Smartphones

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,573
45,202
Anyone here use Straight Talk? Thinking about switching off my VZW plan and buying an ATT sim. I know that won't fix the coverage hole at my house, but at least I'll be paying less for something I'm not receiving. And yes, I know Straight Talk does VZW now, but VZW won't allow any 4G devices on their network...so, no smart phone from the last two years.

Anyway, I've read that the customer service side of Straight Talk is pretty horrible. If you know what you're doing, do you need to even interact with that part? What are the fees/taxes on top of the $45/month? Lastly, have you been throttled? I'm not too worried about being throttled, the wife and I use ~0.5GB/month combined.
I've been using them on my Nexus 4 since the Nexus came out last year and haven't had any issues. I'm using one of their ATT sim cards. I haven't really had to talk to their customer service at all, though, so I cannot comment on them. My credit card gets charged 48.00/month total. No throttling that I'm aware of, but I'm also a relatively low-data user. There is no international roaming, so if you leave the country, you'll need another SIM card if you want to use your phone.

Going from almost 100 bucks a month with Sprint to 48 bucks has been more than worth it. The service has been very good for the most part.
 

Saladus

Bronze Knight of the Realm
271
11
I was going to pull the trigger on an iPhone 5S, but, I heard the battery is poor. QQ.
Mine has been pretty damn amazing thus far. Granted, I'm coming from Galaxy Nexus which was abysmal, but i still haven't had to charge my phone until late at night. I only had one bad day with an ios bug with email, but other than that, it's been amazing. Not much use today, but 2 hours 35 min usage, 13 hours standby, and at 67%.
 

Kuriin

Just a Nurse
4,046
1,024
Yeah, I'm coming from a Galaxy Nexus which gets you maybe 2 hours max of cell phone use before it's dead. I'm really close to destroying the phone and going without a cell phone, lol.
 

Ameraves

New title pending...
<Bronze Donator>
13,882
15,347
I was going to pull the trigger on an iPhone 5S, but, I heard the battery is poor. QQ.
I am by no means an Apple fan, but I would be surprised by this. The Apple phones are usually pretty kick ass when it comes to battery life.
 

Falstaff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,566
3,581
one of my friends has told me his 5S loses about 60% battery just idling overnight with everything disabled... he thinks he just got a phone with a bad battery. I haven't heard of this being a widespread issue.
 

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
More likely that he's got something running on there that's not letting the phone go to sleep. Or where he's leaving the phone overnight has bad signal, causing it to jump around. I know when I sleep over at my girlfriend's place my Nexus 4 will eat up 20-30% of the battery if left on vs. under 10% when I'm at home, because her place is some sort of Bermuda triangle of shitty cell reception.
 

Saladus

Bronze Knight of the Realm
271
11
one of my friends has told me his 5S loses about 60% battery just idling overnight with everything disabled... he thinks he just got a phone with a bad battery. I haven't heard of this being a widespread issue.
I was gonna save this tidbit for later if I felt like reviewing my experience vs Android, but I'll just say now I had an issue like this just two days ago. Battery was draining at an alarming rate, and no matter what I was closing, nothing was getting fixed for the battery. I had to look up some solutions on forums and tried the first tip, which was removing all email accounts, and adding them again. Turns out it worked. I guess my work email was stuck in some loop, and I kind of had an idea it was an email issue when I would try to select multiple emails, and immediately they would uncheck themselves. After that I've had no issue. Still though, when something goes wrong in iOS, it can be a complete mystery trying to find the solution.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Yea, saw a friend on FB with some sort of sync loop that was killing the 5S battery in like an hour or two. Something ridiculous. Never did say if they found a fix or not.
 

Gnomedolf

<Silver Donator>
15,796
99,180
People make fun of the iphone/ipad charging cable, but once you use it, you never want to go back. Not having to worry about which way you're plugging it in is nice. I use my ipad in bed at night with the lights off (kinky). When I'm done using it, it's easy to plug in. Same scenario with my HTC One, I'm fumbling in the dark trying to feel which side of the plug is up. Sure, first world problem, but you get used to the convenience.
 

Zodiac

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,200
14
Seems like you guys had a lot of problems with the G Nex. I've had mine since release and I still get 12-15 hours before I need to recharge, guess I was lucky. Still thinking I'm going to wait for the new Nexus before I upgrade. I went and looked at the new iPhone but it just seems so small now.
 

Saladus

Bronze Knight of the Realm
271
11
Same boat as Kuriin on Galaxy Nexus. Even firing it up right now, it's not TOO slow, but there were countless times, probably daily, where it was like "Ok, need to look up info for a friend next to me ... I'll just pull out my phone!" *Stutter...load stutter load... press keys numerous times, shit ain't happening, stutter stutter, friend doesn't give a shit anymore* Fucking made me rage. It was the type of phone where in the second year of having it, it just was not convenient to use if I needed to look shit up or do anything fast.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,714
3,211
So in light of the battery cable discussion that recently raged on I wanted to get some information on best phone charging practices.

I've almost just prescribed to the old practice to charge to full, run it all the way down to dead or close it and then charge it all the way to full again. I question this because I've started hearing that running a battery down to near dead is bad for it and also hearing if the battery is charged to full and you leave it on the charger that this can hurt the battery as well.

Any information on this? Thanks.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
People make fun of the iphone/ipad charging cable, but once you use it, you never want to go back. Not having to worry about which way you're plugging it in is nice. I use my ipad in bed at night with the lights off (kinky). When I'm done using it, it's easy to plug in. Same scenario with my HTC One, I'm fumbling in the dark trying to feel which side of the plug is up. Sure, first world problem, but you get used to the convenience.
What the hell are you talking about miniUSB only fits one way, and it's really goddamn obvious. You got like 20/80 vision or something? Or talking about not even touching the device a sec to get some light illumination from it - which is a ridiculously stupid corner case. "I can't see the hole well, I could make light here by tapping the power on the device a sec - but fuck it!"

Seriously, my wife is retarded enough that she literally just destroyed her PC spilling soda on it internally (to the tune of $700 in replacement parts I just had to order) and she's never been confused about "which way the USB cable goes in" with her 20/40 vision...
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
16,146
9,615
Yeah I plug mine in all the time in the middle of the night without even looking at the cord just fine. I don't get how this can be or not be a selling point for anyone.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Yeah I plug mine in all the time in the middle of the night without even looking at the cord just fine. I don't get how this can be or not be a selling point for anyone.
Same I don't even turn on the lights - just alarm clock + notification lights and shit in the room for illumination + starlight depending on the cloudcover outside since the bed is against the window - I've got exceptional vision so I'm surely an outlier but as I've said my wife isn't that bright (seriously so annoyed about the PC replacement - included a 7970 in the meltdown - 7970 took a direct hit from the cascade (seriously the card smells like caramel - so weird for Sprite to turn into that so quick), other stuff might salvage but still....) and she's got shit vision and still does the same.

But then again I still see those retarded phones with 1"x1" buttons occasionally when I'm in a target or some such, so maybe there are people that have hands akin to the Incredible Hulk's IRL.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,714
3,211
Lol, ripping on the dude much? It's not really a problem but most of the time I jam the cord in and realize its the wrong direction, flip it, and jam it in again. Not having to worry about that? pretty dang awesome.
 

Selix

Lord Nagafen Raider
2,149
4
Does the iPhone 5 not have a wireless charging case mod? That's the first thing I did to my Note II and I've never looked backed.