Android Phones

[PhoneMan]

What do you guys think about public mobile coming out with these phones? and are they going to be any good because they are low end android phones?

In my opinion this is a good move for public mobile if they are to stay in the competition, and the phones might be decent for the price. what do you guys think?

[ruddias]

Seems legitimate. Really any android 2.3 under $200 is a bargain. The "Max" seems a little shifty considering I have no idea who makes it... Is it Public Mobile who makes the phone? Not sure.. Either way jumping on the Android bandwagon will pay off for them.

[PhoneMan]

yeah, you're right about the "Max", and Im not sure if public mobile makes there own phones or not, but I would like to seem them stay without smart phones and stay different from the other big phone companies.

[ruddias]

Good point. If they want more customers though, this is a smart move business wise. I think a healthy mix of smart phones and feature phones is good, but only if you keep support for the others. Its kind of a sell out move, but if they want to expand it could be their only choice.. I would like to see them as a top competitor.

[PhoneMan]

yeah, if wants to stay and do well, sadly smart phones are their only chance :P

[the_rookie16]

The two new smartphones at PM are both made by ZTE. Just wanted to let you guys know.

[FileNotFound]

anybody has the new phones? Any data tethering possible?

[raveydavey]

anybody has the new phones? Any data tethering possible?

usb tethering works on the max, havent found a way to root it yet to open it up for wireless tethering though

[tokyopunk]

usb tethering works on the max, havent found a way to root it yet to open it up for wireless tethering though

How does the USB tethering work?

Also the 45$ plans gives unlimited data? I'm hoping to use it as a hotspot for my laptop because I'm often away from my home connection... Do you think it's feasible?

[sarahgreg]

I've got a ZTE android, It's quite good in fact ! 3g speeds are around 1.5 mps with only 1 bar of signal most times. Screen is nice and responsive, colour and such is good...I am quite happy with it ! Truly it's one of the better android phones i've owned. I've never tried any type of tethering and I don't know how. Upload speeds are just as fast. Nope it's not 4g/LTE but it's unbelievable for the money. Data speeds increase as signal gets stronger.:)

[raveydavey]

How does the USB tethering work?

Also the 45$ plans gives unlimited data? I'm hoping to use it as a hotspot for my laptop because I'm often away from my home connection... Do you think it's feasible?

there are 2 ways to get usb tethering working:

connect the phone to the laptop via usb, let it do its installation thing then unplug the phone and restart the computer. turn the phone to debug mode when in usb and power off. when your computer is restarted, log in as normal, then connect the phone up via usb cable and hold the home button while powering on, itll install all new drivers for the phone and create a new network connection, which you just connect through in order to use the web

that's a little bit fiddly

your second option is to download and install pdanet to your computer, as well as on your phone. when you connect your phone and activate it, pdanet SHOULD pick it up and allow you to tether. i say should, because it doesnt work sometimes, giving a bizarre HTC error. you can get round that error simply by restarting your computer, but that can be a bit of a pain at times too

basically find the method that works best for you, and remember exactly what you did in the order you did it. it may be that my laptop is a little bit temperamental that is making it trickier than it should be, so experiment.

and yes, the $45 plan is unlimited data. they will apparently throttle you if you go overboard, but i tested it over the course of a week with 1GB+ per day of data and saw no major reduction in speeds - i maintained a solid 1.8mbps result on speedtest

also, there's a deal on now that the $45 plan is only $30 for the first 6 months

one thing i will say is that the call quality isn't all that, and the phone takes a LOT of tweaking to really get under control

as mentioned above the easy wifi thing is a pain in the butt, so you'll need to get startup auditor to shut it down and keep it down. there are also a few little things in there that public have added to the OS that i dont like the look of, but until someone figures out a way to root it there's not really much that can be done apart from careful task control maintenance

for a complete novice, it would be a fine phone, and for someone who enjoys trying to get phones to do things they shouldnt do out of the box, it's a very enjoyable piece of kit - but for a general consumer looking for nice android phone to play with, it's probably a mixture of being not good enough and too high maintenance

for the record too, and i cant overstate the importance of this, i get longer out of a full charge on this than i do on my iphone after tweaking the crap out of it. direct from box itll be dead in about 12 hours even if youre not using it though