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SWMich4G

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Everything posted by SWMich4G

  1. SWMich4G
    Just got a GS4 today, and it's my first android device. I created a google account, logged in, went to the store, and clicked to download various apps. They say "downloading" and remain that way forever. Checking my data usage I know the apps are all done downloading, but hours later it still says "downloading." I've tried restarting the S4, force stopping the play store and the play service, deleting and re-adding my google account, and pushing the apps through my pc. Is there something obvious I'm missing here? I read to uninstall Google Play, but how exactly do I reinstall an app if I uninstall my device's installer? Other than that, I think I've tried every remedy I can find on the web short of a hard reset. And I can make phone calls and search the internet just fine, so my phone is in fact activated.
  2. SWMich4G
    It would be nice to have sites for AT&T and T-Mobile similar to this one. This site can help people get great information on Sprint's progress, but it can be misleading without as much information on the other carriers. Sprint might have half the users as AT&T, but they probably have considerably more people mapping sensorly for them because of this site. The info in the sponsors section goes way beyond anything I've seen for any carrier. It's difficult to accurately assess which carrier is best for you when you have a lot of future information on one (e.g. Sprint towers in progress) and not even accurate present-day info on others (e.g. very few people actively mapping sensorly for AT&T). I happen to be in Michigan and have a grandfathered plan with Sprint, so the decision is easy for me: Great coverage with Verizon for almost 2 and a half times the price, no nearby LTE with AT&T for twice the price, or no rural coverage with T-Mobile for about the same price. Needing rural coverage and with the explosion of Sprint LTE in my county I'll stay with them. But if I lived in New York or Washington state or Tennessee it'd be hard to choose without a TMO4GRU.com and ATTLTEtowersightings.com.
  3. SWMich4G
    Ya but I'm also still on regular SERO, so every month with a new phone would cost me $20 more on my bill since they'll force me to upgrade to SERO-P. It comes close to cancelling out ($400 off every 24 months = $16.67 a month).
  4. SWMich4G
    What's the difference between you typing on the S3 vs the iPhone? Or is it just that the S3 was the first virtual keyboard you used and you were still learning?
  5. SWMich4G
    I'm a little afraid of taking the jump to a virtual keyboard. I'm sure it's not as bad on a big screen like a GS4, but it still can't be as good as a physical one. I know I'll have to go to one soon, but I'm still scared.
  6. SWMich4G
    I'm in dire need of a new phone, but I don't want to upgrade a month or two before the 800MHz phones become available. Option A: I could just renew my contract now and get a 1900 LTE phone with the upgrade discount, and then buy a full price 800 LTE phone when they come out and sell the 1900 one. I'll start my 2 year cycle right away, but will have to buy a brand new phone at full price in a few months (probably around $650). I also won't be saving that much with the upgrade vs a used phone unless I get the newest phone (GS4), but in that case I'll actually make money on the resale. Option B: I could buy a used 1900 LTE phone now (probably Photon Q), and save my upgrade for a few months until the 800 LTE phones come out. This delays my upgrade until that time, but maximizes the savings from it by getting a brand new phone. The used price of the Photon Q is only about $50 more than the upgrade discounted price. Has anyone been in a similar situation when waiting for a certain phone to come out? What is the most economical solution? My TP2 doesn't even download weather data anymore, can't run sensorly, is too slow and small to use the internet for more than a quick google search, and freezes pretty often when doing the most basic things like texting. I don't want to take Option C and wait it out since I might not even like the first 800 LTE phones, and we don't know for sure when they'll be out. I'd appreciate any input you can give. EDIT: If it matters, I'm on SERO 500, and would be upgrading to the SERO-P 500 whenever I get a new phone.
  7. SWMich4G
    The Michigan thread in the sponsors' section is still pretty active
  8. SWMich4G
    Is there a relatively standard amount of time between FCC testing and the release of a phone (e.g. 2 months)? Also, I noticed the S4 was tested a couple weeks after its announcement (so about 3 weeks before it was released). Is that usually how it goes, or is it more common to have testing before a model is announced? Sorry if these are stupid questions; FCC testing is new to me.
  9. SWMich4G
    Ya, I was just saying it looks like it's possible to use none of your wireless data (run in background, only upload via wifi). I was kind of thinking out loud. I really need a new phone so I can use sensorly myself, but I know the day after I get one they'll announce the first 800 LTE phone.
  10. SWMich4G
    If that's the case then sensorly can use literally no data, assuming you would normally have your phone, data, and gps on anyway, as long as you set to upload only via wifi. Granted that doesn't mean people actually know that it doesn't use data, but I imagine users with data caps track where their data goes, and would notice nothing for sensorly, so they wouldn't turn it off because of bandwidth limits.
  11. SWMich4G
    Does mapping sensorly really require much data at all? I imagine all it has to do is transmit a tiny amount to verify a connection and the strength, then (possibly at a later time) send coordinates and how strong the signal was at each coordinate. It seems to me it'd be a few bytes for each point it maps. I don't see how that can add up unless I'm way off on how much data it uses. And in that case, it can definitely be made more efficient. I was wondering if the site had any publicly available information on how many users and how often people are running sensorly from each carrier. If Sprint users are submitting sensorly data 5 times as much as AT&T users, that would be significant. I really think this is the case based on looking at the maps. There are AT&T areas with solid, strong signals for long distances on the highway, then nothing in the city right next to it. Obviously the city should have at least some signal (even with narrow bandwidth highway panels), but since no one is mapping within the city, nothing shows up on sensorly. EDIT: Beaten by digiblur. Maybe I should refresh before I submit...
  12. SWMich4G
    I've also always been curious as to whether sensorly is notably more/less popular with users of any particular carrier (perhaps due to a smaller/greater percentage of Android users)? The maps seem to show Sprint as having really caught up to AT&T in most areas and surpassed them in some (Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, KC). Besides California and the areas where Sprint has zero LTE, they now appear to be pretty even with AT&T. I wasn't sure if this is accurate or if there just aren't that many people mapping a lot of areas for AT&T. This could also be affected by the obsessed sensorly mappers using Sprint from this site... Oh and can the lack of dark purple for Sprint compared to other carriers be explained by the lack of 800MHz LTE atm, or is it just because of a lower LTE-enabled tower density?
  13. SWMich4G
    Have you considered adding the distance scale to the maps (scaleControl=true)? It comes in handy in visualizing the distances when viewing the map.
  14. SWMich4G
    Did they sound the Lunk Alarm on you for using your phone?
  15. SWMich4G
    I half agree and half disagree with what I think you're saying. One the one side, hitting the tower in the middle of Big Rapids would immediately give everyone in town (all the students at Ferris State) LTE, compared to a single tower in downtown Detroit that would immediately be saturated by users and give much slower speeds than anyone wants. The small town towers give better immediate results because they cover their full range and blanket everyone there with what completed NV will give them. On the other hand, the highway towers work the opposite way. They're probably never saturated, which is why they are no more tightly spaced on the busiest interstate routes than they are on the rarely used (but still main), 2 lane freeways up north. But as luck would have it you can now commute from Bay City to Big Rapids with LTE almost the whole way, for all 3 people that make that commute a week. Meanwhile traveling from Lansing to Detroit (capital to biggest city) you get LTE for 5-10% of your trip. For highways, hitting the most used interstates simply gives more people the full NV benefit for the 6-10 miles of road each tower covers. And yes, I understand they aren't purposely choosing US-10 over I-96; it's just where the work has been approved and where they can get crews. But it's frustrating that it's not working out in the favor of very many commuters. I-94 has less than 1 mile of coverage from mile marker 1 to marker 100.
  16. SWMich4G
    I wish people wouldn't map when they aren't getting LTE. The gray makes the map look ugly. You'd think after 10-15 minutes of no LTE coverage it would stop letting you map. I'm sure others disagree and like seeing where people aren't getting coverage, but I'd prefer an option to toggle the gray from the map.
  17. SWMich4G
    You should become a sponsor so you can see all the maps of tower locations and scout out which ones they are updating (if he doesn't already have them marked). If any of the signals you are getting are from a tower still being tested (not already on the approved list & map) and you take some pictures, Robert will add it to the in-progress map and hopefully another sponsor will see it and map it on sensorly.
  18. SWMich4G
    I was gonna say that when I saw the sensorly update a few days ago. That's some dedication! That's gotta be around 200 miles of purple, and they probably had to drive quite a bit more than that because of overlap and intentional second passes. It gives us a great example of the coverage a single tower in a rural location.
  19. SWMich4G
    Did you happen to scout out the panels on top of the senior apartment complex (the only tall building in town)? That's only a half mile away so there's a very tiny possibility they were testing LTE there. I haven't scouted it because I feel creepy pointing a super-telephoto lens at an apartment building and don't want to get arrested. The site four and a half miles north of Silver Beach does have a panel pointing straight to it, so obviously you're right that it's much more likely coming from there.
  20. SWMich4G
    As for screen: I'd imagine people that view extended media on their device would want a display that is accurate and doesn't strain their eyes. I'd personally want it to display my photos properly (correctly calibrated) so I don't have to convert them before transferring them to my phone. Right now I have to edit every photo I transfer to my phone to show a client, and they still don't display quite right. As for cores and speed (and RAM, etc): the better those are, the more future-proof the phone is. Even if two phones both run their current OS and apps fine, it's better to have the one that has more cores & runs faster so that when future apps are written to optimize more cores or require more power, you don't have to buy a new phone. I can't install anything on my phone, including the OS update that came a few months after I got it. It simply cannot run it because it's too slow. This is why my next phone will be no more than 6 months old when I get it, and preferably newer.
  21. SWMich4G
    It looks like the black level/brightness is noticeably too low on the GS4 in those pics, especially in the gray scale image. Is that more likely a flaw in the display, or just a display setting being off (i.e. it's fixable)?
  22. SWMich4G
    Yeah it's definitely worth donating just for the maps alone. How do you get the specific data (site ID, RF Switch, exact coordinates) for the ones that members have found to be missing? I could scout the site for the ID on some day it isn't snowing if that would help.
  23. SWMich4G
    Not every Sprint site. There's still one I know about missing in Benton Harbor, MI. It's at 42.1054, -86.4394. You can search on Sprint's site for it: https://network.spri...om/search/49022 You can see it on google maps as well (found via antennasearch): http://www.antennase..._number=1225974 I haven't scouted it out, but if Sprint is claiming they upgraded something there and there's a tower there, I'm guessing there are Sprint panels.
  24. SWMich4G
    Dunno if there's any point to posting these, but I did confirm the Benton Harbor upgrade with pics today. Unfortunately the whole lot (not just the fenced area) was marked "No Trespassing" so I just took pics from across the street. I would have liked to get closer, but at least it was only a 200ft tower. Also, these pics are huge, so view the full pic if you want to zoom in and read the writing on the panels and RRUs (the panels are made by Powerwave). I may go back on a clearer day with a longer lens and try to get everything readable. Direct link to full size panels pic Direct link to full size tower pic EDIT: ugh...nevermind my first edit
  25. SWMich4G
    Oh thanks I dunno how I didn't see the dot for the Benton Harbor site that's In Progress. I guess I wasted an hour of my time going to other towers lol. :/
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