yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[HD2 General] DuoM:
This is what I was expecting. Thanks for testing this.

Not if Virgin are only paying T-Mobile for a reduced bandwidth service to save money.

The £10 per month with O2 is only useful if you travel to Europe a lot. Otherwise it will be £0.35/min to call, £0.18/min to receive in the EU dropping to £0.30/min to call in W. Europe but outside of the EU.

Be careful with T-Mobile, they have recently changed their roaming charges for non-EU countries from what was a pretty good £0.55/£0.50 to £1 or more and some countries like Switzerland are now pretty expensive.

Data in the EU is cheaper on T-Mobile at £1.50 per MB vs. £3 per MB on O2 in W. Europe but you can buy Data Abroad bundles on O2 for 10MB (£20) and 50MB (£50) and even higher (and cheaper) ones on the business tariff. Outside of the EU T-Mobile is more expensive than O2, £7.50 per MB vs £6 per MB.

Orange also have some decent data packages for Europe but outside of Europe their packages are much more expensive than Of's.

Also with O2 you use the texts from your bundle when abroad so rather than paying £0.40 per text or £0.20 per MMS as you do with T-Mobile you use your bundle messages at the rate of 4:1. I believe that this applies to MMS as well as texts while abroad and as far as I know your UK text bundle also applies to MMS on O2.

I recently dropped T-Mobile because I travel a lot and O2 was simply the better option due to data and text costs. However with the recent price increases by T-Mobile, O2 is now also the cheaper option for calls for me when I travel.

When I was on T-Mobile I had to ask for Web 'n' Walk Plus to get HSDPA speeds (and T-Mobile agreed to credit back the difference every month) but I get HSDPA speeds anyway with O2. However I believe that T-Mobile have the bigger 3G network and they and 3 also have a network sharing agreement.

Should the T-Mobile/Orange deal pass the regulators here and in Europe they will have the largest and best 3G network in the UK (with or without 3) but considering how long these things can take (regulators + network integration) your contract could be almost up by the time that you see the benefits.

One last thing, O2 implemented EDGE across their network to support the iPhone 2G back in 2007. As far as I know T-Mobile haven't done this so when you can't get 3G you just get standard GPRS on T-Mobile. With O2 you will probably get EDGE unless the signal is really, really bad. O2 are also in the process of upgrading their UK network and adding more cell towers especially in London, so hopefully their network coverage and signal strength will improve.
[HD2 General] chris_ah1:
thanks for the detailed info. One question - how likely is it I would be able to get them to agree to web n walk plus and credit back the difference? that is quite a risk?

Yes, I do travel in the EU a fair bit during the year and O2 would be perfect - due to the ability to receive calls with the £10....but when i go abroad for a long time I'll be getting a local sim so perhaps that is a redundant consideration and should just text...which brings me back to the thing that on O2 it is 4:1 texts, so 250 texts whilst abroad is pretty handy to use instead of calls between familly.

As for the network it seems like you describe O2 as maximin - it maximises the lowest speed with Edge, but T-mobile maximises the fastest with broader 3G.

I must admit I have personally found T-mobile to blow vodafone away in London, but I guess I will just have to get an O2 sim in my phone to compare.
[HD2 General] DuoM:
Firstly I should say that I have no idea if you will need this or not. You may get HSDPA right off the bat if you go with T-Mobile.

Relying on getting an upgrade would be a risk. I had been with T-Mobile for 13 months, upgraded and found that my new TYTN II was not getting more than 3G speeds. Went back and forth with their technical team over a couple of days and they insisted that everything was set to allow me to receive HSDPA speeds (I'd done some reading on various forums and it sounded like it was).

So I asked them to move me to Web 'n' Walk Plus and as soon as they made the change (while I was on the phone with them) I got decent speeds.

After that it was a matter of getting CS to credit everything back and then place a monthly credit on the account.

I sometimes had £300 monthly bills while traveling on T-Mobile. O2 do seem to be pretty good for travelers unless you are in a Vodafone Passport country but Vodafone are still not good for data abroad (although I would most likely be with them if they had managed to buy Cingular in the US a few years ago).

Oh, I almost posted without suggesting that if you are interested in Vodafone for calls for travel purposes and if your signal problems are mainly in your home, they have their Sure Signal units for a one off fee of £50 or a monthly fee of £5. However do not underestimate the cost of using data on their network when you are abroad.

I believe that the 3G coverage from T-Mobile is broader than that of O2 (and HSDPA coverage is much broader still) but as I said O2 are working on improving their network right now (announced in Nov 2009 if memory serves). I've already seen some improvements to the HSDPA signal in my area.

However you need to look at it on a case by case basis and see how good the signal is where you need it most.

In my case both O2 and T-Mobile are poor at my house but O2 are improving and I do get HSDPA at varying speeds and EDGE where the HSDPA signal drops. This is better than T-Mobile which gave me a poor HSDPA signal or GPRS.

Note: T-Mobile are enabling 7.2Mbps on their network (you'd have to check and see where it has happened so far) but I think that that may only be for laptops.

Yes. If you are going to be with them for as much as two years it's worth doing some testing first.

One thing that I was going to mention in my previous post but didn't was the option of going SIM Only. The cost of the phone plus the cost of a two year SIM Only deal may not be too much more than some of the other deals available.

When I dumped my T-Mobile contract I went for a £20 pm Simplicity 30 day rolling contract from O2, which gave me 600 mins + 1200 texts + ITS + my choice of Bolt On. I just had them reload it a few days ago to take advantage of the January 700 mins + 1400 texts offer.

It may be worth considering going this route.
[HD2 General] chris_ah1:
yeah, phone works out to be £20per month for 24months :(

My budget was really no more than £35pm including handset costs so £15pm sim only is MAX.

If I could stretch to £40pm then sim only is no brainer as you say - £20 sim only is 800mins, 1600/unlimited texts + internet on both networks!! lol. talk about oligopoly!

I cant go with vodafone. they stiffed me with my HD2 upgrade (1200mins, free phone, texts+internet at £35) by sending a SE satio to get me off pre-order queue.

Then they charged me £340 for allegedly calling my voicemail from the US with my phone for over 4hours - even though i was in UK and there were local calls around it and i have phone+sim in my possession.

This is fraud on their part tbh so on principle I cannot go with them. They refuse to accept it is a bogus charge.

T-mob: 24months, 700mins, UT, UI +handset = £34pm

O2: 24months, 600mins, 1000T, UI + handset = £34pm

Sim only: 12months, 800mins, 1600/UT + handset = £40pm.. :(
[HD2 General] rumpleforeskin:
I recently moved from orange to T-mobile (to get HD2), and in bedfordshire the HSDPA speed is about 70% of what i recieved when i was an orange customer.

T-MOB block FTP access which is pretty annoying as i only found this out AFTER phoning them to find out why i could not access my home PC.

And browsing the internet T-Mob have a proxy that reduces image sizes (degrades quality alot) which is good if you want speed or have a limited data tarrif, but bad if you are in a 3G area and speed is not an issue and you would rather have a better image

On a plus i seem to get a good 3G/HSDPA signal most places so i would say the coverage, while not as fast as orange, is better
[HD2 General] chris_ah1:
apparently you can refresh the page to get the full image quality. Or you can remove the proxy setting - does either work for you?

I am doubtful about the proxy setting because if I were an isp i would make it transparent.

Unfortunately my current phone only does 384kbps 3G and both O2 and T-mobile max it out indoors with limited signal.

Between O2 and T-mobile signal strength tests seem to be varied.

T-mobile seems to be stronger for longer, but then drops of quickly.

O2 often drops off sooner, but then sticks around at a few bars.

At home: O2 wins.

At School: T-mobile wins esp in basement.

At gym: Awash between the two.

On the street/out and about - Holborn, Oxford street, king's road, picadilly etc = full 3G bars on both.

In all places I'm getting better reception with O2 and T-mobile than I ever got with vodafone.
[HD2 General] leoni1980:
o2s 3g coverage is supposed to be pretty bad if you believe the number of complaints levelled at them by iPhone users. they were also the last major network to go full steam ahead with 3g. Their GSM coverage is very good though.

T-Mobile DO provide true unlimited downloads, and you will never receive a charge for going over the fair usage allowance. Supposedly after using up your 3gb you will be only able to browse and they cut off your ability to download or stream, however on two occasions I've received a text telling me I have used up my allowance only to find that I am still able to download and stream and my 3G speed is just as fast.

with respect to their Flext plan (which I am on) I am able to call most countries abroad, along with 08 numbers, out of my £220 monthly flext allowance. texts and mms abroad are charged at the same rate of 10p and 20p respectively. I don't use voicemail at all.
[HD2 General] grayme:
Certainly an interesting thread this.

I'm currently getting 30% off the line rental with O2 with their O2 Open scheme which I cannot upgrade and keep, I'd just get £75 off as a one-off, so it would be £25 for the phone and £35pm (to get unlimited internet) for 18m = £655 for the life of the contract.

T-Mobile on the other hand would charge me £241 for the phone, then I could get unlimited internet for £10pm, this is on a 24 month contract (which I could 'pay off' after 18 months to save on their £15pm for an 18 month contract) = £481 (over 24 months if I want it).

Yes there are less mins and texts on the latter, (100 of each), but I see I am not alone on here in that having the internet is the main objective.

However, is T Mobile that bad that I'd want to keep with O2? Guess I may have to try a T Mobile SIM to test it out.
[HD2 General] Volw:
Check Virgin, same network as T-Mob, yet much lower prices.

I've switched form T-Mob to Virgin to get HD2 and it will save me close to £200 over 18 months.

Edit: but as mentioned earlier, it's a bit slower. It's good enough as long as you don't watch youtube really.
[HD2 General] hollinshead:
I was in the same boat as yourself, having gone from O2 back to T-Mobile.

One thing I found is that the 3G speed and coverage is alot better on T-Mobile than O2 (obviously this could be different depending on where you are).

Also on the HD2 with T-Mobile it switches to HSDA when sending data over 3G, much faster!

With regards to price, O2 wanted £100 for the phone on £35 a month with 600mins 1000 txts (500txts if from shop) and unlimited data. The best retentions could do is take the phone down from £100 to £45.

I got my phone on T-Mobile, 600 mins 500 texts unlimited data for £30 (18 month contract) and the phone only cost £19.99!

I got mine from here:

http://www.buymobilephones.net/mobi...le/T-Mobile-30-(18mths)-inc.-Internet/2707361
[HD2 General] grayme:
I've been looking a while now, Virgin do worry me with their slower speeds from this thread, and the cheapest I have found was the £481 over 24 months from T Mobile (that is cheaper than Virgin's 18 month deal which would be £491 so cheaper to take out T Mobile's 24 months even if I decided to chop it in after 18 months and pay off the balance).

Virgin do a free phone on £30pm for 24 months (£720!) or £200 plus £18pm for 18 months (£524), T Mobile winning there.

Thanks hollinshead, I work out your cost as £560 which if you need more than 100 mins and 100 texts is better than my deal, I just don't think I use it (and if I did, not to the tune of £119 extra charges over the period). However, if T Mobile is usable (and I spend most of my time either in North Herts or on the train to London) then O2 better pull something special out of the bag to keep me; even 30% off £35pm for 18 months would be £541.
[HD2 General] hollinshead:
Sorry, I didn't realise you didn't want many minutes and were looking for a cheap overall cost.

Best I could find was £20 a month, 100 mins, 100 texts, unlimited data (18 months)

Phone costs £159.99 making the total cost £519.99 without the need for a 24 month plan.

http://www.buymobilephones.net/mobi...le/T-Mobile-20-(18mths)-inc.-Internet/2706205
[HD2 General] grayme:
T Mobile beat this too on their 24 months, £481 for the same mins and texts, in effect £20pm including the cost of the phone. (I know it is 24 months and not 18, but that gives the option of keeping for those six months in effect for free). Guess I can stop looking for a better deal atm. :)
[HD2 General] grayme:
I didn't realise I was missing the 'flexible booster' from T Mobile; I could also add unlimited texts or landline calls (or a few other alternatives, like unlimited calls to other T Mobile phones).

Email rather than text, unlimited landline calls, seems ample now. :cool:
[HD2 General] terrytpot:
I use my phone a bit differently..my main use is for making calls (10,000 mins used so far in 8weeks) hardly ever text and browse as much as I can find the time for (assuming my laptops not to hand). Having had some horrendous "after sales service" from both Orange and T-mo I switched to O2 four or five years back and haven't looked back since (although upgrade time can be a bit fraught if you're not the persistant type). Trying to get the HD2 when it came out was a bit of a nightmare but I'm really happy with the deal I got..

As most of my calls are to other O2 users its dead easy to keep costs down and moving onto one of their Business tarrifs (which anyone can do) was the key to getting everything I wanted IE:

300 mins x/net,UL O2 calls,10UL landline numbers,250 texts, and of course ULI...free phone on a 24mth contract with a free upgrade @12 mths (that'll get used for a winmo7 phone;)) all for the bargain price of £27.38+vat/mth... oh,and to cap it all,after making several (free) calls a day to retentions (or anyone at O2 I could grab hold of) untill I finally got the deal I wanted they appologised for how often I'd had to contact them in the form of a £5.00 discount off my first bill to compensate for the inconvenience they felt I'd been put to :D now thats what I call service!
[HD2 General] ez2remember:
IMHO after 15+ years with different networks I would say

Vodafone > O2 > Orange > T-Mobile > Three

Obviously this only applies if you live within area where you get a good signal. I live in London where signal is pretty much well covered by all the networks.
[HD2 General] samjpullen:
I have read a fair bit about Virgin been capped...

But if it is then Orange are capped even more so!.. i get full signal for both at home and my HD2 speed tests beat my Hero (on Orange) every single time.

Infact when browing with my HD2 its almost like having wifi at times its that fast!... i personaly think that Virgin who piggy back onto T-Mobile are Amazing :)
[HD2 General] chris_ah1:
Network / Mins / Texts / Internet / Months / Contract / Handset / Total / Effective pm

Virgin / 800 / UT / UI / 24 / 30 / 0 / 720 / 30

T-mob / 600 /500T/UI / 24/ 25 / 137 / 737 / 30.71

Orange / 1200/UT/500MB/24/ 30 / 30 / 750 / 31.25 (through mobiles.co.uk)

T-mob / 900 /500T/ UI / 24/ 25 / 172 / 772 / 32.17

O2 / 600/1000T/ UI/ 24/ 30 / 100 / 820 / 34.17

Orange / 1200/UT / UI / 24/ 35 / 30 / 870 / 36.25

As you can see, O2 give you the joint least minutes, but have nice data allowances and speed. And have good roaming prices for receiving calls and making them and texts from abroad are priced at four uk ones so it is easy to stay within bill. They also have the best reception for me at home, and an impeccable 2G network and the fastest EDGE i have found. For small transfers EDGE uses less power, and is just as quick due to less time needed to start connection up. I find 3G to have big overheads for small files. Less so for downloads ofc.

Orange if you simply take the 500MB and stay under is also competitive despite having by far the most minutes. However, despite OFCOM maps, I have found orange to be consistently worse than the other networks...but once in a while it does surprise with strong indoor coverage where others are weaker.

T-mobile you can choose an extra 300mins for a little more outlay pm, but you also have the flexible booster - for texts or unlimited landlines or even going abroad. But their roaming packages are pricey and stingey!!!! And their handsets are very expensive too. If you go to a site like mobiles.co.uk they appear to not include unlimited internet.

Because i do go abroad (mostly EU) and would like to receive calls with a UK sim, the real sensible choices are O2 and orange.

O2 has better data speed and a nicer policy.

Both have £10 roaming packages for Europe which makes receiving calls free. (25p O2 / 28p orange permin to make calls)

So folks - Orange or O2???

p.s. I think if you are staying in the UK the T-mobile is best for you as I've found it to be consistently better than orange...at least in central london!!!
[HD2 General] PhatEd:
I managed to get a pretty good deal with T-Mobile here in the UK. I got the HD2 for free, 1000 mins, ultd texts and ultd mobile internet for £38 a month. It was advertised as £45 on their website but I gave them a call and told them I could get it cheaper elsewhere and they knocked the price down. 18 month contract too. It pays to give them a call for sure!
[HD2 General] Volw:
I've had a completely different experience with them over the phone and I called 5 or 6 times as I really wanted to stay with T-Mob. (I have a T-Mob contract in Germany for about 10 years now and since I travel there often, it's still running.)

I wanted to extend the contract with T-Mob and get a price match with Virgin (which was over £200 less over 18 months).

T-mob gave me a counter offer, which - after I've calculated it - was more expansive than the offer for new customers! I did negotiate it down a little, but they still didn't want to price match or even get close to it.
[HD2 General] pa49:
I recently got my upgrade to the HD2 from T-mobile.

I have been a customer for three years and I have 600 mins/1200texts, mobile broadband with a 10GB limit on a 12 month contract and pay 31.75/month.

So you see I can't complain at any of that.
[HD2 General] samsamuel:
results of mobile broadband tests across the UK HERE show there's not much in it!
[HD2 General] Volw:
That's not bad. Makes me wonder why they didn't offer me anything interesting after 2 years of being with t-mob uk.
[HD2 General] pa49:
You have to push and push!
[HD2 General] nixeon:
I had the same problem when buying my hd2. I originally wanted to stay with o2 as my family are on it, which means free calls for them to me (they are on pay and go). However o2 want £330 for the hd2 for me to upgrade.

In the end I went with T-Mobile as they were doing the following deal:

HTC HD2 Phone = £69.99

Unlimited Text

Unlimited Web'n'Walk

900 Minutes

18 Month Contract.

£36 per month (I was paying £45 per month for my o2 iphone and got less!)

You could get the phone free if you signed up to a 24month contract, but for some reason T-mobile credited my account with the £69.99 so I got the first month free, and the second month I had to pay £2.99 lol. (basically got the phone free anyhow)

Have a look around for deals, and don't be afraid to go to the shop and say, this is company A's deal can you beat it.
[HD2 General] chris_ah1:
well after ten years last time i tried to upgrade on vodafone all i could get was 150mins, 150 texts for £25 per month + VAT!!!!

Then i did haggling and got 1200mins+UT+UI+HD2 all for £30 per month when they saw my usage and my low tariffs for all these years.

Then they sent me satio instead of HD2 so they would not have to supply anything :(

Ijust hope my haggling works better on O2!!! All i have to do is get a few extra mins thrown in.
[HD2 General] bangell:
Got a great deal through carphone warehouse online

Orange, 1200 mins, unlimited texts, 500MB internet (which I dont go anywhere near) £35 for £18

The contract is actually £45 for 18 months but carphone warehouse automatically credit my orange account with £10 a month - need to remember to renegotiate my contract before month 18!
[HD2 General] :
HD2

FREE

Virgin mobile uk

800 mins

unlimited txt (capped 3000)

unlimited data (capped 1gig)

£30 a month

3 months free insurance

2 months free line rental because i already have a virgin tv package with broadband
[Touch Dual, MDA Touch Plus ROM Development] kauazake:
hello developers ..

1.i have a niki 100 16 key 3 months ago my phone speaker died (the one in the back) i still can make phone calls and everything but i cannot hear the ringtone or any multimedia .

today suddenly the phone speaker started to work again :D and then went off again :(

could it be a software issue??if so can anybody tell me how to fix it

i`m using Insomnia v3.20 - v3.20

2.wat is the best Insomnia rom??

thnx alot!
[Hero CDMA General] Joecrack305:
Next Android version will be called Froyo,

says Erick Tseng

By Vladislav Savov posted Jan 16th 2010 7:10PM

Breaking News

Exclusive

Proving once again that those who don't watch The Engadget Show are always going to be one step behind those who do, our latest star guest Erick Tseng has dropped a dollop of exclusive wisdom on us: Android's next big iteration will be known as Froyo. That's short for "frozen yogurt" and fits right in line with the zany naming scheme that has delivered us Cupcakes, Donuts, and Eclairs so far. If you had your money on Flan being next in that alphabetical order, sorry to disappoint. No additional info could be squeezed out of the Google man at present -- such as how much further along Froyo will be from Android 2.1 (technically considered part of Eclair) or when we might expect the upgrade -- but we've got a name and that should be plenty to get us started on another wonderful journey of soothsaying and speculation.
[Hero CDMA General] jeric71:
2.1 is actually part of Eclair - as noted in the article.

Froyo looks to be whatever number Google wants to trot out next, whether that be 2.5, or 3.0.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] canoliman67:
I have a global Verizon TP2, that I've now moved to T-Mobile service. Obviously, I'm now using the GSM network.

My questions is, and I haven't seen it answered elsewhere, can I flash a GSM ROM or must I flash a CMDA Rom and set my network manually?

I may have missed the answer in my search, I admit, but I did try.

I should add, I've unlocked using HardSpl and the radio unlocker by Olipro and friends, which is how I got it working with T-mobile. I've also flashed the unofficial "official" 6.5 ROM for Verizon TP2.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] ai6908:
CDMA is thats what your base phone is.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] jhernand1102:
I'm not positive but I do not think you can flash any rom but an official upgrade from verizon, This is a hybird phone and no cooks have made any customs roms for it yet that I'm aware of...
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] canoliman67:
There are custom ROMs for CDMA TP2, but not as many as for GSM TP2. I was just wondering. If I flash a CMDA ROM, I have to work through all the settings again to set it up for GSM, and it's a pain.

But if I must, I must.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Windows Mobile General] fendi503:
It is a verizon phone so it is CDMA with the ability to use the GSM network. You HAVE to flash a CDMA ROM.