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earl
Posted on: Jul 29 2008, 02:13 PM


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Hi all,
What's the consensus on traveling to the EU as far as best options for SIM cards etc? I just got back from Spain and France and I had some good and some and bad experience. It only just now occurred to me that I should have checked here at MGN before I left. We bought prepaid SIM cards for my ATT 8525 and my wife's iPhone, both unlocked. We were unwilling to pay $1.49 per minute using the ATT international plan. So I bought SIMs from a company called Telius for a Spanish provider named Lebara, who I believe are a subsidiary of Vodafone. The cards were $39 each and the rates were reasonable within Spain and calling home to the US was also cheap, about 0.25 euro per minute. It seemed to be a better option than one of the international SIM cards where the rates are on the order of 0.50 to 1.00 euro per minute. We didn't look into data service, although in retrospect it would have been useful since we spent so much of our time getting lost.
My experience with Lebara:
Before leaving we activated the SIMs no problem and once we arrived I put them in and we were good to go. Call quality and coverage were pretty good considering the fact that we spent most of our trip in a tiny town in a semi-mountainous area. We had some trouble finding places to add minutes, it seems that Lebara is a small provider and many places that service Orange, Vodafone and Movistar hadn't even heard of Lebara. It was tough to find places to recharge in both Madrid and Barcelona. The Lebara website was fouled up so we could not recharge online with a credit card. My success rate was 50% for recharging at public phones. The second time I tried to recharge from a payphone in Barcelona I got screwed. The phone ate my 10 euro and didn't credit the minutes. Payphones in Spain seem to be more like slot machines than phones. After nearly an hour of trying to get some customer service in English from Telefonica I gave up (my Spanish is decent but it seems that when you are trying to get customer service they mysteriously can't understand you). The last part of our trip was in France, where I was told by Lebara that roaming would work. It didn't. I changed all my settings, tried manually connecting to all of the French networks, to no avail. French payphones aren't any better than the Spanish ones, I tried getting through to Lebara customer service several times with no luck. So the last week of our trip we had no phone service. It probably would have been possible to resolve all the issues we had given enough time and patience, but we were traveling with two kids under 3 years old, so patience and time were both in very short supply.
So, if I had it to do over again, I would probably buy prepaid SIM cards from one of the large providers such as Orange or Vodafone and also be sure to get data service set up as well. I understand that roaming between countries in the EU is troublesome even for Europeans, so I don't know how unique our experience was.
Has anybody had similar experiences or some suggestions I could use next time?
  Forum: Other Providers · Post Preview: #62999 · Replies: 0 · Views: 35,206

earl
Posted on: Dec 22 2007, 07:47 AM


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I've been running one of the beta versions of WM6 that have been floating around the web. It has some issues but is still a big improvement over WM5. The official release of WM6 for BJ is still "coming soon" as far as I know. In any case, I gave up on the BJ and got the 8525 with WM6 pro.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #60311 · Replies: 11 · Views: 6,093

earl
Posted on: Oct 19 2007, 02:58 PM


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I saw the Samsung i760 at a tech fair yesterday, now I'm totally jealous. Too bad I have 5 lines and nearly 2 years left on my ATT contract, or I would make the carrier switch sooo easily. My smartphone addiction still hasn't reached the point where I hop service providers just for the devices. I don't even think Smeg is that far gone!!
  Forum: Home Page News · Post Preview: #59862 · Replies: 3 · Views: 2,219

earl
Posted on: Oct 15 2007, 09:30 PM


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The Libra appears to be WM6 standard, it looks to me like a newer CDMA version of the HTC S710.
  Forum: Samsung i760 · Post Preview: #59822 · Replies: 5 · Views: 15,409

earl
Posted on: Sep 25 2007, 06:03 AM


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Youtube videos on your mobile device, and the software is free!

From the Veveo website:

QUOTE
There are hundreds of millions of videos available on the Web today, and millions more are added every week. But try searching, browsing or viewing them on your TV, your mobile, or even your brand new iPhone™. It’s frustrating, if not impossible, simply because most Web video services are desktop based and not designed for the mobile or TV user. And those that do focus on the mobile or TV limit the Web video universe to only a small sliver of what exists.

That’s why we at Veveo™ created vTap—the quick and easy Web video solution that lets you search, browse and pinpoint the exact Web video you’re looking for—from sources all over the Internet—and play it on any supported device! With vTap's unique character-based incremental
search—where results are returned with every character entered—you can perform searches using just a few characters instead of whole keywords. It’s so easy, you’ll think it’s reading your mind.


I just now tried it on my blackjack, and I must say I'm impressed. Here's the link:
http://www.vtap.com/
  Forum: Announcements · Post Preview: #59689 · Replies: 0 · Views: 1,667

earl
Posted on: Sep 20 2007, 02:17 PM


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I haven't seen any reliable information on the BJ2, some have speculated that it may have a secondary camera for videoshare and maybe WiFi too. It definitely WILL have WM6 though.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59661 · Replies: 11 · Views: 6,093

earl
Posted on: Sep 18 2007, 07:28 PM


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It looks like the Sept. 17th date was not legitimate, or at there are further delays... the newest rumored date is Oct. 1. We have another 'reliable' source, again, for this information:

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/m...ing&page=11

...and still we wait.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59646 · Replies: 11 · Views: 6,093

earl
Posted on: Sep 11 2007, 08:20 PM


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I'm not sure I understand your problem, can you be more specific?
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59598 · Replies: 1 · Views: 3,610

earl
Posted on: Sep 7 2007, 02:14 AM


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Bluetooth on the leaked WM6 rom was a total PoS. I didn't care since I only rarely need BT. If the news is correct that the official WM6 has fixed all the problems, you should definitely give it a shot. HTML email in itself was more than enough reason for me to snap up the leaked version. Mobile excel and word have also come in handy, at least for viewing documents. At any rate, I'll let yall know how the new rom works out for me when I get it.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59569 · Replies: 4 · Views: 5,614

earl
Posted on: Sep 2 2007, 03:33 PM


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QUOTE (earl @ Sep 2 2007, 10:30 AM) *
The folks over at the ATT forums have been in quite an uproar over the new WM6 ROM for Blackjack. They seem to have some good information that the official release date is September 17.

Check it out:

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/m...ding&page=1



Oh, yeah, they're saying BT is fixed, and also video share and internet connection sharing are in the ROM. No word as to the F'ed up Java engine... I guess we'll see.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59547 · Replies: 4 · Views: 5,614

earl
Posted on: Sep 2 2007, 03:30 PM


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The folks over at the ATT forums have been in quite an uproar over the new WM6 ROM for Blackjack. They seem to have some good information that the official release date is September 17.

Check it out:

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/m...ding&page=1
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59546 · Replies: 4 · Views: 5,614

earl
Posted on: Sep 2 2007, 03:16 PM


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Sorry, the ROM is hardware-specific and will only work with the I607.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59545 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

earl
Posted on: Aug 7 2007, 11:51 PM


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I found the link, all it took was a bit of effort:

http://www.samsungwireless.com/techtrain/t...ack_Upgrade.zip
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59446 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

earl
Posted on: Aug 7 2007, 11:13 PM


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Well, RT, you know by now that I have the fever... and by the way, thanks a lot for getting me all riled up about the Touch with your stellar review... I'm breaking out in a cold sweat right now! My kids are going to end up wearing burlap sacks so I can keep feeding this monster. The worst of it is my wife is now strung out with gadget fever too. She got herself an iPhone because (her logic) if you lose or break your phone every 6 weeks, clearly you should get something much more expensive. I forced her to read your review first, and we priced the Touch, but she was convinced it would be too much like the MDA/8125 which was more phone than she wanted. Really she's the ideal iPhone customer in that she loves what the MS smartphones can do as far as web-browsing, calendar, and music, but she's not willing to spend much time learning more advanced stuff or chasing software. I played with her iPhone for 2 days and now I'm over it. Beautiful and shallow; just what I'd expect from Apple. The device is fragile too; she already broke the orientation sensor with one short drop. The good news is: now that she's spent 500 bucks on a phone for herself I have carte blanche to get myself any phone I want next time. I'll let y'all know when I get my next fix...
  Forum: Home Page News · Post Preview: #59445 · Replies: 5 · Views: 3,466

earl
Posted on: Aug 7 2007, 10:31 PM


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see the response to your other post.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59444 · Replies: 1 · Views: 2,810

earl
Posted on: Aug 7 2007, 10:30 PM


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Follow all the steps exactly like you did to do the upgrade to WM6.

Here's the How-to from samsung:

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/popup/ho...guide_step_no=1

Funny, now I can't find the actual installer package, I know I have it at home, I'll post it up here for you tonight or tomorrow.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59443 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

earl
Posted on: Aug 2 2007, 07:52 PM


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any word on a GSM version?
  Forum: Home Page News · Post Preview: #59399 · Replies: 5 · Views: 3,466

earl
Posted on: Jul 24 2007, 05:48 AM


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Me too, and it's not just this post but any post with photos... The home page news posts display just fine.
  Forum: Hardware Reviews · Post Preview: #59310 · Replies: 22 · Views: 43,712

earl
Posted on: Jul 4 2007, 06:51 PM


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Thanks, but no thanks! I'm not interested in Blackberry. I just have a case of gadget envy, so everytime I see an ad I have to start wondering what I'm missing out on. My brother-in-law is always bragging about his (crappy IMHO) blackberry; I just smile to myself and feel superior about my Blackjack (and smt5600 and mpx220 and mpx200). The only gadgets I really envy at this point are the HTC phones Touch and Vox, the Samsung i760, and the new i-mate ultimate devices. Apple/ ATT can keep their iPhone, as cute as it is.
  Forum: General Discussion · Post Preview: #59142 · Replies: 2 · Views: 1,296

earl
Posted on: Jul 4 2007, 07:13 AM


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I just don't get it... I guess this Blackberry 8830 must have two radios inside, one for Verizon's US CDMA network and another GSM radio for the rest of the world. If you travel out of the US, do you have to insert a local SIM card or get one from Verizon? Is it SIM-less? I'm confused.
  Forum: General Discussion · Post Preview: #59139 · Replies: 2 · Views: 1,296

earl
Posted on: Jun 23 2007, 08:07 PM


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Power on while holding the 'up' portion of the d-pad.
  Forum: Samsung SmartPhones · Post Preview: #59079 · Replies: 3 · Views: 8,211

earl
Posted on: Jun 16 2007, 09:31 PM


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There have been some problems reported with this ROM; the only complaints I have are the loss of internet connection sharing and the broken Java engine. Other than that I love WM6. I just hope the ATT release has these issues fixed.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #59028 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

earl
Posted on: Jun 5 2007, 04:49 AM


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Is it an ISP email account? I have Roadrunner cable at home and they will not allow messages to be sent through the SMTP server from outside their network. In other words, you can only send mail from home or by using the webmail site. I have no trouble with my work email account which is an IMAP server, I can send and receive mail from my phone.
  Forum: Motorola MPx220 · Post Preview: #58943 · Replies: 1 · Views: 1,845

earl
Posted on: Jun 2 2007, 07:00 PM


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OK, so the ROM seems legitimate, I installed it without any trouble. At first I couldn't get data to work; I had to change one setting in the GPRS connections. Now everything is perfect. Just have to go back and remove all the extra Cingular crap I don't want and put all my software back on...
So far, I love WM6. The only downside is that MS voice command is not included on the BJ.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #58934 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

earl
Posted on: Jun 2 2007, 01:18 PM


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Hey all, check out this from the Cingular customer forums:

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/m...thread.id=32417

and also:

http://www.blackjackusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=352

I downloaded it, but haven't yet flashed the ROM. I'll keep y'all posted on how it works out for me.
  Forum: Samsung Blackjack · Post Preview: #58933 · Replies: 10 · Views: 14,122

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