Caps are
nothing new to the world's 3G networks, but T-Mobile's being particularly stingy with the bytes -- 1GB is all you get. Well, technically you can get more than that, but our friends in magenta are reserving the right to throttle you back to a stifling 50Kbps -- virtually useless by smartphone standards, and less than what even a good EDGE network is capable of providing. That's going to be sour news to heavy
G1 users, especially as Android touts its stellar connectivity, world-class browser, and a full suite of data-gorging apps. For now, we're going to cut T-Mob some slack on this since the threat is purely theoretical, but if they start enforcing this little stipulation with a heavy hand, the G1 is going to have to stay in the pocket a little more than we'd like.
[Thanks, Emmanuel C.]
posted Sep 23rd 2008 2:51PM
Coincidentally, I had just found that concept in the details.
It is totally unacceptable, and will prevent me from signing up for 3G data fees with T-Mobile. They better amend this policy stat.
Thats ok, because the phone only has 1GB of storage out of the box...
And that has what to do with transferring data over the cellular network?
I know, if only there was a way to add more...
LMAO...
dude how about learnin terminology before you speak.
1 GB of bandwidth ... I doubt they will enforce that... but hypothetically...... if they did.... why would they throttle you to less than EDGE speed? FTW is that??
I ordered my G1 earlier today.... and I KNOW 100% Im going to LOVE playing with it.... but something tells me Ill be back on my Javelin or the 9500 soon afterwords.
For it used to being caleld the "Dream", its becoming more of a nightmare.......
And I believe everyone was talking about how open the software would be, now if only the hardware would be just as open.........
*called
forgot to change it earlier :P
@ yaniv
its WTF is that,
not FTW is that
back on your javelin? Either you have a time machine, or you're delusional
I wondered WTF FTW meant
It either means For The Win, or that the one speaking is Yoda.
TFSU!
everyone ignore the invisible man...but honestly...about 33MB per day? i dunno if i could do it, then again...there are a few days that i'm glued to the comp and hardly touch my phone. I guess it really depends on the settings of the browser.
And I thought that the G1 news were bad enough already..
Tmobile released a new BetaMax. Congrats!
exactly! Don't get me wrong guys, I am a fan of Apple products, and I do own an iPod Touch (no iPhone - Stuck on verizon for now), but I also love Google and really want Android to succeed. Although everyone is dying to see the launch of a worthy alternative to the iPhone, I think Google should have held off until christmas, and perhaps even to Q1 2009 if that's how long it will take to get everything right. Due to the enormous pressure and expectations everyone has since most people and the press really consider this the "G Phone", They absolutely have to get this launch right, and the critical period is going to be the next 8-12 weeks which will allow them to get in a few updates before the long-term reviews come in.
What I have seen so far is NOT encouraging. First of all, why launch the first device on a second-class network which barely just turned on a UTMS/3G network, and is only available in a handful of metro areas. Secondly, I haven't read all the reviews yet, but it appears Android is just not ready yet with things like bluetooth pulled and much of the software being incomplete. I really hope they don't totally blow the public's first impression of Android, which will really hurt the platform.
Google needs to work overtime (and put some serious resources into it) to ensure overall platform compatibility and consistency. With the open source nature of OS stack and expectation of being deployed onto devices with different performance capabilities and form factors, they already have a serious challenge ahead of them compared to Apple. They need to stand their ground and NOT allow the carriers to butcher the OS by removing default applications/services and inserting their own expensive, crappy, proprietary software (I'M LOOKING AT YOU VERIZON WIRELESS) In addition to cross-carrier compatibility, I hope they can execute a decent strategy with the SDK for managing different device profiles, so there is a system for mapping user interface and controls to different physical hardware layouts. For example, applications needing text input should automatically bring up a software keyboard on touchscreen phones lacking physical keyboards, and it should be flawlessly integrated into the interface.
Also, I'm not sure how games and other performance oriented applications will deal with different processing capabilities. A game will need to be able to detect the capabilities of the graphics processor/DSP and adjust polygon counts/texture sizes/etc for allowing adequate framerates. If the SDK can't do that, then games will be designed for the lowest common denominator which would not be good. anyways, this is turning into a blog entry so I'll stop...
Google wants an open spectrum for this same reason. So that carriers cant fuck up and cripple their android phones. Also it seems like although they planned an initial release date of Q1 2009 they probably decided to bring it closer because of the looming problems of the economy as our country is on the brink of bankruptcy. Not to mention that they didnt want to lose any more potential adopters to apple.
Just keeps on getting worse...
now i feel slightly less cheated being stuck with ATT another year .5 even though i've sold off my cracked iphone v1
Eman is a nerd reading through fine print!
T-mobile does provide a lot of wifi hot spots though don't they?
No Wi-Fi from what I hear
You heard wrong. If you get the all you can eat package you get access to T Mobile's hotspots.
The G1 has Wi-Fi.
AT&T: 1
T-Mobile: 0
Okay i don't know about you guys but any1 who has every had AT&T data knows what a burden unlimited data can be on the 3G network if it is not rolled out properly and the kinks are ironed out first. I would rather have a 1GB data cap than unlimited data that is unstable and full of bugs. I think T Mobile is learning from ATT's mistakes. I am sure once the network is built up properly and has evolved they will raise the limit. ATT's 3G coverage is inconsistent and shoddy at best. I have seen numerous instances in witch 3G phones dont even work with voice for days on end. Imagine if that happened to you during a state of emergency?
Totally ridiculous.
They'll probably up the cap once they get more of their 3G network rolled out.
Agreed, i'm sure this had something to do with protecting their weak EDGE network.
Remember kiddies " NO ONE TELLS THE TURTH"! Am I lieing?
I've never said "turth" in my life.
SOOPERCANTSPELLMAN
This is nothing new in the mobile data world, I guess maybe for you guys stateside? T-Mobile do this in the UK already, but 1GB is more than enough for the average users needs I reckon; when restrictions are enforced they're generally pretty lax. I don't doubt they'll offer bigger bundles for a good price in good time... I get 3 GB for £7.50 (about $15 ish) a month on TMUK, which is pretty decent!
Most of the complaints on T-Mobile are practices that are quite common in Europe.
For common use, 1 Gb is plenty enough and you need more, they will gladly find a way for you to have it (albeit with a price).
But in the States, the data cap is around 5GB with the other carriers. This make T-Mobile USA less desirable.
So:
No REAL unlimited data, no tethering (because of carrier).
Locked bluetooth (because of amazon mp3 store).
But, but...
Its open source!!!!!
sounds just like the iPhone!!!
since it's open source, it'll only be a matter of time before someone finds a way around it.
@scott
Uh, not really. Open source does not mean you can get around restrictions like bandwidth caps and data throughput speeds... those are on the network side.
@brendan
i was talking about bluetooth.
there's not much else they could have done to screw up the launch of this device.. no real news on the deployment of 3g... or if it's on schedule.. cheap data plan with a cap on it.. phone with no way of syncing contacts.. gotta bring at least something to the table..
How do you cap a phone that is almost purely internet based?
"Hold on, let me get that phone number for ya out of my contacts. Damn it! It might be a while, I went over my limit..."
That's pitiful. That has to be tmporary until they get their 3g network off the ground, right?
... and people complain about Verizon's cap. This one makes Verizon's look, downright, unlimited.
"downright, unlimited"
sounds like a progressive rock band
"Some downloads, such as movies, music, and games, not included." I would think, other than web browsing, that's the majority of data usage. I guess we have to wait and see what exactly they mean.
I doubt they'll be enforcing that for G1 owners, if they are using their connection for normal cellular internet. (Youtube / Web / Emails)
They'll probably just be using this to shoot down mobile-torrents and other extreme circumstances.
This restriction makes sense because their fledgling 3G network probably can't handle too many people transferring extremely large amounts of data, yet.
1GB / 30 days = 30MB/day. or 1GB / 20 work days = 50MB/day.
With YouTube and Flickr/Picasa it is quite easy to go over the limit. And heck I'd love to have YouTube while commuting.
Though if you only read icanhascheezburger once a day - you should be pretty safe.
Overall - it sucks. But, well, at least they do not disconnect you or (worse) charge you $1 / 1KB over the cap.
I just woke up from a nap and was going to buy myself the G1.
Wow. Good think I checked Engadget first.
You guys over there can be so demanding. ;) Not everything in life can be all you can eat. Data is bandwidth and bandwidth costs money to transport! Find me someone who has unlimited bandwidth on their web hosting account which is truly unlimited.
Most people can run through 1GB in a day easy...
They come out here touting this phon eas an iKiller, and then present this crap phone with weak UI, proprietary jacks, and now slam people with 1GB data plans?
how dare they try to compete with the deathstar... T-mobile should just stay with activating unlocked iPhones intil they mature the network... And get rid of that damn magenta, time for a refresh...
The people calling this an iPhone killer are iPhone owners.
If you are really running through 1Gb of data, you either have no life or you are doing it for business reasons for which you can expense it out (or they already pay for it).
For average users, using an excess 1Gb of data means your sit there and just browse all day and are constantly fingering your phone. Maybe you should look up sometime an realize your eyes can connect you to the rest of the world much fast than your finger on a touch screen accessing the internet.
yes, 1GB /mo for the g1 data plan that's required. -- $35 ON TOP of your new plan, yes they will make you choose either $35/mo for unlimited data and text or $25/mo for unlimited data and 400 text messages, and you cannot keep your existing plan if you have an older one.
...and it's not $176 for the phone, its $299, after their $100 discount...
Where do I sign up... OH WAIT... FAIL
http://i37.tinypic.com/2dtc4er.jpg
Yeah, whats up with the price on the website? $299 is a stupid move after they hyped it being under $200 this morning. I sent tmobile an email about it, but i doubt they will get back with me anytime soon.
http://i36.tinypic.com/lxn4m.jpg
BOATLOAD OF FAIL!
Oops.
Huh.
Why did I want a G1, again?
Same reason why most of us have iPhones (including myself)...we have no idea but buy into the hype of a cool internet mobile device.
God, this whole thing reeks of failure & poor planning.
First, they give us the same clunky generic device they've been using for MONTHS in all their demos, leak a bunch of photos/videos & present a big "Ta Da!" announcement like its something new. Yeah, thanks.
Now that its here, all these tid bits of lack of this, data cap on that, no 3G for your city till God knows when, etc bullshit is coming out. What a letdown this whole thing has been.
Do you expect companies to redesign their devices everytime they get leaked to keep you on your toes?
come to at&t my friend....we will make it all better for you lol
You left out, no 3.5mm port, no A2DP, no video recording, no flash, no mirror to see what you're taking, no local sync, no exchange, and a 300mhz(single core?) processor. But I guess it is open source. I'm sticking to WinMo.
@ ENVi
300MHz??!? where have you beeen? read up on the specs before you put your turd down... it's 528 MHz... just for the record.
Oh i love this...it gets worst and worst for tmobile users....lol
Wait a second.... How much time would you get from a 1GB cap per month?
How fast is 3G supposed to be?
The iPhone 3g seems to average about 170kbps (kilobits)
(http://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=98342)
A Gigabyte has 8,388,608 Kilobits.
(http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/?input_amount=1&input_units=gigabytes¬ation=legacy)
So at a rate of 170kbps you would use up 1GB in: ~ 13.7 Hours.
Which gives you an average of about 27min of use per day in a 30 day billing cycle.
Ouch.
It gives you an average of 27 minutes a day of bittorrent, maybe; also if you're RDP/VNCing to a desktop, and that kind of thing. Web surfing is a different matter (even ignoring the time spent reading pages, in between loading them).
On account of latency, opening and closing TCP connections, CPU time figuring out what to request next, etc., it's unlikely that it'll average over half the available bandwidth while continuously loading web pages. I don't have one, or any other Android device, so maybe their browser implements some good pipelining and does better, but I doubt it.
Moreover, I'm now going to stop ignoring the time spent reading pages. How much of the time you're actually loading new pages? Probably around 10% if you're doing stuff like engadget, news, forums, etc. If you're into content-heavy stuff, it's more. But in most practical applications, 3G is faster than content consumption, so it becomes irrelevant. The question is, how many kB/minute of website (including graphics) you can read, or how many MB/minute your A/V streams run. The latter is around 2 for youtube; it's just about one-to-one with the reported speeds, so your analysis holds. For anything less, you need to analyse based on content consumption bandwidth, not link bandwidth.
And I still don't like it.
Good move Tmo...haha. Kill the G1 before it even gets out....
Actually, they had a seal woth StarBucks which was bamboozled from right under thier feet by AT&T.
Now TMo is suing Starbucks and will prolly win a nice chunk of change.... but that wont repair the damage to thier reputation.
TMo is getting bitch slapped by every provider under the sun.
All thats left is for Chad from Alltel to drop kick it and its out for the count.
They sued Starbucks over Wifi, but we still had AT&T wifi over T-mobile equipment. And then AT&T installed their equipment and T-mobile fell out of the picture. Who the fuck cares if they get money, in the end they lose the money they would've made charging ludicrous rates for Wifi.
Not surprising seeing as they're late to getting their 3G networks up. This WILL be temporary. C'mon... this is Tmobile we're talking about here.... they're all about text and data and what not.
iPhone, FTW! Bwahahahaha!
Don't you mean for the lockin? As in sucks to be a developer.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/app-store-is-a.html
$250,000 in 2 months..yeah, life sucks as a "locked in" iPhone developer. If you're not even gonna try it, don't waste everyone's time. Jeeesh. If ALL of the developers that are considering developing for the G1, all 12 of them, are making even close to $250,000 the first year, I'll buy you a pie. (shaking his head)
iPhone Developers! FTW! Bwahahahahaing all the way to the bank!
First the lack of a 3.5mm jack, now this?
It's like when I found out in the same day that my beautiful girlfriend farts and picks her nose.
Worse still that you just found out that you don't have a beautiful girlfriend, eh?
what, a hot chick can't have bad habits?
you've never been to the LA basin apparently
1gb per month? about 33mb per day? tsk tsk tsk....
Did I miss something on the white color?
I'm pre-ordering on Tmo's site, but all I have are black or brown options, no white.
brown phone.
that's a first.
..... it's nice that they can coordinate the color with what it actually is.
ha, ha...brown is the color of poo...
Add that with the G1 being neutered with no UMA for hotspot@home calling, as well as no tethering etc.
The No UMA was the reason I cancelled my order.
No UMA? I thought that's why all T-mo's BBs had the wifi instead of GPS. LAME
This coupled with no tethering has me really thinking twice about going T Mobile. Hell I expect a lawsuit if they call it unlimited internet. 1GB sure as hell isn't unlimited. When you add Google maps with street view, Amazon downloads, pictures, and god knows what ever else people can think up on Android 1GB is staggeringly small. Small enough to actually stifle innovation IMHO. 2-3GB would be more reasonable.
Shee-it. T-Mobile charges us Sidekick owners $19.99 a month for unlimited data and unlimited text messages, and both are the unlimited kind of "unlimited." Maybe all the Googlephone owners can pull together some kind of class action suit because they're being treated so unfairly!
It might be interesting to note that when the sidekick originally came out, we were told that we would be charged for bandwidth after the first 15 megabytes per month. It never happened.
This is a problem how?
I have 4 gmail accounts going to my blackberry, do FREQUENT browsing(2+hrs per day), have Jivetalk on for 12 hrs a day for IM and i barely break 80mb a month on my bill for data.
1 gb of bandwith is huge for a mobile device
well seeing as how you can't tether with the G1 anyway guess you're right
Yeah... I don't buy that. I've had my iPhone 3G a month, and I do moderate browsing (and data download of applications.) Still, I've done 340MB in the past month.
Even 340MB in a month is obviously less then half. It seems that you would have to be a heavy user to hit that 1GB amount.
People putting up a shit storm about this are seriously looking for a reason to bitch. The average user will rarely come near that 1GB amount.
if all you're doing is browsing the internet and sending off emails the 1gb should be fine, but I think if you're going to heavily use the phone for it's ADVERTISED FEATURES ... such as youtube, downloading mp3s, and true mobile internet ... then it's a joke.
It's a neutered phone, it wouldn't have taken that much for it to be pushed over the top. As it is now, it's a severe FAIL from all it's hype.
But perhaps the problem is that this plan's definition of "unlimited" is that it's "unlimited as long as you don't go over the limit."
when you say that 1GB is bs than i want to know HOW would you spend 1GB thats 1000mb on a celluar phone just browsing. Actual truth is this , that 1GB is a bargain , face it if u dont want it just dont comment
totally. only fawning love comments allowed... pshhh i love limits and make-a-them my bride
easy..
youtube vids, google maps, sling box, remote desktop, xm/sirius online, lastfm, shoutcast, orb media streaming, maybe mobile torrents, i dunno, there are probably a dozen other ways aswell. And that doesn't even include tethering...
in this day and age 1gb/month regardless of device is laughable.. and will be even more ridiculous as devices become even more connected in future applications..
Seriously...queue the rabid iPhone user.
Honestly, I would much prefer they throttle after 1GB than just cut you off or toss an unreasonably large bill at you.
Completely agree. They have to cap it somewhere (all carriers do) so throttling makes more sense than a hard cutoff, especially given how heavily Android seems to rely on connectivity to do anything.
The 1GB data cap has shifted me from the "eagerly waiting to buy" to the "not going to buy it unless they fix it" category.
If they match AT&T's data cap, I'll still look for a device to use on AT&T's network.
They either need to eliminate the data cap, or raise it above AT&T's cap, or I not only wont get the G1, I'll use the ETF and jump ship. If I was going to deal with a draconian boatload of b*stards, I'd at least deal with ones who have better phone selection and coverage.
Definitely; since there's no 3G where I live, I think I'd have to hit it pretty hard to rack up a GB, but it's still low enough to be somewhat threatening. They'd better improve it, because they're hurting the big reason I went with T-mobile, cheap all-you-can-eat data for tethered devices.
And what's this do to Google Maps (or Maemo Mapper), anyway?!
Oh, and ETFs suck. I can jump any time I feel like it; flexpay all the way!
I'm really curious how quickly we'll approach the 1GB cap. It seems really low, but the device's "killer apps" at this point are Google Maps street view, Amazon MP3 store, maybe YouTube, and Gmail. How much data do these use, and can they be optimized for the G1 at all?