-Touch that is debatable.

2. Again you can’t knock the touch on this, its extremely configurable once you figure out the interface.

3. battery life… That is actually pretty good.  Although using the GPS Or other intensive options I would recommend a car-charger.

4. You can make ringtones till you puke with this thing rather than jumping through hoops trying to convert soundfiles into strange formats.

5. As Far as applications go, you can find most of the common apps you need on the phone although I’d recommend downloading Google maps. With enough looking you can find pretty much any app you want for the phone but, this is where i’d give the Iphone or palm pre a small advantage with an “app store” for centralized buying of applications although the Iphone is more like Locked into the app store which I believe you can not install any 3rd party apps w/o jailbreaking the phone.

6. Lastly durability I seriously question, as the phone did make it One year. as Far as the refurbished HTC-Touches.. Those sucked ass.. there’s not enough swears in the English language to say what shit the HTC Touch Refurbs are. I may of run into a bad line of them but that is hard to believe that i’d of gone through that many phones.

as far as my current phone, Sprint has offered me a HTC Diamond,  Again i leave this post open till the next time I come back to phones.

As far as sprint is concerned – It seems they are OK as far as support as long as you get the right person.

Phone fun III: there is No spoon edition…

Posted on by Forge77

After all the fun with the two Samsung phones that had battery life shorter than a 1meter marathon and several billion calls to sprint, to which they were very helpful about my problems and have been overall very good to me.  The problem I Have is due to where i bought the phone .. radio shack it makes dealing with sprint a little bit crazy, Since the phone was purchased at radioshack sprint doesnt deal with the phone  till its 30 days old, and as far as choice of phones at radioshack your fairly limited to what you can pick unless you know what your doing.  Also dealing with sprint because of having previously swapped my phone, which the last call to sprint helped me the greatest in not getting stuck with a phone that was like trying to power your house with a AA battery.

At Radioshack you will spend a little less to ALOT less on the phone, but as I said before its very slim pickings, they will generally have 5 or so phones to choose from in a store. After dealing with the 2 samsungs , I decided to take a more detailed online search for phones. Looking at the radioshack website shows alot more phones than are instore, but if you look carefully it doesn’t have the little warning of “you have to online only sucker.”

But, I did notice something, Different radioshacks Stock different items. So i went around to a few different radioshacks, and the radioshack closest to me which is at a mall thats not a mall anymore, its what malls look like when they die, there was a phone that caught my interest. The HTC touch , compairing it feature-wise to the M520 they were very alike in features, the only thing missing was the GPS feature (so I thought). I had also looked at the samsung instinct, but the killing factor to that phone was the fact i’d have to change my plan massively in order to get it and paying 25$ more a month for the same features i get now doesnt really float my boat. I did not want a crackberry because the stupid services you have to get.   For me to get an instinct I’d have to get an “everything” plan, which is already close to what i have now, I have data , text and unlimited data for 45$ a month. the cheapest “Everything plan sprint has is 69$ a month….. Do not want… Anyways.

I Wondered if this would be a nightmare returning the phone because I was told you are allowed only so many swaps, So I made sure and called up sprint customer service (*2 on sprint phones) and explained my plight, To which I got a very understanding person on the phone and they put me on hold a bit and than sent me to there hardware tech support, I explained my very issue with the phone and told them where i purchased the phone and they said that it was “ok to bring the phone back to the retail store and they would mark the information in the computer so i’d have no problems returning the phone”. I brought the phone to the first radioshack and explained what i was told and that i had seen a phone in a different radioshack that had my interest.

The HTC touch is an interesting phone,

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

It Definanatly meets #1 , as far as numbers 2,4,5,6 it seems to exceed that greatly, Number 3 though will be the test, i’ve only owned the phone for 3 days. but, a sign of hope was when i got the phone i never charged the battery and it lasted 3 days.  As far as the learning curve on the phone, which logic wise you’d think it would be just something you could just pick up the phone and use. with the HTC touch there are 2 buttons and an omnidirecitonal button, if you make a call you need to pay attention to the touch screen at first because if you just assume where buttons are you are going to end up making a mistake. About the GPS with the phone, the phone at it default settings from the store does not have a GPS, but if you update your phone with the most current ROM file from HTC You will have GPS enabled minding this is sprint only. software installation is fairly simple and does not take alot of time, phone updates are also fairly easy with one drawback, if you update and dont have anything to backup your phone numbers be prepaired to write down all the numbers on your phone or you will loose them.  the touch interface is intuitive , but sometimes it gets in the way. as far as tweaking the phone there are many many things you can do to the phone due to the fact its windows mobile 6.1. I think another few weeks with this phone should tell the tale of this phone..

Phone fun Revisited, A month and a half with Sprint and another phone (Samsung SPH-M520)

Posted on by Forge77

Now that i’ve had some time with This plan and Sadly enough i’ve gone through a few phones , I figure I’d update a little bit. The katana lx is no more, the phone had issues that drove me nuts (no ability to mess with the phone at all).

About a week after my post i had given up all hope on the katana, Its a nice phone for someone who just wants a phone.. but if you like tinkering the katana is no mans land. So I headed back to the store i purchased the phone and stepped up a bit on the phone. I ended up getting the Samsung M520 ,

As far as the M520 was It is a good phone with one glaring problem. The battery.. Now i dont know if i ended up getting a crap phone or just the phones battery lasts for a time shorter than it takes to sneeze.

From the time of my last post and my expectations of a phone have changed a little bit due to changes in my phone plan and experiences I’ve personally had, before it was

basic requirements for a phone.

  1. to make calls
  2. that the phone is somewhat configurable
  3. can add/make own ringtones.
  4. Durable

Since i’m on a contracted phone plan now I have moved my expectations a bit higher since its something I will have for as long as the contract lasts, which the revised list is.

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

The Samsung M520 Meets 1,2,4 and 6 without a problem and 5 conditionally , but the glaring problem was number 3, battery life. the first week with the phone seemed ok, but after each night the phone would be maybe 1/3rd dead, As time progressed it seemed like the phone would not last more than 3 days on a charge with the light usage.  On my trip to California the 520’s weaknesses showed badly, but as a premptive thought i had purchased a second battery for the 520 which ended up saving the day. reason being is all that day I had been calling people when I touched down in each airport and just using the phone to keep in contact with people to keep them up to date, fairly light usage overall. When I got off the plane in San Jose in the airport i turned on the phone and It instantly died just saying “Recharge battery”. No when i had left chicago I was fairly sure i powered down my phone. but, without a phone and meeting friends for the first time in person, it can be a troublesome thing if you have no way to communicate with them. Thankfully the second battery came into play and I was able to make a call.  All that week i found myself having to recharge the phone whenever i could which to me is totally annoying. When i had left San Jose to go home I had the phone on the charger till the second I left California, When I had got back to Rhode island the phone pulled just about the same thing which was the final straw for the m520.

Figuring that it may of just been a fluke i tried a second M520 and to no avail the battery seemed just not to favor me, Either the store i had got the phone from had a shitty shipment of that phone or otherwise. but, there’s No way I’d go for another M520.

As far as the Phone goes the battery is the deal killer on it , I don’t want a phone that needs to be hooked up to a power outlet every night. but as far as Feature the phone was inline with everything i wanted with a phone with exception to battery life.

Phone Fun .. Katana LX mini-review

Posted on by Forge77

I was on a Pay as you go plan for AT&T and it worked out well if you made next to no calls. but then again there were times you were forced to make calls. That got expensive quick, the silly rounding rules for minutes killed off money faster than anything. After signing up to sprint on there low plan  29.99 for 200 minutes.

The Katana lx is decent looking phone but looks do not make up for its problems. the problem maybe more from my point of view, but moreso they tend to be things I look for in a phone and i have basic requirements for a phone.

1. to make calls
2. that the phone is somewhat configurable
3. can add/make own ringtones.
4. Durable

well the phone right out of the box passes only on #1 and #4. I had started with a bluetooth connector the phone connected right up but after that the phone really as far as accessing data and such was worthless, the best that could be done is a tether if you had a DataPlan.

Another issue i have with sprint is the fact that the phones dont use Sim cards which makes programing your phonebook a pain in the ass and you look like an ass doing it with 2 phones in hand. As Far as a Dead basic phone the Katana LX is just that.

After the bluetooth try i figured maybe the USB Cable would be more fruitful in getting the phone to be somewhat responsive , I was wrong, as Far as drivers from Sanyo – Good luck with that. It took me two days of looking and when i finally did get it working , the phone did Even less than when connected to bluetooth.

But for being a basic phone it does have its pluses , You can hear it ring from jupiter on its loudest setting.  The T9 texting was decent..  but overall it was not what I would personally want in a phone.

So after talking to the rep at the sprint store I ended up returning the Katana after a good weeks use and learning its up and downs.

The phone would be good for someone who just wants to have a phone with not many bells and whistles.