Ottawa notes: cell phones
by Gerald Oskoboiny
... part of a larger list of Ottawa notes/resources,
mainly for my own use.
Contents
- Jan 12, 2006
- Unlocked
my cell phone for only $2
- Aug 16, 2005
- Signed up for Win-tel's Call25
plan (long distance calls anywhere in Canada and the continental US for
$.25/call.) I did this primarily for work teleconferences from my land
line, but plan to use it from my cell phone as well.
- Aug 7, 2005
- On Friday I called Fido to enable WAP/GPRS service on my account, and
used it for the first time today (because it has been down for the last
couple days); very cool! I set up a directory on my site with various
things to download (e.g. small images to use as background images
on my phone.) The requests showed up in my web server's access log a
la:
204.92.15.223 - - [07/Aug/2005:18:32:46 -0400] "GET /wap/test.txt
HTTP/1.0" 200 7 "-" "Nokia3100b/1.0 (04.75) Profile/MIDP-1.0
Configuration/CLDC-1.0" 0 impressive.net
- June 16, 2005
- The speaker on my Nokia 3390 flaked out again a couple weeks ago, and
when I was in France last week I blew the charger by plugging it into a
French outlet without checking if it could handle the extra voltage (most
of my other toys can); the combination of these two things finally prompted
me to replace my 3390 with something new. I decided to stick with Nokia
because I have been very happy with every Nokia I have ever owned. The only
two Nokias available through Fido right now are the 3100b and 6670; the
6670 does photos, video, bluetooth and a bunch of other stuff the 3100b
doesn't, but I decided to go for the 3100b because the 6670 would cost
~$400 CAD while the 3100b is only $100, and the 6670 is a bit bigger. (I
tried to convince Fido to give me a free 6670 since I have been a loyal
customer for ~5 years, but they didn't go for it.) The 3100b turned out to
be free because I had enough FidoDollars accumulated to cover it. It's
supposed to arrive in 5 calendar days, woohoo!
Photos: front
or side view.
(pictured next to my old 3390.)
- Nov 4, 2002
- My Nokia 3390 is finally starting to bite the dust: something has been
rattling inside it since I dropped it last year,
and lately the speaker just stops working randomly during phone calls.
It does seem to work OK if I take the cover off, so I have been using it in
without the cover for
the last few days. I guess I should get a new one soon.
(it eventually started working again, woohoo)
- Oct 23, 2001
- Read about Fido's
GPRS service: $100/month for unlimited data and plenty of voice service;
triband GPRS handsets are $500-$650. Pretty tempting...
(related notes: GSM
phones and Linux, Debian
gsm-utils package, Linux
and cell phones)
- August 31, 2001
- I was pleasantly surprised by my cell phone bill tonight; the cost of
roaming in Europe was more
reasonable than I expected. Also, I found some cool
Nokia ring tones.
- July 31, 2001
- I bought a cell phone in Amsterdam (a Nokia 3310, almost identical to
my existing 3390) so I can roam around Europe using my usual phone number.
I paid 349 NLG, ~$220 CAD.
- July 26, 2001
- I went to Fido intending to buy an Ericsson T28W so I could
use my Fido service in Europe, but first I asked them
if my broken Nokia 3390 was fixable and they said yes, took it in
the back for 30 minutes and came out with it fixed. I'm glad they
did, because the T28 is wicked ugly and the keypad seems lame
too. I'll just try to find a cheap phone in Europe somewhere.
- June 14, 2001
- Got a new high score on the Snake II game on my phone, 1254!
I still rule!
- June 3, 2001
- Found an excellent, free SMS
to email gateway, that I can use to send email from my phone.
I will probably use this mostly to send myself reminders.
- May 27, 2001
- Broke my new phone already: I missed my pocket when putting
it away, and it smashed into a concrete sidewalk. Now the speaker
doesn't work any more, so I bought an earpiece/mic thing for $20
USD, which works but is a pain to use because the cord always
gets tangled up when I put it in my pockets.
- March 12, 2001
- Bought a Nokia
3390 phone for $150 CAD plus tax; it's nice and small (see
photos: front
or side view),
and has a bunch of features my 5590 didn't have: vibrating
ringer, voice-activated dialing, calendar/reminders, and great
new games. :) Sound quality sucks compared to my old 5190 though.
I wonder if I have a bad phone, or if they are all like that.
- March 11, 2001
- When surfing around Fido's
site looking for info on a new phone, I found out that they have
dropped long distance and roaming rates: now it's only $0.10/min
CAD to call anywhere in Canada and the US (reduced from $0.20/min),
and only $0.20/min USD while roaming in the US. (down from $0.50/min
or something.)
- February 12, 2001
- I broke my
phone a couple days ago (wiped out on it while snowboarding), now
I have to find a new one. Nokia 8890 is still tempting...
- August 29, 2000
- I'm pretty happy with Fido's service so far. Very happy I went GSM.
Couldn't roam in Halifax without the analog module, that sucked.
Roaming worked beautifully in Boston: I had a much better signal
than I ever had with Sprint PCS when living there, and had a signal all
the way out of the city a couple hours up the I-93 in New Hampshire.
(roaming on Voicestream's network, formerly Omnipoint.)
- August 28, 2000
- Got a new high score on the Snake game on my phone, 1125!
I rule!
- July 20?, 2000
- Signed up for a Nokia 5190 from Fido, paid $50 CAD for the phone,
skipped the optional $75 analog module. Started out with the 200
minutes for $20 plan, plus FidoPro (~$8/mo?) for a few extra
options (voicemail, email/SMS messaging.) I kind of wish I had
gone for the Nokia 8890 for $850 CAD, which would allow roaming
anywhere in the world. (with the 5190, I'll have to get a
different phone for use in Europe and Asia.) Plus, the Nokia 8890
is dead sexy.
This section is all pretty stale now; it was written when I was
shopping around for a service provider in July 2000.
- Service providers:
- Phones:
- Misc:
Last modified: $Date: 2006/01/12 22:41:39 $
Gerald Oskoboiny, <[email protected]>