Very interesting product [telecom]

John, would that be 3G of the 1700 MHz "T-Mobile USA" variety, or 3G of the 1900 MHz "at&t & nearly everybody else" variety? And, any idea if the GSM for voice uses a world-wide 4-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) radio?

Interesting find :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

What's the best way to determine this? Frankly I don't know and this has got to be the most poorly documented device I have ever used.

I have one site that claims:

network:GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA frequency:850/900/1800/1900/2100

But it also says they're made in Malaysia when mine says it's made in China. Yeah, it could be built in both or production was moved to China.

I'm really resisting the urge to carry it around work and use it as a phone. People think I'm strange enough. ;-) And speaking of strange, my email about the iPhone Fork was intended for another private list of phone geeks. I was sending stuff into this list and went into autopilot.

John

Whose network SIM are you using, and in which country?

If a T-Mo USA SIM in the USA, and you're really getting 3G speeds, then I have to guess you've got the T-Mo brand of 1700 MHz (that at&t doesn't use) for HSDPA.

If an at&t/cingular SIM in the USA, and you're really getting 3G speeds, then I have to guess you've got the more universal brand of

1900 MHz for HSDPA that at&t uses (but T-Mo doesn't).

If pretty near anywhere else in the world, with pretty near anybody's SIM, most likely the same universal 1900 MHz HSDPA.

acronym HSDPA), I have to suspect you've *not* got in that device any

1700 MHz radio of the sort that T-Mo USA HSDPA would require -- and perhaps no HSDPA service at all.

If you're *really* lucky, the acronym WCDMA and the frequency 2100 MHz

*may* mean you can use this beastie for cellular data access in Japan and Korea, too :-) .

Well, it was perfectly welcome here, fit perfectly.

Cheers, -- tlvp

I'm in the US and I used both a T-Mobile and at AT&T SIM. In both cases I had phone, SMS, and data. I did not try to determine data speeds, I was just more curious if they worked at all.

I'm taking this to Malaysia soon where I have a Maxis/Hotlink SIM. I'll let you know how it works.

If I have time I'll put both SIMs back in and see what sort of connection I get.

If I get the flight I want I'll have a layover in Seoul. But I doubt I'd go to the effort to get a SIM card for my hour or so there.

I try to be more "professional" here than on other lists where it's just a bunch of friends shooting the breeze. :-)

John

In either case they *will* work "at all" because the connection will fall back to an EDGE -- or even a GPRS -- connection. GPRS is a hair faster than old 56 Kb/s dial-up was; EDGE is a hair faster than slowest available DSL (768 Kb/s). Full-speed HSDPA connections can easily exceed

3 Mb/s DSL speeds, depending on the carrier and your equipment.

It should work. Try a speedtest site once there, if you're curious. If you're fast enough to be doing HSDPA, your device is using the

1900 MHz at&t HSDPA spectrum :-) . And bon voyage!

Cheers, -- tlvp

AT&T = 3G T-Mobile = EDGE

I'll be there in about a month. Look for my post then. :-)

+--------------- | tlvp wrote: | > In either case they *will* work "at all" because the connection will | > fall back to an EDGE -- or even a GPRS -- connection. GPRS is a hair | > faster than old 56 Kb/s dial-up was; EDGE is a hair faster than slowest | > available DSL (768 Kb/s). Full-speed HSDPA connections can easily exceed | > 3 Mb/s DSL speeds, depending on the carrier and your equipment. | | AT&T = 3G | T-Mobile = EDGE +---------------

Actually, AT&T still supports EDGE (and EDGE-2, and GPRS) even in places where 3G is fully(?) deployed, e.g., the San Francisco Bay Area. When 3G gets congested, which is *often* around rush hour, AT&T will push people off to EDGE. You can see this on phones which display a "G" when they're getting 3G service and "E" when they're only getting EDGE.

The same is also true of my "Laptop Connect" service, using an old Sierra Wireless AC860 PCMCIA card. Unless I "lock" the card onto 3G [using "AT!BAND=02"], it will bounce me back & forth from HSDPA (3G) to EDGE (2G) without warning... assigning new IP addresses and blowing away my SSH sessions in the process!!

-Rob

p.s. One of the few annoying things about my "Captivate" [Samsung Galaxy-S tweaked for AT&T] is that it sometimes gets "stuck" in EDGE-only mode, and then *never* switches back to 3G until the next time I power-cycle it. (*grumpf!*) I don't know if this is a problem with the phone's radio, with the Android-2.1 driver for it, or with AT&T's policies. All I know for sure it's that it's *very* irritating!

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ Rob Warnock 627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

Sounds like its 3G radio is relying on the (far more universally used) 1900 MHz HSDPA band, hence should be just fine in ...

Cheers, and enjoy all the fine local Rijstafel cuisine, -- tlvp

Huh? Outside North America the GSM bands are 900 and 1800, not 850 and 1900.

R's, John

Not the GSM voice part, John -- the HSDPA (high-speed) *data* part :-). Or am I off track yet again?

Cheers, -- tlvp

I'm pretty sure you're mistaken. All the time I've been in Europe, I've never seen any refs to a 1900 MHz mobile band. It's 1900 here,

1800 in most of the rest of the world. Mobile bands are valuable, voice and data share them.

I know you're referring to another John. But I'm often off track on this subject too. I just can't keep everything straight any more. Even when I think I have it right I have it wrong. :-)

Again, John, I was referring rather to the data bands 900/1700/2100 UMTS, or

850/1900/2100 UMTS, that see use only with T-Mobile (and a few Canadian operators), or pretty much everyone else, respectively. I think the newish Nokias N8 may well be the only -- certainly one of the very few -- handsets extant to handle *both* with aplomb :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp

-- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

Rather than telling you once again that you're confused, can I ask you to spend two minutes and read this Wikipedia article which explains what bands are used where?

The 2100 band is starting to be used in Europe, other than that it's

900 and 1800. The 850 and 1900 bands are used in North America, as is the recently licensed 1700 band.

R's, John

Per John Mayson:

I'm probably looking right at it and not seeing... but does anybody know what the screen rez is?

-- PeteCresswell

800x480