You know I’ve been usin’ Pandora a lot lately. And although it can take a long time to start up or can bug out if you need to change songs ‘n’ crap via Edge, it’s been workin’ out nicely. I’ve been listenin’ to it a crap load when I’m out drivin’ or if I take a walk somewhere.

I’ve been impressed with it’s constant great quality and reliability over Edge. I’ll leave it docked in the Lexus, playing through the sound system and I sometimes forget I’m playing muisc over the Internet… music over the Internet anywhere you go… it’s a crazy concept.

Peace, J

For me, I’ve joined the whole unlimited mobile Internet game late. So one thing I’ve noticed is how fast T-mobile’s Edge (2G) Internet is. I mean long before I had mobile internet, I heard stories about it, how it was slow and how even 3G wasn’t that fast… at least all of these stories were for AT&T, and if any of them were talking about T-mobile, it was from like 2007 when iPhones first came out.

But I’ve noticed that my T-mobile 2G Edge seems to act, well… almost as if I had 3G. It’s very fast. In fact, I’ve noticed simple pages like news.google.com load up about the same speed as iPhones on AT&T’s 3G.

I started thinking about this… why would T-mobile give such good speed to their 2G network? All of their smart phones access their 3G network… and I’ve heard so many complaints of it’s 3G speed compared to AT&T’s 3G speed. I know T-mobile’s 2G’s network used so be dirt slow, but now they’ve put so much quality in it. Why bother when most complain about T-mobile’s 3G? After all, the only ones on T-mobile that even use 2G to the full extent are… iPhone users, that’s it!

That’s why T-mobile’s Edge is so fast and reliable now. It’s because of all the iPhone users. Any model iPhone unlocked and running on T-mobile are only able to access their 2G network. Makes perfect sense. They have virtually no new phones that use the 2G network, so T-mobile boosting it’s 2G network makes it’s iPhone users happy. After all, if people bring their iPhones over to T-mobile and are then let down by sluggish 2G speeds, they’ll jump back to AT&T.

Keeping T-mobile’s Edge boosted helps them steal AT&T iPhone customers, and because they’re paying for the 3G network speeds anyways, but can only access 2G… so it’s only in their best interest.

Now, I can’t speak for all areas… but in the Tampa Bay area, T-mobile’s Edge is nice ‘n’ fast. I took some speed results from the Neocell to show what I mean…

Peace, J

So ‘ight, here’s the deal. It’s been about a month or two since I had the basic $9.99 Edge Internet stop working for the Neocell. As you can read from my post here, I was using a “social hack” method to get the $9.99 a month Internet for the Neocell, but started getting blocked. I’ve gotten to the root of the issue…

I put the SIM card into my old phone and the Internet worked, but not on the Neocell. I thought it might just be a flook so I waited and tried to test it out a few different times that whole month, but the same thing…

So what’s this mean? It means T-mobile’s system will at some point detect… whatever, and disable the net for just your device. Now, your not able to just pop your SIM into your old phone, call T-mobile, say your net’s not working and have it be done. You’ve gotta’ have the full, $25 a month Internet plan. Keep in mind this doesn’t include any text messages, which is fine by me. **** text messages.

So, is it worth it? $25 for unlimited Internet? If you were a chick readin’ this, I’d say, “Honey, it’s so worth it…”. The 2G speeds we get with Edge are very fast… don’t believe me? I’m able to stream net radio from WunderRadio and Pandora. And no, no skips or delays… just pure music. In fact, I plan on installing a secret, hidden little dock into my Lexus’ center console to play net radio straight into the stereo (already tested it on a few drives, works great).

I couldn’t do this with the $9.99 Internet plan ‘cuz they give you 50 MBs a MONTH… so I was turning on Edge only in the rarest of times, and there’s no way to track usage with T-mobile. So bein’ free to so what I want with the Internet when I’m not on wifi, shoot… I swear I go through 50 MBs in a few days.

Havin’ unlimited Internet is so worth it.

Peace, J

Ok, a music producer bud of mine also happens to work for T-mobile’s tech support out in Washington. I happened to speak to him today about the problems I was havin’ usin’ Edge.

I don’t use T-mobile’s normal internet. Na, I ain’t payin’ $25 extra a month for mobile internet. What I was doing was using the “phone only” internet plan, where you pay $10 a month for 50 MBs of data a month. T-mobile wants you to pay for their $25 unlimited “3G” plan, but as I’ve mentioned before, it’s impossible for any iPhones to use T-mobile’s 3G network because the bands are different than AT&T’s. So your basicly paying for unlimited 2G internet, which is fine because I have a 2G iPhone for that exact reason.

So what my bud told me is that T-mobile has started doing auditing of their data and billing each month, either to make sure customers aren’t getting chraged twice, or that they’re doing it in a way to try to push users into upgrading their plans, or both.

I already know there’s a way to get the $9.99 Internet back, such as putting my SIM card into my “non-smart” phone and call into T-mobile to reactivate my Internet, but my bud says T-mobile will do the same thing at any given time that month.

I really don’t know if I wanna’ go through that hassle, ya know? It all depends. For now, I’m just planning on turning the Internet off. I’ll keep ya updated if anything changes though.

Peace, J

Oh no… I’m out here at beautiful Hydr Park in Tampa, Fl, typin’ up the post “Hot and Sexy iPhone”, which I finished and I activated Edge to upload it and WordPress can’t access the net. Hmm… Never happened before. So I go to see if I can access the net from Safari and I notice I’m being redirected. “Redirected? Why, I’m not on wifi…” and then I get the image included below.

Are you ****** me?! No, serious, are-you-******-me? ‘Freak… What bull **** is this?

For those of you that don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, check out the “Careful When Callin’ Into T-mobile” post. In a nut shell, I pay $10 a month for my Internet, but I only get 50 MBs a month. T-mobile wants iPhone users to pay for the unlimited plan, $25 a month for unlimited.

It’s towards the end of my billing cycle and T-mobile gives you no way to check how much Internet usage you use. So, there could be a chance I’ve run down all my net usage and that’s the default message your given. Or, T-mobile has started putting filters in place to automatically detect and then block iPhones.

I really don’t know what it could be, so I’ll have to find out later tonight or tomorrow.

Peace, J

So I’ve been usin’ SBSettings to turn my T-mobile Edge Internet on and off enough that I’ve got some tips for ya.

First, unless you’ve got unlimited Internet with T-mobile, my advice is to turn Edge off (and leave it off) when your not usin’ it. This will save not only your data from push service like email, but also save power. And if ya do have unlimited Internet, turn it off when your either in wifi, or when your doing something for a long time, like watchin’ video, and don’t need data (to save battery juice).

When you turn Edge on or off, keep in mind it will disconnect Bluetooth for some reason. But don’t worry, it’s only for a second. Now that ain’t a thang’ for me, but if some of you have Bluetooth devices that will lock up if your phone disconnects from them or somethin’, then keep that in mind.

Turning Edge on or off will make your signal drop. This is your phone signal resetting itself I guess. In addition, it takes Edge about 10 to 30 seconds before the Internet will be ready. You’ll know when Edge is ready when your signal bar goes back up to where it was.

The last thing to keep in mind is that there’s a 1/10 chance that Edge will cause your iPhone to feeze when turning on or off. Make sure to save what your doing before turning Edge on or off.

Peace, J

Well, the info has been released on what most of the major things will be comin’ out for the new iPhone 3.0 OS (set to come out this summer). There were hopes that Apple would introduce “teathered” Internet, as I mentioned the post before.

Well the bad news, for people like me, is that’s not gonna’ happen. Yeah, sorta’ sucks that I won’t be able to use the NeoCell to share its Edge Internet with my TomTom GPS so that I can get traffic updates. I’d go with a traffic antenna for my GPS, but, just like the NeoCell, I’ve hacked it too, turnin’ my model of GPS into the latest model (savin’ hundreds), so a traffic antenna may not work. That’s why I’m pushin’ to get the NeoCell to feed the Lexus data rather than an antenna.

Peace, J