Phones

[octave]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

I have a question. As far as I know, all the new phones have non removable batteries. What happens when the battery dies?

 

You can replace all phone batteries yourself however it is a bit of a pain. You can pay to get a non-replaceable battery replaced.   New legislation in the EU will require all phones to have replaceable batteries by 2027 so things are going in the right direction. 

 

I have been lucky lately as my still tech-savvy 90-year father inlaw replaces his phone every few years and hands me down his old but still good phone.

[pmccarthy]

Our dentist sends a reminder to my wife to send Peter in for a checkup. They have done it for years. I like it that way, because when I ignore it she gets the further reminders.

[spacesailor]

" Specsavers " .

Always sends us reminders. ( the wife & I , by post ).

And, I have never bought specs from them , they did a couple of eye tests.

Then tried to sell me glasses. 

  Turns out my eyes are 'dirty '  LoL

Had to go to a different optomatist to be told .

spacesailor

Edited April 10 by spacesailor
Missed word

[facthunter]

I've heard of dirty minds nut not dirty eyes.  How do you rectify that problem? Nev

[facthunter]

  My wife changes her mind a lot. I hasten to say.  Do Nuns get dirty Habits?  It doesn't suit them. Nev

[spacesailor]

It   ( dirty eyes ) is like ' looking through a " fly screen '' or fine curtain .

I call those shadows " dark caterpillars " as they moved little. 

Eye test result 19 .18 , not 20 . 20 vision .

spacesailor

[pmccarthy]

How do you avoid giving people a dirty look.

[spacesailor]

People ! .

I'm ostracised. 

Never ' talked ' so much ,

& learnt a huge lot .

Since joining this " Recration Flying forum   " .

spacesailor

 

[pmccarthy]

Did you say ostrich eyed? That’s why they are dirty, they stick their heads in the sand.

[facthunter]

If you are of Scottish descent you don't GIVE any body anything. You sell it. Nev

[willedoo]

I'm on the way to sorting out the lack of VoLTE issue in regard to the 3G network closing soon. I shopped around and found a dealer on evilbay selling phones, so I bought a Samsung Galaxy S10e. It's second hand but has a two year warranty which may or may not be worth the paper it's written on. The good thing about the 'e' model it is the small size; it's basically the same size as my old S5, so it won't spend it's life trying to escape from pockets. I'll miss the old S5 physical button in the middle bottom section to wake the screen up, but this one can wake up by setting it to wake up with a double tap to the screen or when you pick it up. The other method is tapping the power button but that's like a game of hide and seek so not a viable method on this phone. To turn on VoLTE, you have to go to settings/connections/mobile networks and set it on. The only problem is that there's no mobile networks option in connection settings. I haven't put a sim card in it yet, so I assume it has to have an active sim for that setting to appear.

[willedoo]

Sometimes I wonder why I bother with my NBN plan. My server is Internode, soon to vanish totally under the TPG umbrella. For $49.95 per month I get 100 GB of not so reliable data. My mobile phone is with Aldi and I could upgrade to a bigger plan of 120 GB of data per month, 5G enabled, unlimited standard calls and SMS to Australian numbers and 20 select countries for $49 per month. Also when I use the phone as a mobile hot spot for the laptop, it's noticably faster than the NBN and that's with 4G and not 5G. The NBN here is fixed wireless. It's been ok, but the last three months has been a bit unreliable. There's a possibility that could be my modem and not the NBN signal at fault.

[willedoo]

The 3G network is going this month. I retired the old Samsung Galaxy S5 as it was 4G capable but not 4G+VoLTE capable. I ended up buying a second hand Galaxy S10e from a dealer selling through evilbay. It was only a couple of hundred dollars and not a bad phone. The 10e is a smaller phone than the other S10 phones, fairly close to the size of the old S5 and is not one of those phones that's always trying to jump out of your pocket. I still keep the old S5 charged and use it as an alarm clock and time clock beside the bed as it's more user friendly in that role, particularly with the physical button to activate the screen at night.

[spacesailor]

I'm with Aldi mobile. 

But the NBN has not made one month without a " maintenance " or some sort of

" no " internet since it it was connected .

Not worth the money,  plus paying extra for the " landline .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was with TPG when I last lived in Aus, which admittedly was 18 years ago. It was a great service then. I just checked their website and they offer TPG Fibre, which I imagine is not NBN? I don't even know what NBN really means - is it Telstra providing the backbone? Oh, the joys.

 

In London, one can get 900mbs download for about £50/month. Where I am only attacts 67mps for about £30 month. Usually totally reliable but I am breaking contract with my current provider who has had two catastrophic outages in 3 months with us.

 

In Aus, I see Starlink (yes, an Elon Musk business) is 135/month. I think it is about 400mbs unlimited. If TPG or similar can't come up with the goods, it will be Starlink.  The $600 setup fee is a little steep, though.

 

Just looked at TPG; plans seem OK https://www.tpg.com.au/fttb

 

 

Edited August 4 by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

Away from the urban conglomerations and regional and rural centres Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite system is popular. Starlink provides what they claim to be download speeds of 400 Mbs, but test show rates of about 100 Mbs, equivalent to the NBN, but without drop-outs seen with the NBN. At the moment the service cost $139.00 per month for a residential connection, plus an initial cost of $599.00 for the receiver hardware.

 

Of course, choosing a suitable Internet Service Provider depends on why you want access to the Internet. For low level usage such as social connectivity and recreational 'Net surfing, you can accept the low end of the upload speeds. If you are into competitive gaming, you need higher speeds, and businesses might require the highest. Like everything, the more you want, the more you pay.

[spacesailor]

Jerry 

In " Wales " they have 0ne gig for 30 pound a month.

spacesailor

[onetrack]

The NBN stands for the National Broadband Network, it is a stand-alone Govt-owned business enterprise that set out in 2009 to establish a wholesale fibre-optic network across all of Australia.

It was deemed to be necessary to bring Australia into the 21st century with high speed electronic communications - and because the copper network was over 120 years old and in poor condition.

 

The NBN cost around AU$75B (about double what was originally estimated) and the entire process was stuffed up by fights between Labor and Liberal Govts over the cost of the project.

Originally, the NBN was going to provide fibre to every premises. But the Liberals stuffed that by limiting the NBN to "Nodes" - community points where copper was run "the last mile" to premises.

 

This became known as "Fibre To The Node" (FTTN) and it was a dead loss, because the benefit of fibre optic speed was seriously impacted by returning the signal to copper to the final delivery point.

Labor got back in and returned the NBN to "Fibre To The Curb" (FTTC), whereby the NBN service ran down every street, past the premises, and it was up to the property owner to decide whether they used fibre optic to connect their premises, ot stayed with copper if they already had copper installed.

 

In some places with difficult terrain, or in remote regions, the NBN had had major difficulty installing fibre - or because of remoteness and low population in the area, the cost of installing the fibre over long distances was deemed too costly, and the NBN installed a satellite service.

As a result, some areas are not getting the service they were promised, and service problems abound. But around 95% of the population appears to be happy with the NBN fibre. 

 

We live in a 67 yr old house and we have FTTC running past the house, and we left the copper line into the house in place. Our NBN service is extremely reliable, and the speed is excellent.

I haven't checked the speed recently, but I never have any download problems, no matter how large the file. We're with TPG (originally Iiinet, but TPG bought them out), we pay $79.90 a month, and we have no restrictions on the service.

 

https://www.nbnco.com.au/

 

https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co

 

Edited August 5 by onetrack

[willedoo]

I have bad memories of the old dial-up system. You could go and make a cup of coffee while a simple HTML page loaded.

[spacesailor]

I have " intermittent " copper to somewhere.  

Never ' as to this date ' had a full month without downtime . 

Optus cable , was so much better . ( downtime wise) .

Plus the added attraction of " emergency relay " , free phone & fax .

spacesailor

 

[onetrack]

The copper network was always full of dodgy connections, corrosion, faulty joins and regular breaks.

 

A mate was a Telstra linesman, he said they had a pillar with a wiring connectivity fault in it one day, and for the life of them, they couldn't find it.

 

Then, when they were standing there, scratching their heads and looking at the pillar full of connections, a big truck roared past them - and the faulty soldered connection showed up.

 

It took the road vibrations from the heavy truck to provide the right amount of movement to open and close the faulty soldered joint.

 

We used to have regular outages with the copper network, the linies were out every week or so, fixing faults.

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Telstra_pillar_with_cover_removed_02.jpg

 

Edited August 5 by onetrack

[facthunter]

Fizzer Turnbull's job was to "Destroy the NBN.".Instructed  by T A Bot. How many Billions and loss of efficiency  and capability, did THAT cost Australia?  Nev

[old man emu]

I went into the Telstra shop today simply to ask what day of the month my data limit resets. I am on a plan where I pay about $50 per month for my phone and $50 for the internet with a download limit of 70 bytey things. The nice young lady took a look at my plan as told me she could do better. So now I'll be paying $10 for the phone and $72 for internet access with a limit of 180 bytey things, per month. 

 

My present plan was set for rest in two days, and I'd only used about 50 - 60% of the 70 bytey things. So now I can just about stay up all night watching renovation videos on YouTube and not have my download speed cut.

[ClintonB]

On 05/08/2024 at 4:18 AM, Jerry_Atrick said:

I was with TPG when I last lived in Aus, which admittedly was 18 years ago. It was a great service then. I just checked their website and they offer TPG Fibre, which I imagine is not NBN? I don't even know what NBN really means - is it Telstra providing the backbone? Oh, the joys.

 

In London, one can get 900mbs download for about £50/month. Where I am only attacts 67mps for about £30 month. Usually totally reliable but I am breaking contract with my current provider who has had two catastrophic outages in 3 months with us.

 

In Aus, I see Starlink (yes, an Elon Musk business) is 135/month. I think it is about 400mbs unlimited. If TPG or similar can't come up with the goods, it will be Starlink.  The $600 setup fee is a little steep, though.

 

Just looked at TPG; plans seem OK https://www.tpg.com.au/fttb

 

 

Starlink in the country cost me $199 to purchase, it can be self setup but i chose to have an private installer that was recommended by someone else. It turned out to be a good thing as the house mounting had trees inside its field of view which were never getting cut down, so he said lets put it on the shed and with 2 little boxes  (sender and receiver) it beams to the house antenna pole, down into the router. been very good service as far as operating. we have 18 to 20  devices hooked up at any given time and our phone calls running through it as there is no service from towers to house. 

[willedoo]

It's hard to find a good small phone these days. Most of the market is for people who use their phone as computer, TV and sound system hence the trend toward bigger screens. I've been checking out small 5G phones and there's not much available in a small size for an affordable price. The only viable one I could find similar in size to what I have now is the Samsung Galaxy S24. The only catch is it's $1,400 which is way out of my budget for a phone. My only requirements are for calls, sms, the odd photo and using it as an internet mobile hotspot for the laptop. That and a size that can be easily carried around in a pocket while working and not fall out. As far as phones working their way out of your pocket, I don't think it's the width that's the problem but rather the length. The larger screens are on average 20mm longer than my Samsung Galaxy S10e and the old S5 but it's enough to cause the phone to gradually work it's way out of the trouser side pocket. I know this because I bought a Nokia a year ago that was too big and only used it for two or three weeks as it was continually escaping from the pocket. It now lives in a drawer as a backup phone.