Food For Thought: Cellular Data Roaming Charges

I spotted an article last week about a Regina man who incurred $10,600 in data roaming charges from SaskTel when he travelled to Phoenix, Arizona and let his grandkids watch Netflix movies over a mobile data stick for his laptop.

The man in the article was honest about his mistake and I'm not going to judge him. What I think is ridiculous is the extremely high data fees he incurred, and how they were dealt with. The article says:

"[The man] followed up with SaskTel which decided to take mercy on him and promised to reduce the $10,668.38 bill by $9,600."

That's good PR for SaskTel, but I think it highlights the worthlessness of data fees on mobile devices. While cellular carriers do incur expenses creating international roaming agreements with carriers worldwide, the $9,600 bill reduction demonstrates that data fees are mostly pure profit for telecoms.

In other words: SaskTel gave up $9,600 in pure profit to get some good PR by taking mercy on a grandfather, but their roaming data rates (and the rates of their competitors) will remain sky-high to scalp profits from ignorant consumers.

I'm not villainizing SaskTel - cellular carriers all over the world do this. So be careful with your smartphones, tablets, and mobile data sticks while travelling!

Samsung Galaxy S II: First Impressions & Tweaks

I broke my Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant yesterday... the phone just completely locked up. I was not too heartbroken, though. The Vibrant was a great phone, but the limited global availability of the GT-I9000M  (Bell, Virgin and SaskTel) limited the hacking/rooting potential - something I'm very keen on. Not many users = not many hacks. (And to be honest - I was itching for a new toy. I think I can revive the Vibrant eventually and sell it)

I knew I was eligible for a hardware upgrade on October 29, so I called SaskTel and pleaded: Will you let me upgrade two weeks early? Yes, they said! Immediately after work I bought a Samsung Galaxy S II (GT-I9100M) from Battery Boys on 8th Street. Samsung has sold millions of these phones already and there is a large, enthusiastic community of hackers hacking away to make them better.

First Impressions

This phone is FAST. The user interface is incredibly fluid and smooth - much more so than on the Vibrant. Finding and installing the ~30 essential apps that I had on my Vibrant took me all of a few minutes on a WiFi connection.

If you are a Vibrant owner (or have any other Android phone) and you upgrade to the SGS2, you may not notice any mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting changes in how you use the Android OS on a daily basis, but everything is just smoother and better. If the SGS2 is your first smartphone, you won't realize just how awesome it is compared to other devices.

Tweaks

I am a tweaker; I tweak. Switching to the SGS2 was awesome because other people have eliminated most of the risks and have written out great instructions. With lots of documentation and careful reading, there is virtually* no risk in modifying the phone.

*some

About 20 minutes after I opened the box, I decided to root the phone. "Rooting" for Android is more-or-less the same as "Jailbreaking" for iOS; it lifts any restrictions that the carrier (SaskTel) or manufacturer (Samsung) have on the device. The process was remarkably simple and fast - I was done in two minutes. I encourage new rooters to read and comprehend the first few posts in these threads (this, this) before attempting root. If you are unwilling to read, rooting is not for you!

After rooting I installed Titanium Backup. This app allows rooted users to uninstall some of the lame "bloatware" apps that waste space on your phone: AccuWeather, AllShare, Buddies Now, Days, Game/Music/Readers/Social Hub(s), Kobo, Mini Diary, Mini Paper, Music Hub, Polaris Office, Press Reader, Yahoo Finance, Zinio Reader. Titanium Backup can also back up these apps before you uninstall them - just in case you remove something critical to your phone (but all of the apps I listed are trash). Here's another list of apps that are "safe" to remove. Remember, just because you can remove them, doesn't mean you should.

Next I installed AdFree Android. This is a deep adblocker for rooted Android users - it doesn't just hide ads, it nullifies ad requests before they leave your phone - saving bandwidth and improving loading times of apps that have ads.

I also carrier-unlocked my phone with the app Galaxy_S Unlock. Again, this requires root. Carriers like SaskTel and Bell "lock" phones to their networks so you can't use them with other providers, should you decide to switch. Sometimes you can pay your carrier a fee to unlock your phone for you. I'm not switching from SaskTel anytime soon, but why shouldn't my phone be carrier-unlocked, and why should I pay to do it? :-)

Finally, there is an annoying "play a notification when the battery is done charging, even if it is 3AM and your phone is muted" setting programmed deep into all Galaxy S phones. I found a helpful post on xda-developers with instructions on how to erase the sound entirely for rooted users. No more 3AM wake-up notifications, hooray!

I am not quite ready to install custom ROMs on my SGS2 since that's how I broke my Vibrant. But lots of people are happily running custom ROMs on SGS2s, so I will get there eventually.

EDIT: October 13/2011
I found two more bugs (well, found discussions about them) that affect SGS2 users.

The first is a persistent but unnecessary process that sucks up a lot of CPU time, and drains the battery. If you press Menu on your homescreen to go into Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Usage and you see "Wi-Fi Sharing" as an app that consumes a significant (>2%) amount of your battery, you're affected. There is a long discussion here, but to summarize, you can use Titanium Backup to "freeze" the processes named "Wi-Fi Sharing" and "Wi-Fi Sharing Manager" to prevent them from running. Yes, root is required. This will not affect your phone's ability to use Wi-Fi or tether via Wi-Fi. This is a dumb Samsung process run amok, wasting your phone's resources.

The second is another persistent but unsolvable bug, as of today. If you go back into your Battery Usage menu and see a process called "Android OS" that's using a significant (>2%) amount of your phone's resources, you're affected. There is a long and geekily-fascinating discussion here, and users of xda-developers have narrowed down the cause to a bug in the Linux kernel. There is no sure fix yet.

SaskTel Voicemail-to-Email: How did I not know about this???

Here's something neat I figured out today for all of you SaskTel customers. SaskTel lets you log into your voicemail online, and you can configure the system to send you your voicemail messages as .wav email attachments.

Check this out. Log into your online voicemail account here.

Under Messaging Options, browse to Notifications. Fill in your email address and check off the .wav file option.

When you get a voicemail, you get an email that looks like this:

Look at that attachment size - 25KB for a quick 15 second voicemail! If your phone supports the audio file (apparently my Android phone doesn't without a .wav player app), it would probably be faster to listen to the .wav file from your email on your phone than it would be to log into your voicemail on your phone by following all of the prompts.

Finally if you decide to click the link in the SaskTel email, this is what you get:

An option to download it to a PC, listen online, or delete the message.

Cool! I don't think I will ever check a voicemail through my phone again - not only are the voice-prompt menus too slow, but basic functions like replaying or skipping messages are complete guesswork. Not any more!

How to get Froyo on your SaskTel Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant

EDIT, APRIL 2011: Hey guys, I noticed for some reason this blog post is getting lots of traffic. Just a heads-up, the info might be out of date and inaccurate by now, especially considering that Android 2.3 is starting to roll out to the Vibrant phones!

Irritating news yesterday, as Samsung Canada announced Froyo (Android 2.2) was available for the Galaxy S Vibrant on SaskTel - and SaskTel said that was false.

Well, good news, a bunch of enterprising hackers have figured out how to get Froyo on their SaskTel Vibrants anyway. Basically, we're going to flash our SaskTel Vibrants with Bell firmware. I'm collecting these links as a helpful internet denizen, but I can't take any credit for any of the process (I do want to thank Bman_1 for pointing me in the right direction).

Standard Disclaimer: While this worked for me, there's a chance it may not work for you. If messing with your phone's firmware makes you queasy, wait for the official SaskTel update. You and you alone are responsible if you brick your phone. These instructions are largely based on this forum post with a few more details added.

UPDATE DECEMBER 19/2010: I can't say whether it's because of this procedure or not, but my Vibrant bricked itself a few days after this update. I heard it turn itself off (it played that off animation) and I was unable to revive it. It died randomly while I wasn't touching it. BEWARE!!!

--== How to get Froyo on your SaskTel Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant ==--

1. Download Kies Registry Patcher from this forum post on XDA-Developers. You will need to register for the forums. Yes, a small pain, but you want the latest version of this software.

2. Download and install Samsung Kies. This is Samsung's massive, bloated updating program. If you already have it installed, make sure you have version 1.5.3.10103.102 installed.

3. If you have Kies open after installing it, close it. Launch Kies Registry Patcher.

• Set "Enable Spoof" to true. 
• Set "Spoof Product Code as" to BMC (this is Bell Mobility Canada's code). 
• After you select BMC, "Spoof Software Revision as" should say "I9000UGJG9/I9000BMCJG9/I9000UGJG9/I9000UGJG9". Kies version should be the same as above.
• Click "Write Registry" and click "yes" to apply the update. 
• You're done with the Kies Registry Patcher for now, but leave it running in the background. You'll need it in a minute. 

4. Open Samsung Kies. Now, refer to Samsung's great step-by-step instructions to updating your phone to Android 2.2. 

5. When you get to Step 13 on Samsung's upgrade instructions, you'll be waiting 2-5 minutes while the firmware is downloading to your Vibrant. This is a great time to snag a copy of the ROM, so go back to Kies Registry Patcher and select Rom (top menu bar) then "Save ROM". Don't worry, the update takes a few minutes, you'll have plenty of time to make this step. 

6. After Step 14, your Vibrant will reboot itself. The first bootup to 2.2 will be the longest bootup you will ever experience, DON'T PANIC and DON'T PULL THE BATTERY. It will start up after a few minutes. 

Once your phone has booted up, you will be running in the slowest and ugliest Android environment you will ever experience. BE PATIENT. All programs and services need to re-initialize themselves in the 2.2 environment. Give your phone about 20 minutes to sort itself out, then reboot it again (shut it down by holding the power button, don't do a battery pull). 

After upgrading, my Email app (not Samsung Email) was crashing and preventing me from pulling down the top status bar. I had to remove my work Exchange account from Settings -> Accounts and Sync. After that, things were working perfectly. 

I didn't see that much of a speed increase with the upgrade (I don't have a rooted phone or OneClickLagFix) BUT the new features are really awesome. Voice Search works great, you can install Skype, and Chrome to Phone works perfectly! 

I hope this guide is useful to a few people! If you're looking for support, your best bet is visiting that XDA-Developers thread. My upgrade went perfectly so I won't be much help troubleshooting. 

Good luck! 

--== BONUS: Fix GPS Issues if you haven't already ==--

When I got my Vibrant, the GPS was lackluster. If you're running Android 2.1, visit this XDA-Developers post and follow those instructions. 

If you're running Android 2.2, the number code stops in the above link stops working. You can get to the LbsTestMode menu by downloading an app called Any Cut from the Market, long-pressing your home screen, select Shortcuts, select Any Cut, select Activity, then scroll way down and select LbsTestMode. Click the shortcut, then go back to the above-linked post and change your SUPL/CP settings.

Check-In: Predictions About SaskTel's 3G+ Network Upgrade

Back in July, I wrote this post about SaskTel's HSPA network upgrade. Phase 1 was rolled out on August 16th.

At the end of my post, I summarized my predictions:

So, hedge your bets. SaskTel has ~30 days until August 16, 2010, when they’re going to light up the new network. Sorry SaskTel! Here are my pessimistic predictions:

1. Some kind of launch day complication or delay that affects CDMA users.
2. Sub-standard device lineup on launch day.
3. No iPhone 4.
4. No Android devices (I would be truly sad about this one).
5. Palm Centro still available to purchase on SaskTel website.

 Let's see how accurate I was. One point per correct answer!

1. Some kind of launch day complication or delay that affects CDMA users. 

To my knowledge, the network light-up went off without a hitch, and nobody I know noticed any adverse effects on their existing phones. Good job, SaskTel!

0/1 Points.

2. Sub-standard device lineup on launch day. 

The 3G+ network launched with five devices: Nokia 6530, Nokia 7230, a Novatel Internet Stick, BlackBerry Pearl 9100, and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. A few days later, they added the Samsung Gravity Touch, but it wasn't available on launch day so it doesn't count.

The two BlackBerry devices are pretty rad, but the Nokias are a big "meh" and even the Gravity Touch isn't that impressive.

0.5/1 Points

3. No iPhone 4. 

Right on the money!

1/1 Points

4. No Android Devices

The Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant looks like it's on its way - which is good, it's a well-reviewed phone - but it wasn't available at launch.

1/1 Points

5. Palm Centro still available to purchase on SaskTel website. 

Awwww.... poor little Palm Centro. Still available.

1/1 Points

3.5/5 isn't bad! Truth be told, I wish I'd been wrong about more. Oh well. Here's hoping that this is just the start of a turnaround for device availability at SaskTel!

Will Smartphones Availability Edge Out Small Carriers?

Here's a thought: Will the rise in popularity of smartphones push smaller carriers out of the market?

This past week I posted about SaskTel's upcoming network upgrade in August. Wayne added a helpful comment; he'd tracked down the preliminary smartphone lineup, which includes two new BlackBerry devices and two unexciting Nokia phones.

Tech-savvy consumers want the latest and greatest in smartphones. The larger the carrier, the sooner you can get the latest and greatest devices. If you're with a small carrier, you get to play the waiting game. Or the jealousy game. Or both.

SaskTel has admitted they're working on getting the iPhone 4, but I'm skeptical that will happen. Rogers has the Sony Xperia X10 and will have the iPhone 4 (as will sister company Fido), Bell will have the iPhone 4 (though Bell doesn't do business in little ole' Saskatchewan), and Telus has the HTC Hero and the HTC Desire is coming soon.

As ill-reviewed as Rogers is here in Saskatchewan, they're the only national carrier with a full selection of BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone devices.

And why is Rogers ill-reviewed in Saskatchewan? Well, their coverage is one issue - SaskTel certainly has them beat. But once SaskTel's new network is operational, Rogers customers should be able to roam on that expanded network (correct me if I'm wrong)

Rogers also adjusts their prices and plans to compete regionally. Go to Rogers.com and select that you live on Ontario. Look at voice/data plans, and you can see that evening calling starts at 9PM. Terrible! But chance your locale to Saskatchewan and look at those plans, evening calling starts at 6PM, presumably to compete with SaskTel's provincial stronghold on the mobile market.

Guess what? Their rates aren't even that bad. I priced out a new Sony Xperia X10 and they've included a helpful bill calculator on checkout, it would be approximately what I'm paying for my BlackBerry on SaskTel.

Eight years ago, when all phones did the same thing, plus or minus a few bells and whistles, SaskTel was the obvious choice for cell phone service in Saskatchewan for their coverage. Now that line is blurred - other providers have equally great coverage and offer better devices for similar rates.

I'm not about to jump SaskTel's ship and go to Rogers (I have 2 years left on my current contract, and I can't bring myself to give up BlackBerry Messenger for an Android phone quite yet), but since no carrier has a significant coverage or price advantage, more and more decisions will be made based on device availability. Carriers will need to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest devices to earn new business.