07-23-2020, 10:29 AM
I'm waiting on my phone (its been sitting in California for a couple weeks).
I live in Utah, and my daily phone carrier is Verizon. I'm interested in an inexpensive alternative for my PinePhone UBPorts edition. I've been eye-balling Mint Mobile, but it's really not much cheaper than what I'm paying (I've got unlimited everything for ~$70 a month currently).
Out here we've got T-Mobile & AT&T for our GSM carriers, and Sprint & Verizon for our CDMA carriers. I know a lot of the smaller companies (I call them spin-off companies, since many are just the big guys under a different name).
TracPhone seems to be popular on the forums, and I have had friends use their pre-paid services with pretty good success. My girlfriend's son uses Cingular, and she uses prepaid from Walmart (Verizon I think) but neither have much data (and I use much data  ).
I usually get the military discount, and I'm only a few years away from getting and senior citizen discounts  .
Is there a decent way to get a better deal over the phone, or in person? I don't want to pay too much since this phone won't be my daily (unless it makes me happier than my Pixel 2XL).
(07-23-2020, 10:29 AM)67comet Wrote: I'm waiting on my phone (its been sitting in California for a couple weeks).
I live in Utah, and my daily phone carrier is Verizon. I'm interested in an inexpensive alternative for my PinePhone UBPorts edition. I've been eye-balling Mint Mobile, but it's really not much cheaper than what I'm paying (I've got unlimited everything for ~$70 a month currently).
Out here we've got T-Mobile & AT&T for our GSM carriers, and Sprint & Verizon for our CDMA carriers. I know a lot of the smaller companies (I call them spin-off companies, since many are just the big guys under a different name).
TracPhone seems to be popular on the forums, and I have had friends use their pre-paid services with pretty good success. My girlfriend's son uses Cingular, and she uses prepaid from Walmart (Verizon I think) but neither have much data (and I use much data ).
I usually get the military discount, and I'm only a few years away from getting and senior citizen discounts .
Is there a decent way to get a better deal over the phone, or in person? I don't want to pay too much since this phone won't be my daily (unless it makes me happier than my Pixel 2XL). Try Visible, republic wireless, us mobile, red pocket
(07-23-2020, 06:40 PM)rocket2nfinity Wrote: (07-23-2020, 10:29 AM)67comet Wrote: I'm waiting on my phone (its been sitting in California for a couple weeks).
I live in Utah, and my daily phone carrier is Verizon. I'm interested in an inexpensive alternative for my PinePhone UBPorts edition. I've been eye-balling Mint Mobile, but it's really not much cheaper than what I'm paying (I've got unlimited everything for ~$70 a month currently).
Out here we've got T-Mobile & AT&T for our GSM carriers, and Sprint & Verizon for our CDMA carriers. I know a lot of the smaller companies (I call them spin-off companies, since many are just the big guys under a different name).
TracPhone seems to be popular on the forums, and I have had friends use their pre-paid services with pretty good success. My girlfriend's son uses Cingular, and she uses prepaid from Walmart (Verizon I think) but neither have much data (and I use much data ).
I usually get the military discount, and I'm only a few years away from getting and senior citizen discounts .
Is there a decent way to get a better deal over the phone, or in person? I don't want to pay too much since this phone won't be my daily (unless it makes me happier than my Pixel 2XL). Try Visible, republic wireless, us mobile, red pocket
(Reply Thank you, I totally forgot about Visible (looks the best for me currently), and Republic Wireless is attractive because I can pay by the year.
Thanks again..
02-11-2021, 02:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-11-2021, 03:55 PM by zer0sig.
Edit Reason: update with results
)
Just got a Red Pocket SIM today - $10.25 for the SIM plus 30 days of modest services (1000min, unlimited texts and 1GB of data), easily enough to test some different builds (starting with Manjaro as per the original install). Looking forward to trying out my phone as a phone.
UPDATE - setup was painless. I logged into the website, entered the number from my ICCID included with my SIM card, and it started seeing towers after a couple of minutes. Didn't let me make a call it first (took a little time to register that there was already a 30 day plan associated, not unusual) but several minutes later that and messaging worked just fine. Towers got a lot better at about the same time I guess as it figured out that the plan covered 4G. No issues so far. Cheap and easy.
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it doesn't get happy
it doesn't get sad
it just runs programs
(02-11-2021, 02:17 PM)zer0sig Wrote: Just got a Red Pocket SIM today - $10.25 for the SIM plus 30 days of modest services (1000min, unlimited texts and 1GB of data), easily enough to test some different builds (starting with Manjaro as per the original install). Looking forward to trying out my phone as a phone.
UPDATE - setup was painless. I logged into the website, entered the number from my ICCID included with my SIM card, and it started seeing towers after a couple of minutes. Didn't let me make a call it first (took a little time to register that there was already a 30 day plan associated, not unusual) but several minutes later that and messaging worked just fine. Towers got a lot better at about the same time I guess as it figured out that the plan covered 4G. No issues so far. Cheap and easy. AT&T, T-mobile, or Verizon sim?
I used AT&T since those towers work well with my current regular cell provider (cricket). My guess is that if you have a provider that covers your area well, Red Pocket's equivalent will work well too. I have usually had better luck with AT&T over time so I used the GSMA option IIRC.
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it doesn't get happy
it doesn't get sad
it just runs programs
(02-12-2021, 06:20 AM)zer0sig Wrote: I used AT&T since those towers work well with my current regular cell provider (cricket). My guess is that if you have a provider that covers your area well, Red Pocket's equivalent will work well too. I have usually had better luck with AT&T over time so I used the GSMA option IIRC. We've had several reports of people getting kicked off of AT&T and Cricket with messages saying, roughly, your device isn't on our whitelist. So, please keep us advised if that happens to you.
(02-12-2021, 06:26 PM)rocket2nfinity Wrote: We've had several reports of people getting kicked off of AT&T and Cricket with messages saying, roughly, your device isn't on our whitelist. So, please keep us advised if that happens to you.
I heard about this happening with Cricket, but I hadn't heard about AT&T itself. Do you remember where the AT&T reports are?
02-14-2021, 08:00 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2021, 08:19 AM by mw4jet.
Edit Reason: added
)
I have a Patriot Mobile account, I get a military discount, and you can type in your IMEI number to see if it is supported.
Check them out, they have a few plans.
(02-12-2021, 06:26 PM)rocket2nfinity Wrote: We've had several reports of people getting kicked off of AT&T and Cricket with messages saying, roughly, your device isn't on our whitelist. So, please keep us advised if that happens to you.
I have a Nexus 4 I flashed to Ubuntu Touch when Canonical was running with it, it never really worked so I threw it in a drawer as the dropped the project.
I stumbled across the UBPorts project and got it to update with the tool they have. I put my ATT sim in it January, I don't think calling worked but texting did?
Anyway, I tried again after and update later in January (like 1 week later) and I got my account suspended because I put my SIM in a unsupported device. I had call them to restore my service. I have a crapple XS daily driver that quit working LOL! I hear Cricket did the same, I suspect they are a subsidiary of ATT.
Edit to add: I checked it on Patriot and it returned a message to contact them about the Nexus 4, So I expect it is not equipped to run on the newer frequencies or whatever. My PinePhone works only as good as the OS....Ubuntu works on 4G for texts and 3G for voice...quite inconvenient. Mobian Text works, voice is awful.
(02-14-2021, 08:00 AM)mw4jet Wrote: I have a Patriot Mobile account, I get a military discount, and you can type in your IMEI number to see if it is supported.
Check them out, they have a few plans.
(02-12-2021, 06:26 PM)rocket2nfinity Wrote: We've had several reports of people getting kicked off of AT&T and Cricket with messages saying, roughly, your device isn't on our whitelist. So, please keep us advised if that happens to you.
I have a Nexus 4 I flashed to Ubuntu Touch when Canonical was running with it, it never really worked so I threw it in a drawer as the dropped the project.
I stumbled across the UBPorts project and got it to update with the tool they have. I put my ATT sim in it January, I don't think calling worked but texting did?
Anyway, I tried again after and update later in January (like 1 week later) and I got my account suspended because I put my SIM in a unsupported device. I had call them to restore my service. I have a crapple XS daily driver that quit working LOL! I hear Cricket did the same, I suspect they are a subsidiary of ATT.
Edit to add: I checked it on Patriot and it returned a message to contact them about the Nexus 4, So I expect it is not equipped to run on the newer frequencies or whatever. My PinePhone works only as good as the OS....Ubuntu works on 4G for texts and 3G for voice...quite inconvenient. Mobian Text works, voice is awful. It's not the frequencies, it's the lack of VoLTE capability and AT&Ts whitelist. The Pinephone is capable of AT&T VoLTE and mine still got kicked off. So that's AT&T pre-paid, Cricket (owned by AT&T), and now Patriot Mobile. It seems the whitelist is rolling out to MVNOs. Not good....
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