Originally Posted by _m:
“Given that it's already a 3 year old device, I highly doubt that EE, Samsung, and Google will go through the crap required for VoLTE support in the OS - even if the hardware supports it.
Also given that the S4 will likely not support Android N, I highly doubt that it would be safe to use, or even usable, next year - never mind in two years.”
In which case, if (and only if) the S4 stops working, I'll upgrade to something newer and better. But I don't have loads of money to spend on phones when my current phone still works (albeit rather wackily sometimes...).
Believe it or not, my S4 is still on Android 4.2, because (when I bought it) Android 4.4 was out, and I didn't want to upgrade due to some of the issues with battery life and SD card support (notably apps on SD). If and when the app makers stop supporting Android 4.2, I'll upgrade the S4 to the latest supported version of Android, which is likely Android 5.0?
So as for having it usable in a year or two - unless the app developers suddenly pull support for Android 4.2.x, of course the S4 will still be usable. I know of people that are still on Android 2.3 devices, and they still work (albeit slowly...).
Originally Posted by de525ma:
“I'm sure you're trolling me now....”
I didn't mean to... Apologies if it came across that way.
Quote:
“On the first point - why on earth would you build infill masts for an obsolete technology, when you can achieve greater coverage using the existing infrastructure and technically superior 4G? 2G's only bothering you because there is something wrong with your phone. Please just go and get a new one.”
My reasoning for infill masts for 3G2100 was because, apart from coverage (and cell breathing), 3G does everything better than 2G for phones. It does phone calls at a high quality (particularly when you're ringing people from the same network, which I do); it sends texts just as reliably, and data is much faster. On a -109dBm 3G signal, I can get 2-3Mbps off most masts. On any type of 2G signal, the maximum I'll get (in real world terms) is 150kbps. And most 2G is still GPRS, which will barely get me 30kbps. Certainly not enough for what I need.
Plus, if what has been discussed does go ahead, that 3G will be axed before 2G, then any device that doesn't support 4G will effectively turn into a data brick away from Wifi hotspots. Functionality that has worked for years (such as Tunein, Spotify, Youtube) will cease to function anymore. If you've got Snapchat, Google Hangouts (or similar) or voice/video calls over services such as Whatsapp, I'd be very surprised if they worked at all over 2G. App updates will struggle; what used to be a 1 minute task would turn into a 10-20 minute task. Even basic tasks such as web browsing will be very slow, particularly if the web site has any images. And that's not mentioning the fact that most older tablets (including some Kindle e-readers) do not support 4G (and some of those do not support GSM either), so you'd be effectively turning those devices into either Wi-Fi only devices (in which case, you'll have wasted your money by buying the 3G version), or devices that can't connect to the internet at all (if they have 3G but no wifi).
Quote:
“On the second point: just because it would be hypothetically cheaper to build a nationwide 2600MHz network with an absurd number of masts rather than refarm GSM-R, doesn't make it any more feasible! Both of those options are off the table, and insanely expensive. One is cheaper, but still insanely expensive. Moox used it as an example to illustrate why it's a stupid idea to refarm GSM-R. That's all.
Why don't you just change to 3 anyway? They have barely any 2G.”
Aah okay, I get you now. I thought at first it might be feasible to convert GSM-R to 3G, obviously now I know that can't be done! Yeah, I should have twigged that 99% geo 2600 wasn't going to happen. 800 and 1800 would be better, and even so, is it actually feasible to make a network with 99% geo coverage? Probably not...
I decided on EE because I know that EE's 3G is pretty reliable (Virgin used EE), plus it was more feasible in terms of value for money. I'm not going to go for a company that charges £30 a month for AYCE minutes/texts/data, when I can get 16GB data and AYCE mins/texts for £20 (during the promotion that happened); particularly since Three don't seem to have the 4G capacity on their network as of yet. EE's 4G is faster and more importantly, more masts are being activated. I can remember last time on Three 4G, whereby I tested the speed in Leicester and got about 3Mbps! In which case, 3G was faster. Overall, it made more sense to choose EE, and I suppose that (unless someone comes up with a way of making a WCDMA/LTE mode for the S4) I'll have to stick to WCDMA Only mode for reliability's sake, and switching up to 4G if I need faster speeds for anything.
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