Sorry...I'm not dead...

Sorry aout the long silence. I should actually be working on a composition paper right now for school...due today...but I might as well announce that I am still alive and well, despite the fact that this blog hasn't been updated in several days. Trust me, I will get the Nokia 6061 review up here. Just not quite yet...maybe tonight...

Worthwhile comment...

I just wrote a comment on the Pocket\Kyocera\etc. post. It's a tad personal, but I'd say take a look at it. Thanks to everyone for making this site what it is!

How to get the 3280...

Want theLG 3280? Just put in zip 78624 for Tracfone's online store. The 3280 will come up. You can activate it wherever, but that zip will let you have it...

Hope this helps...the 6061 review won't be out tonight...sorry...but it will be out soon...as will a review for the Audiovox 8910 I now have on Pocket...

Airtime, Pocket and K132...and My 16th Birthday is Tomorrow!

First off, because I've been signed on with some huge distributors, I'm not selling Tracfone airtime here anymore, at least for the forseeable future. However, all I did was go to Tracfone's website and bought their free-phone-with-airtime-card deals, so someone else can pick up there and I'll be glad to link to them.

Second, I just got Pocket (www.pocket.com) unlimited cellular service last night. Sort of a birthday present. But anyway they seem okay, other than the fact that SMS shortcodes don't work, and the fact that the Kyocera K132 is a lousy phone.

Which brings me to a quick mini-review of the Kyocera K132 Shadow, somewhat akin to the Kyocera KX9d (Oystr) except with better styling and a worse UI...

Firswt off, the phone looks nice. That's about its only claim to fame, but its angular, relatively thin design and dark blue soft-touch finish is clessy. The annoying thing though is there isn't even a status light on the outside, just the speakerphone grille, which incidentally is passable in quality and loudness.

When you open up the phone, it's not quite as pretty, but it still looks okay. Until you turn it on. At which point the smallish screen is white for a few second, then slowly boots up to a home screen that reminds me of something out of 2004 or maybe a little earlier. In other words, Kyocera's UI on this phone defines "backward".

Yet so does the UI's speed, which is odd considering that there aren't many shiny graphics to push around. On top of this, the phone has two types of ringtones: ones you can use and ones you can't for no apparent reason. Wierd.

What about call quality? Well, it's okay enough if you're in an area that has very good signal. But when you *should* have okay signal, it's a toss-up whether the phone will break up or not. Yay internal antennas...I really think the phone can be blamed for bad reception at my house rather than the network.

As to battery life, I don't really know, as I've only had the phone for about 18 hours. It seems to hold a charge fairly well, but I can't really tell as I haven't had enough time to tell whether it'll work for long periods of time or not.

But I'm not going to keep it. It's just not the kind of phone that I want to use to do all of my talking on, which it's supposed to be since it's on an unlimited plan. Heck, uts angularness makes it slightly uncomfortable to hold. Ah well...

Turning to something else, my birthday is tomorrow! My sixteenth birthday, that is. I hope I have a good one! I should have the review of the Nokia 061 up either today or tomorrow...see everyone then!

Good Vibes: Nokia 2366i

I thought I mentioned this... but anyway the Nokia 2366i has a vibration function that is quite good. Unless you have loose clothing, but hey, all phones have that problem. But yeah, vibraation of this phone is nice and strong.

Coming Soon: Nokia 6061 Review

Courtesy BabbleBug, I just got a Cingular (GoPhone) Nokia 6061 in the mail today to review. I'll post in a few days about my experiences with the phone...

What's In Store\What's Happening

You may be wondering what I'm doing, seeing as how I haven't posted in a few days. Not that there's really anything to post about, other than Tracfone's refer-a-friend system being down again.

But anyway, probably the next big thing I'll post up here will be a review of the Nokia 6061 (thanks BabbleBug!) and PagePlus service on the Nokia 2366i (thanks BabbleBug) if I can ever get the ESN rightly assigned to PagePlus instead of INPulse on that phone.

Just letting everyone know that I'm alive and well...didn't post yesterday or the day before because I was ordering an unreal number of Tracfones :)

iPhone, Obopay, ESN Minutes and Phone Reviews!

First off, the biggest news but the smallest impact to here: the iPhone is out. And it's called the iPhone. And despite its being on the junktackylar Cingular network I'm gonna get it around the time it comes out. A sort of present to myself for when I go to college, I'm thinking. Then again, it might not be all it's cracked up to be and I'll pass it by. But anyway that thing's one heckuva phone, with one heckuva price tag...but then again you get a lot of stuff with it. But I won't dwell on this phone, since you can only get it with a contract and probably have to pay $70+ a month for the regular service and a data plan etc. Which ain't prepaid in the least. So now i'm kindof waiting for a cheapie iPhone knockoff (2.5" widescreen instead of 3.5", thicker, only 1GB of flash memory, only 1.3MP camera) on prepaid. lol...

Now for the second thing, which has less to do with super hot breaking news but more to do with this site...

I was surfing HowardForums.com (something I do fairly regularly) and came acros a banner ad for this wierd little thing called Obopay (www.obopay.com). Basically it's a money account, a la PayPal, that you can use with your cell phone, either via SMS shortcodes, WAP or if you're using Cingular, Amp'd or Helio, via a program on your phone. Adding money to your account is free for now, as is taking money out of your account, either via bank transfer or by using the supplied Obopay prepaid MasterCard (yay, a reloadable card that is actually inexpensive to use!). The only thing that really costs is sending money from one Obopay user (which can be anyone with a cell phone...maybe...need to check about shortbodes) to another user, which is only 10 cents per transaction so it's not that bad.

But wait, it gets even better! If you sign up right now you get a $5 bonus, so basically your first 50 money sends are free. Nifty. But don't sign up yet, because I have an even better deal for you. If you (or I in this case) refer someone else to Obopay, the referer also gets $5. So I'm willing to make a deal: whoever signs up for Obopay through me (just email me and I'll send you an invitation) will get $2.50 off the next airtime purchase from me. Yeah, it's not $5, but hey, it's a fair amount. I could even send you the $2.50 via Obopay if you wanted...

Though I haven't signed up yet...if someone already has Obopay here I'll happy to be your referred-person. But anyway I should be able to sign up later on today...

OK, now to the next thing...

Due to a really good deal I'm working out with a huge airtime seller that's buying my airtime, I'm not going to be selling 60-minute cards here anymore. However, it seems like Tracfone's refer-a-friend program is back up again, so I'm substituting ESN minutes for 60-minute cards, at the same price! Plus you have the Obopay discount...

But anyway I'm not sure whether refer-a-friend will work correctly, so just send me your ESN and be prepared to pay for minutes if you want them. If they go through I'll ask for payment. If they don't I naturally won't.

One last thing: don't get too excited about having ESN minutes right now, as it will be about a week before I get phones in and setart doing this. But in the mean time get ready, because if this works correctly things are getting cheaper on the Tracfone front :). When I get the phones in I'll update the minutes store page to reflect that...

OK, last but not least...

The phone review section is up!

Go to the Go4Prepaid landing (www.go4prepaid.info) and you'll find that the Phone Reviews section no longer says "Coming Soon". You can now peruse the fifteen-some-odd reviews I have there of various phones and services. Hope everyone likes them! It took me a couple hourse to set up this part of the site and I hope it's worth it to everyone here...

Why My Parents Use Tracfone

Why don't my parents use PagePlus or U Prepaid?

1. Neither have local nuimbers, and U Prepaid doesn't have local service, in my area. We're on an el cheapo landline so we need local numbers. And you can't port into PagePlus. On U Prepaid they'd have to double-dial, which they'd be hard-pressed to do.

2. Trac on VZW coverage is much better, in terms of cheap roaming, than PagePlus.In our area VZW isn't all that strong, so there might be some roaming neede every once in awhile, and nobody wants to pay a ton for roaming.

3. Due to my knowing how to work Tracfone's service, my mom and dad get cheap minutes on Tracfone. Or they can easily get them...it's their choice and PagePlus is neither ultra-cheap nor easy to get, comparatively.

4. PagePlus had no attractive phones until the Nokia 2366i. The Nokia 2126 is a great phone. 'nuff said.

Review: UTStarComm CDM7000 and Movida Unlimited Service

Here's the phone review that catches me up to what I said I'd do awhile ago...now to put all these reviews into a dedicated reviews section on the site...ah well...but anyway...

First I'll start with a review of Movida's Unlimited service. As everyone probably knows already, Movida runs off of Sprint PCS and doesn't have the hottest rates in town for its normal plans, but has an interesting twist to the "hybrid" plans that nobody else that I know of as far as Sprint hybrids go is doing: rollover minutes.

Okay, that's not such a huge deal but when everyone else isn't doing it the fact that Movida is sets it apart from the crowd. So basically as long was you keep your expiration up to date, which costs at least $30 a month and includes unlimited nights and weekends starting at 9, you can use that $30 on 25-cent anytime minutes or 10-cent text messages whenever you want. Which is sorta neat. As an added bonus, if you spend $50 a month the rate drops to 20 cents a minute. Of course, that's still not a great rate, but they're pretty much giving you the UTStarComm 7000\7025 (I'm reviewing the 7000 hrere, the 7025 is similar but I'll talk about it soon) with a month of service so things aren't quite so bad.

But I have a few nits to pick about the service, whose phones come preprogrammed to "habla Espanol" (which is fine; I could change the language setting relatively easily). First off, it's a bit expensive for what you get minute-wise, but then again it seems like all Sprint-based hybrids are that way. Second, all shortcode SMS doesn't work on Movida...no Facebook texts for me :(. Third, free weekends are nice but I honestly don't talk to anyone much after 9 p.m. on the phone and don't particularly want to have to change my calling habits to get enough out of the service to justify the extra cost of this feature. Then again, some people do all of their talking after 9 p.m. but I simply don't do much talking at any part of the day, and most of the time it is during the day. Last, customer service takes a long time to come online, or at least they did when I activated the phone about a month ago...which is of course annoying...

Okay, that was the service. Now to the phone...

Which was surprisingly good for how people had reviewed it over on PhoneScoop. Signal-wise I have no complaints, though I was surprised when I idly unscrewed the antenna and it could suddenly be lifted out of its socket...guess that's just for the capability of having bigger antennas...

But reception, as said, was good. Battery life wasn't as good, averaging to my reckoning about three days of light usage on a charge, but the battery life isn't horrible either. Though I can't figure out why the life is so low when the phone doesn't have an external screen...maybe it's the flashing UTSTarComm logo on the front...

Inside the phone, you find something that reminds you of gram'ma: a pixelated, small screen with a user interface that isn't so hot. But you also find a fairly large keypad that's abundant in tactile feedback, good for text messaging despite the fact that the screen is small resolution-wise and size-wise.

The phone isn't particularly beautiful (like the Nokia 2366i for example) but it isn't horribly ugly either. It's also on the thin side...sort of...and has a loud speakerphone, though the handset volume without the speakerphone isn't so loud...yeah I'm being random here but I'm just talking about odds and ends...

And of course you get polyphonic ringtones, as well as hybrid polyphonic\PureVoice (lo-fi real audio) ringers, plus if I remember correctly a PureVoice-only ringer or two. Which is interesting, but that's about it.

And that pretty much sums up the phone and service. Both work, both are cheap to start out with through prepaidWireless.com, who lent me this phone for review, but neither have any particularly noteworthy features that render them a "must buy" combo.

MEID What?

When I mentioned that the Nokia 2366i uses an MEID, I was met with a resounding "Huh?". So here's some clarification, as I head to bed, without the UTStarComm CDM7000\Movida Unlimited review completed (will probably do tomorrow morning).

Basically, an MEID (Mobile Equipment Identifier) is an ESN (Electronic Serial Number) for CDMA phones (Verizon and Sprint, plus every good unlimited carrier in the U.S. out there), except better. Well, longer...which means that we aren't going to run out of them like we would run out of ESNs. Also, an MEID is the same length as an IMEI (the GSM answer to the ESN countdown problem) so you can easily have dual-model CDMA\GSM phones. Niiiice.

If you're still achine for knowledge, here are a few sites that say what I just said, except with a little more info...

http://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=254

http://rfdesign.com/mag/radio_goodbye_esn_hello/

Nokia 2366i

Behold, the long-awaited review...okay, not really long-awaited by announcement but someone probably wants to know about this phone and has been wanting to know for quite awhile...of the Nokia 2366i! I've had the phone for two weeks now, and it's a nice phone in my opinion. I'll outline why below...though I haven't so much as activated it. Which merely means that I used 611 to test call quality...

Which is really good. Though it seems a little buzzy on the highest-volume speakerphone setting and a little metallic (compression-style) on the highest volume on handset mode. But then again I was calling 611. Oh, and the volume for non-speakerphone is nice and loud...if you're hard of hearing the highest volume level should still be plenty loud enough for you, if you're holding the phone up to your ear...loud and clear...can't expect less from Nokia anyway. The speakerphone, active only when the phone is shut and played through the handset speaker, is pretty loud, too, though not ear-splittingly Nextel loud. But it's fine most of the time.

What about signal? Well, next to my trusty LG 3280 in my house both phones get two bars. I call 611. The LG connects at the same time as the Nokia, or close to it, though it rings first by a few seconds, so the Nokia actually may be connecting slower...which is fine because it doesn't take forever to make the call in any event. But anyway the Nokia, with its angular antenna just slightly longer than the LG's, picks up a nice, clean signal while the LG cuts out twice, though these cut-outs are barely noticeable. Not saying that the LG is a great phone to compare with or anything, but the Nokia bests it.

So I compared the 2366i with my dad's trusty Nokia 2126, again with both phones at my desk on Verizon. Both showed a similar signal (2366i: 2\5 bars, 2126: 3\7). I test-called three times. It was a tossup as to who connected first. But both didn't cut out at all. To my ears, however, the 2366i souns a tad more lush than the 2126. So for signal the 2366i is quite solid. Wierd how it's not available as a contact phone...it's INPulse (or PagePlus) only.

Hmmm...maybe it's because I didn't see any way that you could get onto the web withthe phone. Which fits it even better to PagePlus and, incidentally, Tracfone. Boy I wish this phone was on Tracfone. They could sell it for $70 and I'd proably help both of my parents get it...

But anyway, the phone is nice, but feature-limited. Texting is there, and works quite well, as far as I've messed with it. The two things about good text messaging are a good keypad and a large enough screen. The 2366i has both. The keypad is nice and big, and looks good, with the typical Nokia panache that features a "digital" font on the buttons. The keys don't stick out or anything, but they provide nice tactile feedback.

But on to the screen...

Suffice to say that it looks to me to be the biggest screen on any phone I've had thusfar. Not as big as, say, a Razr screen, but it's plenty big enough to see what you're doing and then some. It seems nice and high-res, too.

Which reminds me of the outside of the phone. It also harbors a screen, which is about half the size of the display on the Nokia 2126. Which is plenty big enough for an external screen on a phone; all the readouts on the screen are very legible. But that's probably due to the fact that Nokia decided to make the screen a kewl ("cool" doesn't do it justice) blue-on-black.

Anyone notice that everything about this phone is really nicely done? Me too. Speaming more of the outside of the phone, and the inside too, the styling is pretty much flawless. The whole thing is beautiful. Small, too, despite a nice screen and keypad. As said, the famously large antenna is simply large compared with the phone; it's the same size as my LG 3280's antenna. Which, by the way, is about as thick as the Nokia, maybe a tad thinner as it tapers down toward the bottom of the phone, but is, in my opinion, not nearly as pretty as the 2366i, which is both narrower and shorter than the 3280, both open and closed, due a lot to the Nokia's squarer design that makes it quite the cool phone. But I said that already.

Let me take a break from ranting about how cool this phone is and tell what I do not like about the phone...then I'll get back onto the last few features that are neat...

First off, a minor nitpick. The outer rocker button (you know, the up\down volume button) isn't exactly snappy. It's made out of black plastic like a lot of the phone body, but there's little tactile feedback when using it. But there is visual feedback on whatever screen you're using, so this can be forgiven.

Second, another minor nitpick. MP3 ringtones (ech, spoiled that secret...nevermind about the rest of the features...I'll cover them in scrutinizing them here) take a few seconds to kick in, at least in the Gallery browser. But when they do start playing they're crystal clear, and they're Nokia-smooth.

Third, a somewhat more major, but expected, annoyance: the phone has limited Bluetooth. Wait...the phone has Bluetooth?!? Yeah, you do get a lot for $50...but Verizon blocked off everything to do with Bluetooth except the most famous part: headset\handsfree capability. Which means that I can't whip out my Palm T|X (which unfortunately has power button problems right now...and I need to call Palm up again to get them to tell me how to send it off to repair it) and send even more luscious MP3 ringtones to the 2366i. Neither can I use the 2366i as a modem. I can't even use my Palm to serve as a 4" screen on which to view and write text messages. Dang. Somebody hack this, please.

Fourth, and most annoying, is that the phone's user interface is slow for the most part and not as easy to use as I'd like. I dunno whether it's because I grew up on Nokia bar phones (well, sort of...from probably mid-2001 through September 2005 that's all I had used) or whether it's just because of what they are, but I think Nokia makes really, really good user interfaces on their phones. User interfaces that work well, and work quickly. Then the flip phones came. The user interface, with added screen space, strangely became slightly less easy to use, at least to my reckoning, but still nice and all that. Now the 2366i...it has this slightly less-than-greatest UI but to boot you don't get instant response when, say, you hit the OK button to go to the main menu of the phone. You hear the button beep instantly, but it takes about a second to actually change to the menu screen. Okay, maybe not a second but no less than half a second. Which is annoying to me, because I've seen so many Nokia phones that have done this right. :( Yet another erason to hack and see what one can do to speed up the darn thing. You can't let such a posh phone as this go to waste just because the UI has a lag to it, an inexplicable lag at that. Or is it Verizon\The Man stickin' it to you? You be the judge...

One last thing, and this isn't a critique but rather a compliment I forgot to pay the 2366i earlier: the battery lasts a long time on it. At least long for CDMA and a phone with an external display, though the display turns off after a few seconds of inactivity. But anyway I must've taken the phone off the charger either on the 1st or the 2nd of the month and it's still alive on the 7th. Granted, this is 99% standby time but that's still nice in view of other phones' 4-day battery lives, or less. I mean, this phone, with a bigger screen, mp3 ringtones, Bluetooth (though for most of those days I didn't have Bluetooth turned on...I don't have a BT headset) and an external display, equals the more basic LG 3280 in battery life. Impressive.

Which reminds me of one last nit to pick: the dang phone makes all things new a bit too much. Besides the different UI (at least from what we're used too) the phone no longer uses the near-universal Nokia power connector. Which means my hundred-and-fifty-some-odd (I'm not kidding...anybody want 'em?) brick-style home chargers, and my smaller travel chargers, and the two car chargers that I can use (one I got with the Motorola c261, one my mom has had for awhile) won't charge this phone. !?! Did Nokia have to break all the great old hardware when they graduated this phone up to the MEID system?

Yeah, Nokia is using MEIDs now. Rock on, Nokia. Take that, But anyway, my closing comments...

I like this phone for what it is: a bang-for-your-buck, good-looking (especially compared with the current INPulse Pantech camera phone...ECH!), Bluetooth-headset-capable flip by the company that's well-known for making crackerjack phones. However, the crippled Bluetooth (thanks, Verizon...oy), nonstandard (or is it becoming a standard now? Who knows?) connector and slow user interface hold it back from it being a phone that I wouldn't part with even if I did have to use it on INPulse (that God for PagePlus...sic them on the evil 99 cent daily fee of INPulse). But those are the phone's only weak spots, leaving you with a really nice phone for $50, perfect for activating on PagePlus and at the same time feature-rich enough that nobody will know you're using something prepaid, let alone PagePlus, whose newest phone if I remember correctly is about three years old now. As I said before, if Tracfone released this as a SingleRate device I'd move up to it in a flash from my LG 3280, and would likely have my parents do the same...even if the phone did cost a bit more than Verizon is offering it for.

But anyway I like this phone...

One thing to ponder though, as Nokia looks to be getting out of the CDMA business entirely ;,(. This seems to be their swan song in that side of the industry, and it's a heckuva swan song, a song that basically says "Qualcomm, look at the people who got their hands on this phone...look at how everyone's going to miss us when we're gone when they've got this baby to remember...". Ah well...maybe Nokia will update the firmware on this phone somehow (over the air? It's possible) and make it an ultra phone that will bring Qualcomm back to the table with them as the phone sells out and Nokia won't make any more and customers flock to GSM for their Nokia fix...okay I'm just thinking wishfully but again this is a nice phone.

News Flash: Good Deal

First off, the deal, that I may have put up before but now have more information on:

PrepaidWireless.com is giving away a $10 off $25 coupon, basically, to anyone who signs up with them right now. Which means you can get a $25 refill for $15...40% off. A little birdie tells me that this promo is going to end around February 28th, so it's best to take advantage of the offer and sign up now to get the bonus. If you do sign up now, you'll be able to keep the $10 bonus until you need it.

Another way to use the $10 bonus is to subsidize the cost of the Movida UTStarComm 7000, so it's $40 instead of $50. It comes with a month of service included, a $30 value (actually, it's $30 in airtime on the phone, but Movida is pushing their "Unlimited" plan which starts at $30 per month). So the phone is effectively $10. But I would actually wait a few days; PrepaidWireless will be coming out with the better-rated, slightly better, and of course newer, 7025. Which will, I'm told, be sold at the same price as the 7000, which is a good thing. Which might mean that the 7000 will be offered at an even further discount to clear out inventories...

Speaking of the 7000, I'll likely put up a review of that phone today, along with my impressions of the Movida service. As an added bonus, I'll also put up a review of the Nokia 2366i, the cheap INPulse\PagePlus bluetooth flip with style. Hopefully. Then again, I have to finish some work for PrepaidWireless.com (I work with them, not for them, though...this site is still Go4Prepaid and not Go4PrepaidWireless.com), write an essay for Civilizations class (not due tomorow, but that's when school starts after a long yet too-short Christmas break), complete a few scholarship applications and in general have too many things on my plate. But I *should* be able to get the reviews up.

Quick Notes...

I just arrived back at my home, from a week-and-a-few-days trip to Florida for Christmas. Hopefully, during the upcoming three-day weekends, I'll be able to do a lot of various things with this site and other stuff...

For starters...

The LG 3280 does indeed (for the upteenth time!) have free, or rather same cost, roaming...SingleRate is SingleRate, yay everyone! Plus coverage is just as good, network-wise, with the SingleRate CDMA as with older, cost-more-if-you-roam models. Also, don't worry about flipping open your phone when it rings...you have to accept the call (by pressing a button) before it starts charging airtime. Though you *can* set up the phone to simply answer when you flip it open.

And to finish up this post, here are the phones I'm reviewing soon:

UTStarComm CDM7000\Movida (Sprint)
Nokia 2366i
Nokia 6061

Thanks PrepaidWireless.com for the Movida, and BabbleBug (in advance) for the Nokia 6061! As for the 2366i, I got it for a cool $50 or so plus tax at the local Super Wal-Mart in Florida.