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ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Judge Schnoopy posted:

So I've got my current verizon phone set up with google voicemail. I'm getting a new phone on t-mobile. My wife and i frequently use picture messages, as does our extended family, and I really don't want to have 2 numbers.

Am I best trying my luck to port my number to T-Mobile to keep MMS support? Or is there a way to make Google Voice work yet? I'd like Google Voice so if I hate t-mobile and switch in two months, I don't need to tell everybody I have yet another phone number.

Google Voice will sometimes (rarely) email pictures to you if you turn on the ability to email texts as well.

I think this only works for Sprint's integrated phones but I'm not 100% sure on that. Sprint was the carrier who mentioned it so maybe?

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plester1
Jul 9, 2004





Judge Schnoopy posted:

So I've got my current verizon phone set up with google voicemail. I'm getting a new phone on t-mobile. My wife and i frequently use picture messages, as does our extended family, and I really don't want to have 2 numbers.

Am I best trying my luck to port my number to T-Mobile to keep MMS support? Or is there a way to make Google Voice work yet? I'd like Google Voice so if I hate t-mobile and switch in two months, I don't need to tell everybody I have yet another phone number.

MMS simply doesn't work with Google Voice. I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't a heavy user of picture messages to begin with. I mostly used email and Facebook linking to share pictures. I can see the lack of MMS being a deal breaker for frequent picture message users.

Judge Schnoopy
Nov 2, 2005

dont even TRY it, pal

plester1 posted:

MMS simply doesn't work with Google Voice. I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't a heavy user of picture messages to begin with. I mostly used email and Facebook linking to share pictures. I can see the lack of MMS being a deal breaker for frequent picture message users.

Bummer. Maybe Google Voice is in my future if they can clean their poo poo up.

Ordering sim kits from T-Mobile now. If I understand correctly, when I get the sim, I will be able to select the $30 monthly plan that I do not see on their website right now?

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



plester1 posted:

MMS simply doesn't work with Google Voice. I got over it pretty quickly, but I wasn't a heavy user of picture messages to begin with. I mostly used email and Facebook linking to share pictures. I can see the lack of MMS being a deal breaker for frequent picture message users.

Sounds like e-mailing MMS is Sprint-only for now then. It does work on my Nexus S 4G but rarely and it forces you to send SMS over e-mail as well, putting them in four places at once (the Messaging app, Google Voice app, Voice website, and Gmail) just to get an MMS in your e-mail which only shows up randomly.

plester1
Jul 9, 2004





Judge Schnoopy posted:

Bummer. Maybe Google Voice is in my future if they can clean their poo poo up.

Ordering sim kits from T-Mobile now. If I understand correctly, when I get the sim, I will be able to select the $30 monthly plan that I do not see on their website right now?

You should be able to. This is where I can see that $30 plan: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

It looks like their prepaid section is a totally separate website from the main site.

Judge Schnoopy
Nov 2, 2005

dont even TRY it, pal

plester1 posted:

You should be able to. This is where I can see that $30 plan: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans

It looks like their prepaid section is a totally separate website from the main site.

Thank you. Side text on the site says $30 plan is for "New activations only. Available exclusively in-store at Walmart, on Walmart.com, and T-Mobile.com."

Instead of ordering the sims, can I walk into a WalMart and have them hook me up with the sim cards and $30 plan? Or would that require me buying a phone from them?

My contract is up Dec 14th, and I'm getting the new phone on Christmas, so I'd like the turnover to happen near instantly when I open the box. Sorry if I'm asking dumb questions, I just don't want to be stuck waiting if I can prevent it.

plester1
Jul 9, 2004





I don't think Walmart sells SIM cards, but they probably have a dirt cheap flip phone that you can pull the SIM out of. Getting the SIM online is the best deal though, its just a buck.

Long Francesco
Jun 3, 2005
I don't think walmart sells just the sim kits, you'd probably have to buy a phone there. It should only take you like 5 minutes on the website to activate and start the 30/mo plan when you get your phone, although porting can take a day or two and I don't know about whatever the christmas schedule is like in bangledesh so it might take longer.

You should also make sure you order the correct size sim for whatever phone you're getting.

Long Francesco fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Nov 28, 2012

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

I LOVE Musk and his pro-first-amendment ways. X is the future.

Long Francesco posted:

You should also make sure you order the correct size sim for whatever phone you're getting.
yeah, activation kit the best way to do it. But having a spare phone isn't the worst thing in the world, either.

Also, I'd get a microSIM regardless of what you need. Get an adapter if you need one, but the microSIM will prevent any issues in the future.

Leon Sumbitches
Mar 27, 2010

Dr. Leon Adoso Sumbitches (prounounced soom-'beh-cheh) (born January 21, 1935) is heir to the legendary Adoso family oil fortune.





Tmo's $30 just isn't enough for me, and I'm having to re-up early every month. What's the next best plan?

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist

Tommy Wiseau posted:

Tmo's $30 just isn't enough for me, and I'm having to re-up early every month. What's the next best plan?

It isn't enough minutes or it isn't enough data?

Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

Tommy Wiseau posted:

Tmo's $30 just isn't enough for me, and I'm having to re-up early every month. What's the next best plan?

What do you mean its not enough? Do you mean the 100 minutes is not enough? If so don't reup early just pay per minute. If you mean the 5 GB isn't enough there there is no better plan.

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy
I'm assuming he means he's going way over the minutes. If you're going waaaaay over minutes and can't cut down on them, like 1000+, maybe just get the StraightTalk $45 plan on T-Mobile towers and set a 2gb data limit on your phone, should be a menu for it if you're ICS or newer.

Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

Zero VGS posted:

I'm assuming he means he's going way over the minutes.

Understood, but he said he had to reup early, which would be $30 for another 100 minutes which is way more expensive then just paying by the minute.

Leon Sumbitches
Mar 27, 2010

Dr. Leon Adoso Sumbitches (prounounced soom-'beh-cheh) (born January 21, 1935) is heir to the legendary Adoso family oil fortune.





Stick100 posted:

What do you mean its not enough? Do you mean the 100 minutes is not enough? If so don't reup early just pay per minute. If you mean the 5 GB isn't enough there there is no better plan.

I mean I'm going over the 100 min by about 10-15 bux a month. Still a steal compared to what I was paying before, but was curious about other options at around that price point. I'm well over 3 gig/mo. data usage, so the ST doesn't sound viable.

Roulette
Sep 17, 2006
Yes get a micro sim. I just got a new phone off Ebay without realizing it took a micro sim and was so excited to swap phones and now I have to wait for a new sim card.

I have some questions with that. Once I get the new sim I want to just play around with my new phone a bit before I commit to it long term but now I won't have my original phone number. Is it possible for me to port my number to this new micro sim and still keep my Web only plan? If I do that but then change my mind and want to go back to my old phone can I just get an adapter to keep using this new micro sim in phones that take the normal sized sim cards? If I'm not able to port my number to this micro sim then obviously I will just create a new account and get a random number but then would I have to port my original number to Google Voice and set up call forwarding?

This is all confusing :saddowns:

MasterSlowPoke
Oct 9, 2005

Our courage will pull us through
My friend is currently on Straight Talk with an Andriod phone and she's going to replace it with an iPhone 3GS. I know she'll need a micro sim, but how should she go about ordering it?

The Ali Bob Factor
Apr 11, 2009
^ To both of you guys - you can cut your sim card down to the size of a micro sim using a guide like this one: http://m.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=24489

Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

Tommy Wiseau posted:

I mean I'm going over the 100 min by about 10-15 bux a month. Still a steal compared to what I was paying before, but was curious about other options at around that price point. I'm well over 3 gig/mo. data usage, so the ST doesn't sound viable.

If your doing all the talk you want and 3Gb of data for $45 a month then there isn't anything better. As you said at $45 for your use case it's still a steal and nothing else is really cheap enough. Others in this thread would suggest using Talkatone or some other VOIP to try to get your minutes back under 100. You could jump to the Virgin $35 per month as you technically get unlimited data, but both the phone and the 3G service are massively inferior to TMos.

Leon Sumbitches
Mar 27, 2010

Dr. Leon Adoso Sumbitches (prounounced soom-'beh-cheh) (born January 21, 1935) is heir to the legendary Adoso family oil fortune.





Stick100 posted:

Others in this thread would suggest using Talkatone or some other VOIP to try to get your minutes back under 100.

Thanks for this useful post!

My original plan was to use VoIP, but the quality over TMOs data connection was awful, and just passable on my home wifi. I was using sipdroid w/ PBX. Is this typical?

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist

Tommy Wiseau posted:

Thanks for this useful post!

My original plan was to use VoIP, but the quality over TMOs data connection was awful, and just passable on my home wifi. I was using sipdroid w/ PBX. Is this typical?

I can't comment on sipdroid, but I use Skype for windows phone to make VoIP calls and it's nearly perfect on my home Wifi and pretty good in areas where I have strong 3G T-Mobile signal. I think a lot of android users in this thread use Groove IP instead of sipdroid.

tonic
Jan 4, 2003

Is anyone using the $30/month T-Mobile plan on a Nexus 4? What kind of speeds are you seeing?

Also, I noticed the OP recommends porting your # to GV for use with prepaid plans. Is there a risk of losing my phone # if I port it over to the T-Mobile $30 plan? (i.e. if I forget to pay or something at some point)

tonic fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Nov 30, 2012

d[-.-]b
Aug 1, 2004

my fav champ that hero who cats a spell that make all bad guy fall down and say my dick BIG

tonic posted:

Is anyone using the $30/month T-Mobile plan on a Nexus 4? What kind of speeds are you seeing?

Also, I noticed the OP recommends porting your # to GV for use with prepaid plans. Is there a risk of losing my phone # if I port it over to the T-Mobile $30 plan? (i.e. if I forget to pay or something at some point)

I should be getting my sim card today, so I'll post some speed tests when I get it setup.

And I think most of the danger of losing your number comes from Straight Talk's ambiguous policies for cutting people off.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



"d[-.- posted:

b" post="410067121"]
I should be getting my sim card today, so I'll post some speed tests when I get it setup.

And I think most of the danger of losing your number comes from Straight Talk's ambiguous policies for cutting people off.

Are ST's weird cut offs mostly for data or are their other things they'll cut people for?

Also, will not adding the proxy for an AT&T SIM cause them not to kick you off so quickly?

hotsauce
Jan 14, 2007

tonic posted:

Is anyone using the $30/month T-Mobile plan on a Nexus 4? What kind of speeds are you seeing?

Also, I noticed the OP recommends porting your # to GV for use with prepaid plans. Is there a risk of losing my phone # if I port it over to the T-Mobile $30 plan? (i.e. if I forget to pay or something at some point)

Getting consistently between 6-12 mbps. This was from today. I have the $30 T-Mobile prepaid plan and am using a Nexus 4.



As for porting - if you port any number to a prepaid plan, you will have a grace period before it expires into oblivion (if you don't re-up). I believe the T-Mobile prepaid is 60 days. On day 61, it may be reassigned to another cheapskate, but you may be able to call up and re-activate it. I doubt you would forget to renew it for that long unless it's very on purpose. I'd highly recommend porting your number to GV though. I did so over Thanksgiving (after like a decade with AT&T) and haven't regretted it one bit. I do have a work phone that I have connected so when someone calls my GV number I take the calls on my free work line instead of using the precious 100 minutes. Also, I have VOIP (Obi) at home that I have ring. Basically I only use T-Mobile prepaid for data and texts and the 100 minutues are there if I need them.

The Dude
Nov 18, 2000
Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that's the Dude.

tonic posted:

Also, I noticed the OP recommends porting your # to GV for use with prepaid plans. Is there a risk of losing my phone # if I port it over to the T-Mobile $30 plan? (i.e. if I forget to pay or something at some point)
T-Mobile's small print says that if you neglect to renew your prepaid plan for 60 days, the account becomes "pay as you go", so you would not lose the number but you also wouldn't be able to restore the 100-minute $30 plan since it's for new activations only. Maybe you could activate a new SIM and port the number to it, or port it off T-Mobile and back to a new SIM but I'm not sure.

tonic
Jan 4, 2003

hotsauce posted:

Getting consistently between 6-12 mbps. This was from today. I have the $30 T-Mobile prepaid plan and am using a Nexus 4.



That's awesome! Faster speeds than I see on my current AT&T plan, so I'll definitely make the switch. GV sounds nice too, but the lack of MMS is kind of a non-starter for me.

tonic
Jan 4, 2003

T-Mobile HSPA+ is about 3x as fast as AT&T HSPA+ here. Should have switched sooner!

IuniusBrutus
Jul 24, 2010

Hey, does Google Voice ever act wonky with texts? I have one person whose texts are forwarded to my GV inbox properly (and then to my phone), but everything else is disappearing into oblivion. It's been a touch over three days since I've ported my number.

Tremors
Aug 16, 2006

What happened to the legendary Chris Redfield, huh? What happened to you?!
I have a friend who wants to get on the $30 T-Mobile plan, but he's currently part of a family plan on Verizon. Is it possible to port a number out of a family plan without a ton of headache?

Long Francesco
Jun 3, 2005

IuniusBrutus posted:

Hey, does Google Voice ever act wonky with texts? I have one person whose texts are forwarded to my GV inbox properly (and then to my phone), but everything else is disappearing into oblivion. It's been a touch over three days since I've ported my number.

Yeah, when I went to tmo I tried Google voice for a week before deciding where to port my number and texts were definitely screwed up. About half would show up like normal on both ends but the other half would either take hours or just disappear.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Would downloading an app on ST cause them to throttle or disconnect?

Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

Tommy Wiseau posted:

Thanks for this useful post!

Well as I said others would suggest that, but I've given up that route as I hated the call quality. VOIP solutions seem to only work on a robust WIFI. I just try to use less than 250 minutes per month. I have a desk phone at work and I just bought an Obi 100 for free phone at home. I've used wired VOIP phones in the past and they seemed fine I'll report on the OBi once I get it up and running.

Reference:
http://www.amazon.com/OBi100-Telephone-Adapter-Service-Bridge/dp/B004LO098O

Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

Long Francesco posted:

I tried Google voice ... texts were definitely screwed up

Did you have just 1 number forwarded as a cell number? I've had pretty good luck as long as it's only redirecting to one number and it's marked as a cell number. When you are sending texts using your google voice number it's using data, so that might account for the delay. I had issues sending text as the google voice number and also making calls as the google voice number. In the end I just reverted to sending texts/calls as my SIM number but giving out my GV number as my contact info. It confuses people a little bit.

Stick100 fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Nov 30, 2012

Long Francesco
Jun 3, 2005
Yep just one number as a cell, most of the time I was on wifi or hspa but it just seemed completely random on when it would drop texts. Not being able to use mms is a deal breaker too. Plus T mobile's coverage sucks if you go a few miles outside of the suburbs so it's either crappy edge or roaming on att with no data and that wouldn't fly for me.

I do use GV and grooveip if im at home or somewhere with good wifi for calling the pizza guy or customer service or whatever, and it's good for that to keep my minute usage down.

As a reliable everyday usage thing though I'd say GV isn't really there yet.

IuniusBrutus
Jul 24, 2010

Well, it turns out my issue with GV was that it can't accept texts send as email - so from my bank, for example. This isn't a huge issue.

What is irritating though, is that it's been loving up texts sent to and from friends with iphones. Texts from them still go through iMessage, which GV can't receive.

hotsauce
Jan 14, 2007

Stick100 posted:

Well as I said others would suggest that, but I've given up that route as I hated the call quality. VOIP solutions seem to only work on a robust WIFI. I just try to use less than 250 minutes per month. I have a desk phone at work and I just bought an Obi 100 for free phone at home. I've used wired VOIP phones in the past and they seemed fine I'll report on the OBi once I get it up and running.

Reference:
http://www.amazon.com/OBi100-Telephone-Adapter-Service-Bridge/dp/B004LO098O

If you are porting to GV with the 100 minute $30 T-Mobile plan, this IS the only answer to save minutes. I have a 3-handset Panasonic cordless phone hooked up to my OBi so I use exactly zero T-Mobile minutes while at home. It's pretty amazing that GV calling is free. The OBi is well worth the $39 and is supremely useful with GV if you don't have a lot of prepaid minutes. I consider it a requirement if you have the $30 T-Mo plan.

goku chewbacca
Dec 14, 2002
Last I knew, Google hadn't yet announced whether free calling from Google Talk would continue into 2013. They've already extended it from 2011 into 2012, so hopefully they do it again.

hotsauce
Jan 14, 2007

goku chewbacca posted:

Last I knew, Google hadn't yet announced whether free calling from Google Talk would continue into 2013. They've already extended it from 2011 into 2012, so hopefully they do it again.

I'd pay for it, honestly. One day it may not be free, and I will be forced to give Google money for it, but I appreciate it being free for now.

It's that good. For instance, I just had some shady caller ring my GV line (literally, just now). I didn't answer. They called back. Then sent some hostile text.

I don't know this person. I just blocked the number. Now the get the *beep beep beeeep - we're sorry, this number has been disconnected* message.

I win.

GV takes the fear out of actually using your real number on Craigslist, giving it to stores, etc. Just block a fool and move on.

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Stick100
Mar 18, 2003

hotsauce posted:

GV takes the fear out of actually using your real number on Craigslist, giving it to stores, etc. Just block a fool and move on.

Or just never answer unrecognized numbers and read the email of the voicemail later. I agree GV is freaking amazing.

Another way to use GV it is to treat your sim number as disposable and guard your GV number (only give it to friends and family). If you get annoyed grab a new sim and restart.

One thing that's too bad is every time you get a new prepaid sim you get a bunch of calls and texts for the old owner for a couple months.

Stick100 fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Dec 3, 2012

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