[ale] HOW2 choose an organizer/phone ?

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:27:26 -0600
JK <jknapka at kneuro.net> wrote:

> > Currently the only Android device out there is GSM, so if you have a
> > phone provider that is CDMA, you'll have to wait a while to get
> > it.  
> 
> How would I find out which kind of network my provider, er, provides?

The basic rule of thumb is this:  If your phone uses a SIM card[1], you
are on a GSM[2] network.  If not, you are on a CDMA[3] network.

With GSM phones, you can go to the store and buy a new (GSM) phone and,
without contacting the provider, put your SIM card into the phone, turn
the phone on, and you are up and running.  With CDMA phones, you must
call the provider and have *them* switch the active phone on your
account, which takes some time while their records update.

The way that this works, in short, is that the SIM card that is present
in GSM phones contains the information that is necessary to register on
the cellular network and make/receive calls and perform other actions
such as send/receive data on the network.  The phone itself doesn't
matter; the phones identifying information is still readable by the
network, but the part that is bound to your account is the SIM card,
not the phone.  With CDMA phones, however, you cannot switch phones
easily.

I used to be a CDMA user, but the ease of use with GSM is far better.
If your CDMA phone dies, and you buy a new one off of eBay, you then
have to call the carrier, read a long hexadecimal number to them, wait
(often only a few minutes, sometimes as much as an hour or two, and
rarely up to a day) for the network to recognize the phone as being
tied to your account, and then you're in business again.  On the other
hand, if your GSM phone dies, you pull the SIM card out, and put it in
another phone.

There are a number of reasons I prefer GSM:

 * It makes it easy to have a spare phone to switch to in an emergency.
 * You don't have to have the network's blessing to operate the phone,
   if it is GSM, it's GSM.  If it's older, it will just use less
   features of the network.
 * You can easily evaluate new phones and decide whether or not you
   care to actually use them.  This is actually how I came to the
   decision that I absolutely did want an HTC Dream, because I had the
   chance to evaluate it (borrowed one for a few months, and fell head
   over heels for the thing).
 * You can use prepaid accounts in different regions without worrying
   abut roaming or anything like that.  If, for example, I went
   somewhere out of the country, GSM is a global standard, and I could
   buy a prepaid account, and use its SIM card in my phone to make
   calls less expensively than if I were to use my home carrier and pay
   international roaming.  Not a killer feature for me, but it is for
   many.  There are CDMA companies around the world, too, but you can't
   hop accounts as easily (if at all) with it.

GSM phones are also (usually) the ones that you hear about being "jail
broken" or "SIM unlocked", since they are absolutely easy to take from
one provider to another.  If I wake up one day hating T-Mobile (and
actually, at this point, I *love* them, they have treated us
wonderfully, worlds better than Sprint ever did), I could go to AT&T
(ew.) or another GSM carrier, though those are the two that I know of
off the top of my head.

	HTH,
	Mike

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_card
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000

-- 
Attempting to decrypt data is an extremely time and equipment
intensive process, requiring a laboratory environment to be done
effectively.
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