T-Mobile + Flexpay = No Shortcodes

I asked the question on June 14, 2007: Why can't I sent and receive text from Twitter (40404) and Google SMS (466453)? They're free.

And after 10 days I finally find out why I'm screwed:

"These services are third-party network services and are accessed through a common gateway for all such services. This gateway is not accessible to all account types, and this includes FlexPay accounts. As your account is a FlexPay account, regrettably, you are unable to make use of these services. This is what the error text is referring to. I apologize for the inconvenience."

So this is my punishment for refusing to sign a contract. Thanks, T-Mobile!

Nokia 6263 Hands Free Through My Car Speakers for $40

If you absolutely hate FM Transmitters, read no further, because that's how I pulled off this little feat.

Items I used:
Belkin F8M010 Tunecast III FM Transmitter - Universal
New OEM Nokia 3.5mm Audio Adapter Ad-50 5200 5300 8800 (included with phone)
Universal Car Phone Holder with Multiple Mounting Options(optional)
CELLULAR INNOVATIONS UY-ADT Universal Cigarette Lighter Splitter(optional)

Now the Nokia adapter was included with my Nokia 6263 phone, so I was in luck.

The Belkin Tunecast III installed like a champ. Toss in the batteries, connect it to the AD-50 3.5mm to 2.5mm jack adapter and insert into the phone. Set the radio to an unused frequency (88.3 FM worked great for me) and set the Belkin Tunecast III to match.

The Belkin Tunecast III comes with a DC power adapter for plugging into your car's cigarette lighter, or can be powered off of 2 "AAA" batteries. I recommend using the adapter. If your car is like mine, you only have one plug-in available, so if you want to use your phone's charger as well, you'll need to get a splitter, like the one I've linked above. Completely optional.

I opted to get a phone holder as well for keeping my phone up on the dash and free from sliding around the car. This also made it easy for wrapping the cords and twist-tying them so they were hanging loose all over the place. Again, this is optional.

When placing your phone, make sure it is not too far away from you, as the microphone on the handset is what will be picking up your voice. When you first connect the headset, the phone will ask you if you want to use the microphone. Be sure to select yes.

I did notice some interference when I first attempted to use the phone (slight buzzing), but simply wrapping the extra cord length around the cord track on the Tunecast FM Transmitter seemed to clear it right up.

In making test calls I was able to hear the person on the other end very clearly and loudly through the car speakers, and on the other end they reported hearing only a slight echo, much like a speakerphone. Nothing too distracting.

My main goal was to be able to play my music stored on the phone over my car speakers, and I was very impressed with how the clear stereo sound came out.

Your mileage may very depending on how many stations you have in your area or how close you live to a major metropolitan space. Overall, this is a very cheap method to having an ultimate hands free phone system in your car.

I Was Hip Back in the Day and Didn't Even Know It

I upgraded to MS DOS 5 back in the day because I was a geek. Too bad this wasn't released to the public back in the day; it could have upped my street cred too.

Why in the world do...

Why in the world do people pay anywhere from $2 to $5 for directory assistance to their mobile phone carrier, when you've got options like 411 Google or 1-800 free 411? Why do people still continue to pay outrageous charges for directory assistance? My question to.... listen

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Collin and I spent Fathers' Day at the Detroit Zoo

Sometimes pictures really are worth 1,000 words.

The Well Hidden "Gotcha" on T-Mobile's FlexPay "Unlimited" Plan

I didn't want to get sucked into another 2-year contract with T-Mobile, or any carrier for that matter, until I was certain who I wanted to end up with. In reviewing all the pre-paid plans out there, I decided to go with T-Mobile's Individual Unlimited plan for $99 per month, and do so month-to-month using their FlexPay program.

In addition to unlimited calling to anyone on any network or landline, the $99 plan also came with unlimited text messaging, IMs, video and picture messaging and that was exactly what I needed.

However, two of the services I use heavily via SMS (text messaging) are Twitter and Google, which both provide free shortcodes for accessing their service.

It turns out that T-Mobile blocks access to these shortcodes, making you unable to send text messages to them.

Surely that's outlined in the plan details; I must have just overlooked that disclosure. After combing through my materials several times, I fail to see where T-Mobile discloses such a blockage.

Where have I seen that business practice before? Oh yes, when I discovered the hard way that T-Mobile blocks Internet access for 3rd party java applications on the Nokia phones they sell.

The bottom line: If you rely on being able to send messages to SMS shortcodes for services such as Twitter or Google SMS, T-Mobile FlexPay plans are not for you.

Photo credit: Flickr user Zach Klein

Collin Gets a Hole-in-One!

Took Collin putt-putt golfing the other day, and he had a blast. He loves all things golf, so I am definitely encouraging it... although I wouldn't be sad if he picked up a hockey stick.

Here's a video I made of him in the pinnacle of putting form, scoring the celebrated hole-in-one in putt-putt golf.

(I shot this using the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic (before I took it back), for those of you in the market for a cell phone and were curious about that phone's video quality.)

Malkin Heads to the YMCA Pool to Practice Diving During the Offseason

I'll make this short and sweet.

Congratulations to the Detroit Red Wings for winning the Stanley Cup this year!
Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Penguins for saving face and avoiding a sweep and making a series out of this year's finals.

Glad to see Evgeni Malkin didn't get to hoist the Stanley Cup.
He is a whiner, a crier, and a blatant diver.

Everyone made such a big deal out of this slapshot goal he scored against the Philadelphia Flyers in the Eastern Conference finals, but nobody points out the fact that the only reason why he got that opportunity to be all alone at the blue line is because he was limping off after a big hit by Mike Richards and looking for a referee all the way back towards the bench.



Sergei Gonchar was the hero on that play, not Malkin. That easily could have been a Philadelphia goal if it wasn't for the heads up defense of Gonchar.

My Love Affair With The Nokia 5310 XPressMusic Abruptly Ends

While grooving to a tune on my Nokia 5310 XpressMusic T-Mobile phone in the McDonald's drive thru this morning, the oddest thing happened: the phone rebooted itself.

Strange, maybe it was just a glitch. So I resumed listening to my music, and then on another song the phone rebooted again. No warning, just a quick reboot.

So a quick little Google search for "Nokia 5310 reboot" uncovered this little gem, with this problem happening to customers over 5 months ago. I just bought this phone on Friday and they still haven't fixed this problem? See you later, XPressMusic. If you're a "music phone", and you reboot at random when trying to play music, that's just sad. Really sad.

I'm going to take the phone back tomorrow and exchange it for the Nokia 6263. Seems to be a decent phone to get me by until my T-Mobile contract is up.

Then again, I'm 0-1 when I praise a Nokia phone thus far.

Photo credit: ME

T-Mobile and the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

Anyone who's been following my Twitter posts knows exactly how sick I was over the T-Mobile Dash. The way it leaked memory like a sieve causing you to reboot the phone several times a day, the poor audio quality on the videos, the rapidly deteriorating battery life, and inability to play streaming video were just a few of the reasons I hated it so. (I'm not the only one who had problems.) Well, what ended up killing it was the fact that it would randomly shut off during any type of over-the-air data transfer or any phone call that took longer than 2 minutes. (The phone would just go black, not actually go through a power down T-Mobile logo love fest cycle.)

The best part of all? I got swindled into signing a 2-year contract extension to upgrade so I could get $100 knocked off the price plus a $50 rebate that T-Mobile never honored for me. All of the functional problems I discovered weren't until several months later and at that point T-Mobile had no obligation to assist me with that T-Mobile Dash. How can a company look its customers in the eye and feel good about signing them into a contract so they can get a deep discount on a piece of technology that won't survive up 25-50% of the contract period?

So after one cut off conversation too many last Thursday, it was time to go look for another phone, as I'm locked into a T-Mobile contract for the next several months and have no desire to reward the pirates at that company with a severance check for customer no-service.

My premise was simple: I needed a phone that could run the Google Java applications so I could check my Gmail account and look at maps while out and about. I also wanted Bluetooth compatibility, a camera that could shoot video as well as stills, and I did not want a Windows Mobile device as that operating system is about as reliable as a dollar store diaper.

So in all my searching and comparing reviews on CNet, I came up with the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic as my phone of choice, weighing in with a $200 price tag, and set off to the T-Mobile store the very next day to buy it.

Apparently this is a pretty new phone, and I knew more about this particular model than the sales representative who helped me. The first thing I did when I took it out of the box was try out some music. Worked very well, and the music came out of the speaker very crisp and clear.

The next thing I played with was the camera phone. Also very easy and the quality of the audio was a night-and-day improvement over the T-Mobile Dash. The video looked how all cell phone video quality looks to me - grainy and dithered, but you could at least see what's going on.

Now it was time to put the phone through the real paces. I sent a picture message to a friend. Worked very well. Sent and received some text messages. I liked the intuitive "guess what you're trying to type" text entering method, as it saved me from having to push the 7 button four times just to get an "S".

Now I was ready to install my Gmail and Google Maps applications. I went to m.google.com and clicked on the download link for Gmail. Google detected my phone and the link downloaded the newest version of the Gmail Java application. So far so good!

After the application downloaded, I gave it a whirl. I was suddenly presented with an error message: "Application access set to not allowed." Seemed like it would be easy to fix; all I'd have to do is just go into the options and change a setting for this application.

I clicked on Options, then scrolled down the menu and saw where it said "Application access." Now we're really cooking! Er, but wait... it's grayed out. No matter, T-Mobile certainly wouldn't be criminal enough to cripple a feature on a device I paid them full price for. Furthermore, I know T-Mobile in their wise and sound judgment would surely allow me as a customer currently subscribed to the "Total Internet Access" package to grant 3rd party applications access to the data network. But alas, this was not so.

I can't stomach anymore sarcasm. Truth is, I knew damn well what was going on as soon as I saw the option was grayed out and I got pissed. Really pissed. Shouldn't those thieves and villains at T-Horrible be forced to disclose when they've disabled a feature on the phone in a manner that is easily visible? If you're buying a product that has set capabilities, as a customer I would expect those capabilities to be there when I open the box and use the product.

The story gets better. For kicks I clicked on "Application access" anyways just to see what would happen, and I received the "Not available for this application" error. Now it was time to call T-Mobile's Technically Challenged Support department.

After saying a couple of prayers and having sadtrombone.com loaded and ready for comical relief, I dialed up T-Mobile and was connected to a representative after a short few minute wait. I explained very clearly what the problem was and that I needed to know how to unlock the "Application access" feature for Java applications. The T-Mobile representative's solution? The phone will magically unlock itself after 48 hours and I will be able to use all the Java applications my little heart desires.

And when I expressed disbelief, the representative offered me clear and convincing proof: my t-mobile.com profile still displayed that I was using a T-Mobile Dash. Wow. It wasn't because I hadn't logged in and updated which phone I owned, it was because the magical towers of T-Mobile haven't detected my new phone.

After it was clear to me I was talking to a brick wall, I decided to go another route: online chat support. I had the pleasure of typing to Sanja, who was very polite in his cut and paste conversation. After diligently typing out the problem and my request, I was told flatly: T-Mobile does not support any 3rd party applications on their phones. What an odd response, as they probably make a fortune selling 3rd party applications on T-Zones. And if I didn't like the answer? Take the phone back within 14 days I was told.

The problem with taking this phone back is the rest of the device lineup is so pathetic, I don't think there's a viable choice I would want to exchange for. I don't have much longer to go on my T-Mobile contract, so I think I will just cancel my Total Internet Service package and tough out the last few months of T-Horrible, then move to a company that makes me feel like a valued customer and not a moronic sheep.

If there's a phone that works really well in unlocked mode or if you're in love with your mobile carrier, I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have.

And if you want to know anything else about the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, I'd be more than happy to answer your questions in the comments. I will point out it has weak e-mail support (no IMAP, all messages are downloaded via SMS service) and the web browser does not present non-mobile sites well at all. Other than that, it's a decent phone. T-Mobile just crippled it, that's all.