On Sun, 2008-03-23 at 00:50 -0700, Lowell Higley wrote: > I bought a tri-band phone while I lived in Europe. It is > 900Mhz/1900Mhz. I had no problems with it on T-Mobile's USA network > while I was their customer. I tend to buy my phones is Asia or Europe > because they are unlocked and usually not crippled. T-Mobile in > particular likes to artificially limit their phones. For example, > they will limit SMS messages to say 30 characters when that is not the > technological limit. My theory is they do this to increase the number > text messages sent so they can get you to buy a more expensive SMS > plan or charge you the 10 cents per message overage charge.
Sounds like you got a raw deal. I'd have quit too if my T-mobile experience was like that. I've been a T-mobile customer since they were VoiceStream and I've had no problems. I stopped buying phones from T-Mo directly many years ago (Back when consumer phones were switching from B/W to color) and instead I have bought my last couple of phones from eBay, unlocked. I've had no problems using them with my SIM card. T-Mo's website "doesn't recognize" my phone when I login, but I know a compatible model (Same OS, same QWERTY keyboard) so I override it and everything mostly works for me (Some of their T-Zones website features don't seem to want to work, but I stopped caring about those when I found free equivalents online). I'm anxious to try GPRS on a FreeRunner. I hope the "2.5G" will be faster and more capable than the radio that's in my current phone. I've never seen T-mo artificially limit phones; not like I've seen Verizon do it. All my texts have been sent as 160-chars-per and my phone automatically reassembles the ones that get split, so any 30-char limit isn't a "feature" of the network. I haven't actually had to call T-mo customer service in several years. I get signal pretty much everywhere I want it and where I don't, there's generally a localized reason that everyone else is subject to. -KW _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community