The only site I'll ever need...

[Slaky]

Does anyone like their cell phone provider?

No.  Everyone just likes to complain.  I hear a lot of complaints about Sprint, but I have it and it works fine.  I probably drop one call a month.  And you know what I do?  Call the person back and resume my conversation. 

Since you're a statfag, you'll be happy to know that when I had Nextel/Sprint they were dropping nearly 23% of my calls (they looked it up and admitted that it was absurdly high).  I think I had good standing to complain.

But that's a .670 full call percentage. That's good for at least top 5 in the league.

[Shooter]

Does anyone like their cell phone provider?

No.  Everyone just likes to complain.  I hear a lot of complaints about Sprint, but I have it and it works fine.  I probably drop one call a month.  And you know what I do?  Call the person back and resume my conversation. 

Since you're a statfag, you'll be happy to know that when I had Nextel/Sprint they were dropping nearly 23% of my calls (they looked it up and admitted that it was absurdly high).  I think I had good standing to complain.

But that's a .670 full call percentage. That's good for at least top 5 in the league.

The math shows you are clearly not a stat fehg.

[Saul Goodman]

Does anyone like their cell phone provider?

No.  Everyone just likes to complain.  I hear a lot of complaints about Sprint, but I have it and it works fine.  I probably drop one call a month.  And you know what I do?  Call the person back and resume my conversation.

Exactly. Maybe it's because I don't do any fancypants 3Ging or Showtime viewing, but I have the dueling Satans of an AT&T cell phone and Comcast cable and I really don't have a beef with either one.

These lousy complainers should take a moment and be thankful they're not a braless dildo that just got queefed on.

I call comcast every 3 months to bitch because they'll keep my rate the same instead of jacking up the price... it's well worth the discount. Even better that now i can do it via an online chat.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[JD]

Does anyone like their cell phone provider?

No.  Everyone just likes to complain.  I hear a lot of complaints about Sprint, but I have it and it works fine.  I probably drop one call a month.  And you know what I do?  Call the person back and resume my conversation. 

Since you're a statfag, you'll be happy to know that when I had Nextel/Sprint they were dropping nearly 23% of my calls (they looked it up and admitted that it was absurdly high).  I think I had good standing to complain.

But that's a .670 full call percentage. That's good for at least top 5 in the league.

I agree.  It's absurdly high.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

If I'm not mistaken, this has become our default technology thread.  Is anyone thinking of getting the newest Google phone?  It's getting pretty positive early impressions so far, and it is available on Verizon, which supposedly has a much more reliable 3G network than AT&T.  Plus, they're supposedly starting their own iTunes rival.

Feature lists and gadget blog hands-ons are great and all, but I'd suggest waiting to get excited about the Droid until it's actually been put through the real world paces.

We've seen this before. The LG Voyager (IIRC, the Original iPhone Killer) was never more than a superficial attempt to clone the iPhone's interface, without its usability.

The Blackberry Storm intrigued me, but turned out to be a total flop.

For a while, it was looking like the Palm Pre was finally a legitimately worthy consumer-grade adversary to the Jesus Phone. But apparently depending on it in real life showed even the Pre to be disappointing.

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

I guess Google is a wee bit pissed about Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app.

They're either doing this because they're super POed about that or because they run a rival business, primarily thanks to a rival mobile platform they've been developing for two years.

BTW... Regardless of what you decide in re: the Droid, do take a look whose pockets its sales will apparently be lining....

http://www.droiddoes.com/

DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.

[Pre]

showed even the Pre to be disappointing

I thought that link was going to be something about my softball stats this year.

I loved T-Mobile while I had them.  I've got a Verizon plan for some reason because all me
and my wife's family are on it and she seems to actually want to talk to them.  Verizon seems
meh, but no major complaints.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

showed even the Pre to be disappointing

I thought that link was going to be something about my softball stats this year.

I loved T-Mobile while I had them.  I've got a Verizon plan for some reason because all me
and my wife's family are on it and she seems to actually want to talk to them.  Verizon seems
meh, but no major complaints.

I've had T-Mobile phone service for years and haven't really had any issues in Chicago. But I've never had a data plan with them. They only started to roll out their 3G network a year and a half ago, so their 3G coverage nationwide must be pathetic. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if data service is actually really good around here.

[BH]

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

4G is coming out soon enough (ATT is testing it now), which should help. Interesting that Apple's first choice of providers was Verizon, but they said no.
So Apple then went with ATT. I'd have to think you could buy a used iphone somewhere and unlock it, so you can use it on other 3G networks (tmobile here.

With all my complaining about ATT, I will be admit that the iphone is the coolest gadget I've ever bought. The reliability (of the phone itself), the usability, new features, genius list, pandora app, mlb app, etc all make it incredible. And the web browser on it is the closest to using a laptop that I've ever seen on a phone. Also cool is that I have the first 3G version, but I get enough new features through software rollouts that I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade the phone, it was that good to begin with. At the end of my 2 year contract, I'll buy another one.

[Kermit, B.]

If I'm not mistaken, this has become our default technology thread.  Is anyone thinking of getting the newest Google phone?  It's getting pretty positive early impressions so far, and it is available on Verizon, which supposedly has a much more reliable 3G network than AT&T.  Plus, they're supposedly starting their own iTunes rival.

Feature lists and gadget blog hands-ons are great and all, but I'd suggest waiting to get excited about the Droid until it's actually been put through the real world paces.

We've seen this before. The LG Voyager (IIRC, the Original iPhone Killer) was never more than a superficial attempt to clone the iPhone's interface, without its usability.

The Blackberry Storm intrigued me, but turned out to be a total flop.

For a while, it was looking like the Palm Pre was finally a legitimately worthy consumer-grade adversary to the Jesus Phone. But apparently depending on it in real life showed even the Pre to be disappointing.

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

I guess Google is a wee bit pissed about Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app.

They're either doing this because they're super POed about that or because they run a rival business, primarily thanks to a rival mobile platform they've been developing for two years.

BTW... Regardless of what you decide in re: the Droid, do take a look whose pockets its sales will apparently be lining....

http://www.droiddoes.com/

DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.

That's okay.  To even out the cosmos, I'll just take a dump in a box and mail it to the Skywalker Ranch.

I totally understand not to get caught up in the "iPhone killer" hype, but one of my buddies has a last-gen Google phone, and it's pretty awesome.  They're saying this one is a major improvement over that one, so I'm pretty well sold.  Plus, I'm eligible for the phone discount at Verizon, so it's good timing for me.  Plus, I just flat-out love Google.

[thehawk]

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

4G is coming out soon enough (ATT is testing it now), which should help. Interesting that Apple's first choice of providers was Verizon, but they said no.
So Apple then went with ATT. I'd have to think you could buy a used iphone somewhere and unlock it, so you can use it on other 3G networks (tmobile here.

With all my complaining about ATT, I will be admit that the iphone is the coolest gadget I've ever bought. The reliability (of the phone itself), the usability, new features, genius list, pandora app, mlb app, etc all make it incredible. And the web browser on it is the closest to using a laptop that I've ever seen on a phone. Also cool is that I have the first 3G version, but I get enough new features through software rollouts that I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade the phone, it was that good to begin with. At the end of my 2 year contract, I'll buy another one.

The irony is that the iPhones goodness is leading to AT+Ts badness.  The apps are so good and easy to use that iPhone users use about (iirc) 4 times more data than other smartphone users.  Then take into account that 75% of all of AT+Ts smartphone sales are iPhones and what happens is that when a cluster of iPhone users get together (for example, Chicago, or even worse ,Wrigley) they effectively take down the entire system.  I had that experience at the air and water show with my wife's iPhone, network made it unusable.  So the likely problem is that if Verizon gets the iPhone (or for that matter if the Pre or Droid or whatever becomes good enough to get a lot of people to use it like an iPhone) their system will likely suffer as well

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

4G is coming out soon enough (ATT is testing it now), which should help. Interesting that Apple's first choice of providers was Verizon, but they said no.
So Apple then went with ATT. I'd have to think you could buy a used iphone somewhere and unlock it, so you can use it on other 3G networks (tmobile here.

With all my complaining about ATT, I will be admit that the iphone is the coolest gadget I've ever bought. The reliability (of the phone itself), the usability, new features, genius list, pandora app, mlb app, etc all make it incredible. And the web browser on it is the closest to using a laptop that I've ever seen on a phone. Also cool is that I have the first 3G version, but I get enough new features through software rollouts that I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade the phone, it was that good to begin with. At the end of my 2 year contract, I'll buy another one.

The irony is that the iPhones goodness is leading to AT+Ts badness.  The apps are so good and easy to use that iPhone users use about (iirc) 4 times more data than other smartphone users.  Then take into account that 75% of all of AT+Ts smartphone sales are iPhones and what happens is that when a cluster of iPhone users get together (for example, Chicago, or even worse ,Wrigley) they effectively take down the entire system.  I had that experience at the air and water show with my wife's iPhone, network made it unusable.  So the likely problem is that if Verizon gets the iPhone (or for that matter if the Pre or Droid or whatever becomes good enough to get a lot of people to use it like an iPhone) their system will likely suffer as well

This is probably a big part of why they still haven't enabled iPhone tethering in the States.

Because they know people will use it.

And, yeah, the iPhone would probably tax pretty much any network it's on. I'd be curious, though, what effect opening it up to several carriers would have. (Not that that's necessarily in the cards.)

[Brownie]

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

4G is coming out soon enough (ATT is testing it now), which should help. Interesting that Apple's first choice of providers was Verizon, but they said no.
So Apple then went with ATT. I'd have to think you could buy a used iphone somewhere and unlock it, so you can use it on other 3G networks (tmobile here.

With all my complaining about ATT, I will be admit that the iphone is the coolest gadget I've ever bought. The reliability (of the phone itself), the usability, new features, genius list, pandora app, mlb app, etc all make it incredible. And the web browser on it is the closest to using a laptop that I've ever seen on a phone. Also cool is that I have the first 3G version, but I get enough new features through software rollouts that I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade the phone, it was that good to begin with. At the end of my 2 year contract, I'll buy another one.

The irony is that the iPhones goodness is leading to AT+Ts badness.  The apps are so good and easy to use that iPhone users use about (iirc) 4 times more data than other smartphone users.  Then take into account that 75% of all of AT+Ts smartphone sales are iPhones and what happens is that when a cluster of iPhone users get together (for example, Chicago, or even worse ,Wrigley) they effectively take down the entire system.  I had that experience at the air and water show with my wife's iPhone, network made it unusable.  So the likely problem is that if Verizon gets the iPhone (or for that matter if the Pre or Droid or whatever becomes good enough to get a lot of people to use it like an iPhone) their system will likely suffer as well

This is probably a big part of why they still haven't enabled iPhone tethering in the States.

Because they know people will use it.

And, yeah, the iPhone would probably tax pretty much any network it's on. I'd be curious, though, what effect opening it up to several carriers would have. (Not that that's necessarily in the cards.)

I think the infrastructure is catching up, particularly because of the wifi technology and the advent of wi-max. I wonder if Apple nixed the google phone application because it might be looking for its own paid app that supplements cellular service. In other words, if wimax is widely available and has the capacity, why not ignore the cellular networks and just use your cellphone for VOIP?

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I still think my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been holding off jumping to it, though, in the hopes that Apple would decide not re-up the exclusive contract with AT&T at year's end and make a deal to jump to Verizon's better network. Seems pretty clear now that that's not gonna happen.

4G is coming out soon enough (ATT is testing it now), which should help. Interesting that Apple's first choice of providers was Verizon, but they said no.
So Apple then went with ATT. I'd have to think you could buy a used iphone somewhere and unlock it, so you can use it on other 3G networks (tmobile here.

With all my complaining about ATT, I will be admit that the iphone is the coolest gadget I've ever bought. The reliability (of the phone itself), the usability, new features, genius list, pandora app, mlb app, etc all make it incredible. And the web browser on it is the closest to using a laptop that I've ever seen on a phone. Also cool is that I have the first 3G version, but I get enough new features through software rollouts that I don't feel the need to constantly upgrade the phone, it was that good to begin with. At the end of my 2 year contract, I'll buy another one.

The irony is that the iPhones goodness is leading to AT+Ts badness.  The apps are so good and easy to use that iPhone users use about (iirc) 4 times more data than other smartphone users.  Then take into account that 75% of all of AT+Ts smartphone sales are iPhones and what happens is that when a cluster of iPhone users get together (for example, Chicago, or even worse ,Wrigley) they effectively take down the entire system.  I had that experience at the air and water show with my wife's iPhone, network made it unusable.  So the likely problem is that if Verizon gets the iPhone (or for that matter if the Pre or Droid or whatever becomes good enough to get a lot of people to use it like an iPhone) their system will likely suffer as well

This is probably a big part of why they still haven't enabled iPhone tethering in the States.

Because they know people will use it.

And, yeah, the iPhone would probably tax pretty much any network it's on. I'd be curious, though, what effect opening it up to several carriers would have. (Not that that's necessarily in the cards.)

I think the infrastructure is catching up, particularly because of the wifi technology and the advent of wi-max. I wonder if Apple nixed the google phone application because it might be looking for its own paid app that supplements cellular service. In other words, if wimax is widely available and has the capacity, why not ignore the cellular networks and just use your cellphone for VOIP?

There are already third-party VOIP apps on the iPhone that Apple hasn't rejected (or simply "not approved," as in the case of Google Voice).

And AT&T recently even reversed course to allow their use over its network (instead of just wifi).

[Jon]

VOIP? What kind of StatPhonePhaggotry is this?

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Video of the Droid in action...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/28/motorola-droid-first-hands-on/