Windows Phone Seven and Prepaid Data

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reefshipping

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Topic # 75747 22-Jan-2011 23:09

I've been considering replacing my ancient iPhone 3G for a year now. And I've Finally decided to remove the bloated elephant that is iTunes out of my life.

At the moment I'm planning on getting an AT&T Samsung Focus from Mobicity but I've been having problems trying to find out how it behaves with data.

Can you disable it from using data at all?

I only sometimes use it, as there is good WiFi coverage at work, uni and home so don't want to pay for it.

If you can't disable it on the device, will the XT $6 data addon (50MB a month) be enough to cover the push notifications and text emails? I'll be doing a tiny amount of browsing mobile sites, and that's it.

I've tried googling with no success.

Thank you! =p

billgates

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Reply # 430060 22-Jan-2011 23:34

Yes. You can disable data on wp7 handsets. I too have a samsung focus and option is availble for me turn data on/off.

I am on the XT prepay smartphoe extra plan. $14 ($11 after XT bonus credit) gets me 480MB data. My first month finished and I ended up using 520MB but that's because it was my first month so I spend a lot of time downloading apps, browsing etc via 3G. 2nd month now and I have only used 50MB in a week now compared to 50MB/day in my first 3 days when I first got the phone.

50MB would be plenty for push emails but it really depends on how many you recieve everyday. I have outlook and hotmail set up as push and my gmail emails being forwarded to hotmail to save data/battery usage on the phone.

Do whatever you want to do man.

reefshipping

29 posts

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Reply # 430064 22-Jan-2011 23:38

billgates: Yes. You can disable data on wp7 handsets. I too have a samsung focus and option is availble for me turn data on/off.

I am on the XT prepay smartphoe extra plan. $14 ($11 after XT bonus credit) gets me 480MB data. My first month finished and I ended up using 520MB but that's because it was my first month so I spend a lot of time downloading apps, browsing etc via 3G. 2nd month now and I have only used 50MB in a week now compared to 50MB/day in my first 3 days when I first got the phone.

50MB would be plenty for push emails but it really depends on how many you recieve everyday. I have outlook and hotmail set up as push and my gmail emails being forwarded to hotmail to save data/battery usage on the phone.

Can you link me to the smartphone data page on telecom?.. Cannot believe I've never heard about such a deal.

Since you own the Focus, can you comment on the build quality... I've heard it feels a bit flimsy, but so does the Galaxy S and I've seen a drunk friend throw it at a fridge and not even a dent.

Thanks for the info on turning data off. Help much appreciated. =p

Can't wait to get my phone now!

billgates

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Reply # 430069 22-Jan-2011 23:54

Build quality is awesome. It does not feel cheap or plasticky. Super AMOLED screen is awesome. My previous phone was a HTC Touch Pro 2 which was HEAVY. My sister in law who has an iPhone 4 picked my phone up and was very surprised that how light my phone was compared to hers.

I have 2 cases for it. Casemate which I got for free and is prob the most expensive one available on ebay or AT&T store and Body Glove case which costed me NZ$28 incl delivery. Without a doubt casemate case is the best. Left and right side has plenty of rubber so good grip and back is solid plastic. I used the phone without a case for a month and still felt safe in my hands although it depends on your job/crazy people around you whether or not you need a case. Body glove case is also very good but not as good as case mate according to me.

http://store.telecom.co.nz/mobile/special-offers/double-up-this-summer?pid=int087

Double your Smartphone Extras

You?ll get double the data for 12 months on a 240MB and 500MB Smartphone Extra options. That means if you pay for a 500MB Extra you?ll get a whopping 1GB of data each month for 12 months. Offer ends 31 January 2011.

I had to ring 0800 32 32 32 to sign up to the smartphone extra plan because the telecom retail store employee was outright lying and asking me to sign up to a 12 month contract to get the double your data deal which doubles your data from 240MB to 480MB for 12 months.

Deal is called Smartphone extra and it costs $28 for 5000 texts and 480MB data. The bit that is interesting with XT and this deal is that $14 is for the data portion and $14 is for the 5000 texts which adds up to $28. If you don't send any texts, then you are only charged $14 for data which btw is charged at $1/MB for the first 14MB to total $14 then rest of 466MB is free. If you do go over your 480MB allowance for the month, then you will be charged 10c/MB till your billing renews.

Texts are charged at .20c for first 70 texts which adds up to $14 then next 4930 texts are free but like I said earlier, if you send say only 2 texts for the whole month then you will only be charged .40 cents for the text and not the entire $14 for the text porttion or if you send no text like me then just $14 for the data portion.

Add XT bonus credit on top of it and $14 data will cost you $11 on a $25 top up. Telecom is ending the bonus credit top up btw on 31st Jan so you might want to buy extra top ups but they will be introducing new bonus system from Feb which no one knows what it is going to be yet.

Do whatever you want to do man.

reefshipping

29 posts

Geek

Reply # 430072 22-Jan-2011 23:59

billgates: Build quality is awesome. It does not feel cheap or plasticky. Super AMOLED screen is awesome. My previous phone was a HTC Touch Pro 2 which was HEAVY. My sister in law who has an iPhone 4 picked my phone up and was very surprised that how light my phone was compared to hers.

I have 2 cases for it. Casemate which I got for free and is prob the most expensive one available on ebay or AT&T store and Body Glove case which costed me NZ$28 incl delivery. Without a doubt casemate case is the best. Left and right side has plenty of rubber so good grip and back is solid plastic. I used the phone without a case for a month and still felt safe in my hands although it depends on your job/crazy people around you whether or not you need a case. Body glove case is also very good but not as good as case mate according to me.

http://store.telecom.co.nz/mobile/special-offers/double-up-this-summer?pid=int087

Double your Smartphone Extras

You?ll get double the data for 12 months on a 240MB and 500MB Smartphone Extra options. That means if you pay for a 500MB Extra you?ll get a whopping 1GB of data each month for 12 months. Offer ends 31 January 2011.

I had to ring 0800 32 32 32 to sign up to the smartphone extra plan because the telecom retail store employee was outright lying and asking me to sign up to a 12 month contract to get the double your data deal which doubles your data from 240MB to 480MB for 12 months.

Deal is called Smartphone extra and it costs $28 for 5000 texts and 480MB data. The bit that is interesting with XT and this deal is that $14 is for the data portion and $14 is for the 5000 texts which adds up to $28. If you don't send any texts, then you are only charged $14 for data which btw is charged at $1/MB for the first 14MB to total $14 then rest of 466MB is free. If you do go over your 480MB allowance for the month, then you will be charged 10c/MB till your billing renews.

Texts are charged at .20c for first 70 texts which adds up to $14 then next 4930 texts are free but like I said earlier, if you send say only 2 texts for the whole month then you will only be charged .40 cents for the text and not the entire $14 for the text porttion or if you send no text like me then just $14 for the data portion.

Add XT bonus credit on top of it and $14 data will cost you $11 on a $25 top up. Telecom is ending the bonus credit top up btw on 31st Jan so you might want to buy extra top ups but they will be introducing new bonus system from Feb which no one knows what it is going to be yet.

Oh fantastic! I cant thank you enough for your help, you've made my night. Pretty much made up my mind now. WP7 here we come.

billgates

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Reply # 430074 23-Jan-2011 00:07

Only thing I can warn you about is that MMS will not work here because there is not setting in wp7 itself to configure MMS settings. It's pre-configured for AT&T. Samsung did release a network profile app to fix this issue but it didn't pick up the XT network when I ran the app though folks in Australia who also imported the AT&T branded foucus from US had success with the network profile app there and their networks like Telstra showed up fine and now they can also send MMS messages. There is another way to congfigure MMS by going into the diagnosis app but wouldn't recommend it. I don't care about MMS anyways so dosen't really bothers me.

I am sure Microsoft would add the MMS settings menu in wp7 in a future update.

Do whatever you want to do man.

chiefie

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Reply # 430089 23-Jan-2011 02:18

Regardless how you want to think of it... be it Windows Phone 7, iPhone or Android, all the smartphones work better with data connection available anytime... delimiting that, you might as well just have basic phone with a PDA.

Anyhow, Windows Phone 7 is a connected device, you can set its synchro to manual, or as frequent as "immediate" for push update, however you cannot disable Facebook data synchro. You can disable data connection to stop all data connection from any app.

The HTC has a connection setting app that will allow you to configure what network you are on. Of course this depending whether the network settings information are kept up to date on the database.

Internet is my backyard...

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