The Prepaid Smartphone Thread - Net10, Actually Mildly Evil

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Prepaid Smartphone Thread - Net10, Actually Mildly Evil

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

About to just go ahead and pay off my G3 from AT&T NEXT so I can have them switch me to Go Phone's unlimited (1.5GB LTE) plan @ $45.

Is there a better GSM prepaid plan than this? The OP's pretty out of date and I see T-Mo's plans are about the same and would require me to try and get my rooted phone unlocked by ATT which I'm not too sure about.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 22:29

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 10:46

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

nimper posted:

$35 on Cricket gets you 2.5GB of LTE.

Wow this is pretty amazing. Looks like it'll be Cricket, thanks!

I did notice they cap the LTE speed at 8Mbps which is slightly irritating since I live in an area with 25Mb+ on most of the towers. But the savings is well worth it.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 23:35

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Jumped ship from ATT to Cricket today, speeds are just fine and my bill is about half which is rad. Didn't even need to enter my phone's unlock code I got from ATT since they are on the same network.

I don't seem to be able to tether, which I may find a workaround for since I"m rooted but otherwise very happy I made the switch. Now to see how long it'll be before I can move to the Oneplus Two because of their dumbass invite system.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 21:54

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

IuniusBrutus posted:

How reliable is Cricket's service these days? Last time I was looking at switching it seemed like they were having issues with service outages.

It's exactly as good as AT&T's

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 04:58

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

peterjmatt posted:

Yup, it's ATT branded. Are folks with carrier-free devices receiving OTA updates on Cricket?

CM12 on my LG G3 is pretty amazing vs stock Kit Kat. I'd recommend it as well. I'm also on Cricket with an ATT phone if that matters.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 17:24

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

According to the website it'll only get 3g with em. It gets 4g lte on T-Mobile but I figured what the hell, it's been a while since I've upgraded my cell.

This is some kind of thing they use to try and trick you into buying a phone from them/not wanting to guarantee 4G speed. They said my ATT LG G3 could not get LTE on Cricket which is complete horseshit. So you may want to at least try it out.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 03:26

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

tonic posted:

Did they increase the bandwidth on Cricket? Repeatedly getting 10+mbit on both the up and download the last few weeks using the speed test app.

Albuquerque - 8.05 down, 7.80 up. The download did burst to about 12Mbps for a couple seconds but the throttling clearly kicked in after that.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2015 20:03

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Looks like I can't tether on my new Moto X pure on Cricket. Is there a work around or should I just jump to Straight Talk?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 16:25

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Vykk.Draygo posted:

Could you tether on your previous phone with the same SIM?

Yes but that was rooted/CM12 so I imagine that's why. I was kind of hoping to move past rooting every device I owned but this kind of sucks

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 17:53

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

FAUXTON posted:

There was probably some kind of header/user-agent fudging going on with your CM ROM to make it look like you weren't tethering. IIRC Koush made something that made tethering work while making the data look like it was just the phone and not tethering, though that was way back in like 2011 or possibly further.

From what I can tell it's just a sql value in settings.db called "tether_entitlement_check_state" and you can change the value to 0 to bypass the auth check. But of course that requires root.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 18:39

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Is the galaxy grand prime thing from cricket rootable?

Yep, you have to flash a kernel via Odin. This of course trips Knox, not that anyone running that cheap rear end phone cares probably

# ¿ Sep 18, 2015 21:20

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Rastor posted:

Heads up, Sprint is tweaking the plans on their Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands:
http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2015/09/boost-mobile-launches-new-plans-with.html

$30/month (with auto-pay) for 5 GB data, unlimited talk, and unlimited text is not too shabby, if you can live with having a Boost Mobile phone on the Sprint network.

The $30 plan doesn't reach 5GB until you have 18 on-time payments. It grows by 500MB every 3 months that you pay on time.

Still, it's a very attractive plan if you can stomach being on Sprint :lol:

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 16:10

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

revdrkevind posted:

Out of curiosity can you grab your APN settings? Not that I expect it would make a difference.

These are mine for Cricket on a Moto X Pure, never had an MMS issue.

Name: internet
APN: ndo
Proxy: Not set
Port: Not set
Username: Not set
Password: Not set
Server: Not set
MMSC: http://mmsc.aiowireless.net
MMS Proxy: proxy.aiowireless.net
MMS Port: 80
MCC: 310
MNC: 150
Authentication type: Not set
APN type: default,mms,fota,hipri,supl
APN protocol: IPv4
APN roaming protocol: IPv4
Bearer: Unspecified

# ¿ Oct 29, 2015 17:50

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

Eh, this might just be a little hiccup in how the phone reports the network it's on. I'll give you an example.

I've used a total of 3 phones on cricket: A verizon Moto Razr M, a Verizon Galaxy s4, and an unlocked Second gen Moto G. The Razr M and Unlocked phone both show the networks as Cricket when I'm using them, but the Galaxy s4 always showed it as ATT. Like if you pulled down the notification bar it would say ATT instead of Cricket. Never affected the performance of the phone in anyway whatsoever.

My X Pure frequently switches between showing ATT and Cricket in the pulldown. The phone works the same no matter which one is shown.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 22:30

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Vykk.Draygo posted:

So what's the catch, other than the hard limits on data? Is it the same 8/4 speeds as Cricket?

I assume "unthrottled" means full speed LTE which is really very fast in many ATT markets (I used to get 15-50Mbps). Since I never hit my 5GB cap on Cricket and I miss using my hotspot I may jump ship.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2015 00:53

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Rastor posted:

When T-Mobile launches their new changes on November 19th, they will also be tweaking their MetroPCS prepaid brand:
https://www.metropcs.com/more-data.html

* $40 plan is now 3GB (instead of 2GB)
* $50 plan is now 5GB (instead of 4GB)
* Music streaming (via approved services) does not count against your data
* "Data Maximizer" is like the Binge On optimizing technology, except that video streaming DOES count against your data, it's just optimized to not use as much

http://www.tmonews.com/2015/11/metropcs-gets-its-own-versions-of-music-freedom-and-binge-on/

Seems pretty compelling if being on the T-Mobile network isn't a problem for you.

Also they let you tether unlike Cricket. Probably going to jump ship to this.

edit: Digitally Imported (and a bunch of other music apps) don't count against your data cap. Sold!

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 01:15

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

I have an AT&T LG G3 (D850) that is carrier unlocked. Will it definitely work on MetroPCS? They supposedly use T-Mobile towers, which would mean I need LTE 2, 4 and 12 and GSM 700, 1700, 1900 MHz? But the phone only has some of those listed so I'm not sure how to interpret that.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2015 23:37

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Metropcs includes hotspot on all their plans for $0 extra

# ¿ Jan 24, 2016 20:25

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

T-Mobile just bumped the data on their no-contract plans:

Unlimited T/T/D plus
-3GB LTE $40
-5GB LTE $50
-10GB LTE $60

Includes Music Freedom which is handy

e: Looks like they charge taxes and fees unlike the MVNOs, so MetroPCS is still a better deal if you want T-Mobile service.

Syrinxx fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jan 28, 2016

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 18:11

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

MrKatharsis posted:

If you have an unlocked device with hotspot capability, you can set up a hotspot using a cricket sim without paying the $10/month. I have done this on an Asus Zenfone 2 multiple times with zero issues.

This doesn't work on a Moto X Pure (unlocked)

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 20:41

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Rabble posted:

Will I regret using straight talk?

My GF jumped from Straight Talk to Cricket and likes it a lot better. She had billing problems, slower speeds, and the customer service from ST was absolutely terrible

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 18:11

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Down in Albuquerque for a few hours now. Hoping it's coming back up nationwide and not just in nyc.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 01:55

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Csixtyfour posted:

Supposedly this is a "24hr network upgrade" Now, who in there right loving mind would decide a good time to upgrade a pre-pay cell service on a friday night is beyond me.

What's the source for this, because their twitter says it's a "service issue" https://twitter.com/Cricketnation/status/738868800137891840

e: lol at the Verizon customer service guy telling the people on twitter to come switch

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 04:06

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Most major network outages are the result of some dipshit slicing a major fiber with a backhoe but I doubt Cricket/ATT will ever actually fess up as to what happened.

Also, still down. Moto X Pure 2015 :suicide:

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 05:15

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Any feedback on Mint SIM? It's got very low pricing if you pay in advance (which is kind of a contract I guess) but they're on T-Mo so I wonder if they're better than Metro.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 22:24

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

mAlfunkti0n posted:

Nope, I verified with them that the info was correct.

If you have a store near you, go in. The people working there are probably 17 year old idiots but at least they have the ability to call the magic number for reseller support and fix a number port while you stand there. Same thing happened to me and the stoners at the local Cricket place had it sorted in about 5 minutes.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2017 18:20

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Uh no, it hasn't even been 2 months since the last time Messenger had a bug that tanked battery life. It's a complete shitshow of an app.

http://www.androidcentral.com/facebook-says-new-battery-issues-can-be-fixed-app-reset-no-update-old-battery-issues

If you don't want to use MMS for some weird reason then I guess just see if your friends are on WhatsApp (hint: if they're in the US they aren't)

# ¿ Mar 11, 2017 00:57

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Vykk.Draygo posted:

Android itself decides to tank the battery seemingly randomly. Should we just quit using it? It's an app that nearly every american with a smartphone has installed, and thus the easiest to use.

I use FB messenger via Metal for people that just refuse to text but the app is pretty bad. No matter how many phones it's on, it's still on fewer than SMS.

This of course would all be solved if Google could stop making weird lovely messaging apps and just make a 100% clone of iMessage

# ¿ Mar 11, 2017 04:14

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

I hotspot on my OnePlus 3 all the time without paying extra to Cricket :confused:

I guess some phones bypass the carrier check maybe?

# ¿ May 28, 2017 20:36

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

I'm looking for a SIM I can put in an old phone so I can leave my 9yo at home for an hour and he can call me if something comes up. I expect the minutes will never be used so I don't want to have a recurring monthly charge. Would I be better off with FreedomPop or a small pay as you go sim such as Ting?

The device is an old Galaxy Note 2 if that matters

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 16:37

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Another slightly disgruntled Cricket customer considering switching. Is there a site I can use to see if Tmo (MetroPCS) in my area has whatever is needed to get good signal inside buildings?

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 19:19

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Mint just upped the data on their plans to 3GB / 8GB / 12GB for $15 / 20 / 25 per month annual or $20 / 25 / 35 biannual

# ¿ Jan 4, 2019 06:58

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

I hopped on Mint once Tmo added band 12 in my area and now I get 4 bars in the parts of my building where the verizon slobs get no coverage.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2019 16:46

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Just started my second 6mo period with Mint, they are great. No throttling or deprioritization that I can tell, I get 25+ Mbps around town. I haven't had to contact their customer service for any reason, though, so I don't know about that.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2019 18:16

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 10:46

Syrinxx: Mar 28, 2002; Death is whimsical today

Valicious posted:

Hey guys, I�m looking for a cheaper wireless plan. My partner and I both use < 1gb of data combined. We�re paying ~$55+tax right now for Google Fi.
Mint Mobile seems pretty nice at $15/month each (3gb), but I�ve seen mention of Mobi (never heard of them before) as well. Any of you have experiences with Mint?

I've been on Mint for a very long time and it is great. They (via Tmo) have great coverage inside buildings thanks to 700MHz band 12.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2021 01:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The Prepaid Smartphone Thread - Net10, Actually Mildly Evil