CombatCritic's TravelValue™: phone

Showing posts with label phone. Show all posts

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Gen Z, Social Dystrophy™ - Is Technology or Poorly Defined Values to Blame?

TravelTech: 2019 - Best International SIM Card And No-Contract Plan For Travel Within The EU

Traveling to Europe and want to pay just $25 for all of the talk, text and data you need with no roaming charges in all 48 European countries and 77 countries worldwide (including the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France and Spain)? Well, you are in luck!

You can get a Vodafone UK SIM card in the United Kingdom from any Vodafone store and most telephone shops for just £1 and a £20 pay-as-you-go big value bundle that includes 1,000 minutes of talk and unlimited texts (local - in the European country that you are in and to UK numbers) and 8GB of 4G/LTE data good for 30 days. Unlike some countries, such as Italy for example, you do not need to show a passport or any other ID when purchasing the SIM card or bundle. Being a pay-as-you-go option, bundles can renew every 30 days (if you so choose), so you can use the SIM card for 4 days, 4 weeks, 4 months or 4 years.

You will need an unlocked GSM phone (AT&T and T-Mobile use the GSM network - Sprint, Verizon and other US carriers do not) to take advantage of this offer. You can buy an unlocked GSM phone on Amazon relatively inexpensively before you leave or you can rent or buy one when you arrive in the UK. Just pop the SIM card in your phone - they come in all three sizes: standard, micro, and nano - and off you go!

When you arrive in another free-roaming country you will get a text welcoming you and your smart phone will connect to a local network automatically. I bought my SIM card in London and traveled to France, Italy and Portugal over a period of two plus months, seamlessly traveling with 100% connectivity everywhere I went. You can top-up your SIM online, over the phone, by text, or, do as I did, by adding an additional two months worth of credit (£40) before I left London.

Unused minutes and data rollover automatically and you can create a mobile hotspot (which Vodafone - Italy will not allow you to do) if you like. I was also able to stream video everywhere we went. I received an offer to add an additional 20GB of data for just £3 after the first month, giving me a total of 34GB of data ... HOOAH!

Translation for Civilians:

HOOAH!: "Phonetic spelling of the acronym HUA, which stands for 'Heard Understood Acknowledged.' Originally used by the British in the late 1800's in Afghanistan. More recently adopted by the United States Army to indicate an affirmative or a pleased response." - Urban Dictionary

"The Department of Military Science and Leadership, University of Tennessee claim HOOAH 'refers to or means anything except no' ... Regardless of its meaning ... the term is an expression of high morale, confidence, motivation and spirit." - WarChronicle.com

"The U.S. Air Force stole 'HOOAH' from the Army because we were part of the Army until 1947 and rather than waste a bunch of time coming up with something new and unique like "ROO-YAH" or "HAL-A-LOO-YAH", we said 'screw it, let's go with HOOAH' ... thanks Army ... HOOAH!" - CombatCritic

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Travel Tech: Even DETECTIVE Moto Could Not Solve The Case Of The DEFECTIVE Moto G4

Moto G (4th Gen.) Unlocked - White - 32GB

by Motorola

If you like to travel as much as I do, you know that when you travel internationally, you need an unlocked GSM (system used in most countries beside the U.S.) phone. With an unlocked GSM phone, you can buy a local SIM card and make calls, send texts, and surf the web at much lower prices than your carrier would charge while roaming abroad.

Well, I needed a new phone and had read good reviews about this phone on Amazon and well known tech websites, so being sick and tired of Apple’s products and their lack of customer focus, I decided to sell my iPhone (and soon my Mac) while I could still get $10-$20 for it and bought the Moto G4. Big mistake!

No because I regretted giving up my iPhone, which actually works most of the time, but because the Moto G4 is a piece of garbage. I wasted the first two days loading all of my apps, email accounts, and setting up the phone and it seemed to work ok. You have to swipe up across the screen to get to the password screen, but an easy swipe was not enough and I had to swipe and swipe and swipe even harder for the damn thing to open. If that were not irritating enough, the phone would randomly chime, turn itself on and show me what time it was. The screen is also far too big for my taste and once protected by the clunky case, it reminded me of the "bricks" (a walkie-talkie the size and weight of a brick) we used in the military.

Then, on the third day, the phone decided to turn itself off while I waiting for an important phone call. Then it turned itself back on, but would never boot with the screen turning itself on, then off, then on, then off, etc., etc., etc. I pushed and held the off button for nearly a minute and still nothing happened. After 5-15 minutes, it would finally boot, only to turn itself off again and so on and so forth. Having all of these major problems after just three days, I decided enough was enough.

I was not going to bother with tech support because the phone was obviously seriously flawed, so I went home and hit the "return" button on Amazon. Because I will not buy this model again, I had to also return the clunky case which actually was not that bad.

DO NOT BUY A MOTOROLA MOTO G4!

CombatCritic Gives The Motorola Moto G4 1 Bomb Out Of 10 And A Spot, Along With Apple, On My “WALL OF SHAME” … More Bombs Are Better!

One Bomb Equates To:

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Title: Travel Tech: Even DETECTIVE Moto Could Not Solve The Case Of The DEFECTIVE Moto G4

Key Words: Travel Tech, Moto, defective Moto G4, G4, G, 4, Motorola, phone, android, smart, smartphone, CombatCritic, TravelValue, travel, value, product, review, Yelp, Amazon, amazon.com

Translation for Civilians: FUBAR = "Fucked Up Beyond All Repair"

Saturday, June 13, 2015

If Traveling In Italy, DO NOT BUY a Vodafone SIM Card For Your GSM SmartPhone

Having traveled to 39 countries, I have purchased many SIM cards for my U.S. purchased GSM phones to stay connected while on the road. Your phone must be GSM (T-Mobile, AT&T) compatible if you hope to use it anywhere outside of the United States and, if it is, all you have to do is buy a local SIM card when you arrive in a foreign country. It will cost you from nothing to $10 for the card (and local phone number) and you can get a data/voice/SMS plan with 2GB or more of 3G or 4G data (depending on country) for $10 per month and up.

I bought a TIM (Telecom Italia) SIM card when I arrived in Italy for an extended trip with 20GB of 4G data per month and 400 minutes of talk-time for just €40 per month. With the plan I can create a portable hotspot or tether my phone to my computer in order for me or anybody else to access the web via wi-fi at no additional charge. TIM has 4G-LTE, 4G, H, H+, and 3G data in many populated areas of Italy with the occasional 1G (E) in some spots, so it was very easy to access the web from my computer pretty much anywhere.

The only downside to TIM is that they do not have an App or other easy way to access your plan in order to monitor data usage, voice minutes or SMS balances. And if you do not speak the language or find a TIM store with an English-speaking employee, you probably will not be able to figure out how to do so. After a week, I finally had a friend help me access the TIM website where you can register and monitor your account. Google even translates the page for you so you do not have to be fluent in Italian to navigate their site!

When my wife arrived in Italy (she is Italian-born), she wanted to use the Vodafone SIM from the phone that her recently deceased father used, so we went and bought a data/voice/SMS plan for her. It seemed like a good deal with 2GB of 4G data and 500 minutes of voice for just €20 per month, but you know what the say when something "seems too good to be true".

My wife was helping a friend prepare a presentation for a conference early the next morning and they needed two photos (they had forgotten at her friend's home) from the internet to finish it. I showed my wife how to create a hotspot on her new Android phone, a Motorola Moto G 4G LTE, and we downloaded two photos, taking a total of five minutes. As soon as we shut-down the hotspot, my wife received a text from Vodafone telling her that she had been charged €4 for utilizing a service not included with her phone plan. She was never warned about the potential charge or clicked on "I Accept" this charge because Vodafone simply deducted the money from her balance.

I wondered how that was possible in the first place, also wondering why Vodafone would care how she used the 2GB of data that we paid for. What does it matter if she used the data on her phone over a month or created a hotspot at the Napoli versus Roma soccer match and gobbled it up in 30 seconds? We paid for the data, so what does it matter? So we decided to visit a Vodafone store and find out what happened.

In the interim, we made a video of her friend's presentation on my wife's Moto and wanted to transfer it to my computer so I could edit it in iMovie and upload it to YouTube. Of course Apple makes it nearly impossible to use anything purchased from another company, so my Macbook Pro would not allow me to connect with her phone via Bluetooth. I finally found a forum that told me what to do and had to tether the phone to my Mac after downloading an App called Android File Transfer from the PlayStore. Success! We transferred the movie when suddenly, my wife received another text from Vodafone ... she had been charged an additional €4 for simply connecting her phone to her computer ... no hotspot created, no Vodafone data used! What the heck was going on?

Staying at her friend's apartment in Vomero, there was a Vodafone store two blocks away, so we decided to go ask about both issues. The girl behind the counter had a snooty look on her face as soon as my wife began to explain and quickly cut her off saying, in Italian of course, "you used a service not on your plan and you have to pay". We tried to reason with her, but it was obviously useless as we could tell that neither she nor Vodafone cared in the least about customer service, so we left.

BOTTOM LINE: If traveling in Italy, DO NOT BUY a Vodafone SIM Card for your GSM smartphone! I am telling you that there are many options available, including TIM, Wind and others, so utilize their services instead of Vodafone when couch surfing or surfing the internet abroad ... as I say to myself, "Is Vodafone a subsidiary of Apple, because they sure have similar business practices?"

CombatCritic Gives Vodafone A Dismal 1 Bomb Out Of 10 ... More Bombs Are Better!

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Title: If Traveling In Italy, DO NOT BUY a Vodafone SIM Card For Your GSM SmartPhone

Key Words: Vodafone, Italy, telecom, plan, data, phone, smartphone, TIM, Wind, tether, mobile, hotspot, review, CombatCritic, travel, value, tech, technology, Apple, Macbook

Friday, April 17, 2015

Garbage ... I Will Never Waste My Money On Apple Products Again

Review: Apple 60W MagSafe Power Adapter (for MacBook and 13‐inch MacBook Pro)

If you like to travel as much as I do, a computer is a necessity in your home away from home and I take mine wherever in the world I go. Having heard wonderful things, propaganda, about Apple products, I took the leap less than two years ago by purchasing a Macbook Pro, then an iPhone 5C. What a mistake!

Just shy of warranty expiration, my Mac's OS went TANGO UNIFORM (military speak for hard‐broke), causing me to spend countless hours on the phone with support, wiping my hard drive clean, reinstalling the OS, and recovering everything from backup ... several times. Then my 6 month old iPhone died while on vacation in Puerto Rico, stranding us in an unfamiliar area while using Google Maps to navigate the island, losing my ability to take vacation photos/video and unable to contact relatives back home over the holidays.

Most recently, my MagSafe power adapter's (plastic) "L" connector head broke off. After removing it with a pair of pliers, I super‐glued it back on, allowing me to charge my computer for a couple weeks, but now it will not charge at all. Having paid close to $3500 for three Apple products (including my wife's computer), I would expect better quality, but what should I expect from overpriced products Made in China? I was shocked to see that Apple wants $79 for a replacement MagSafe adapter. Where else would you pay $80 for a power cord other than Apple? Nowhere! Based on the reviews this product has garnered, it is a piece of $80 junk just like the rest of Apple's products, I can see that my problem is fairly common. I will buy a new adapter from another supplier for just $30 and I will never buy another Apple product again.

CombatCritic Gives Apple, Inc. and their MagSafe 60W Power Adapter A Dismal 1 Bomb Out Of 10 ... More Bombs Are Better!

Read More Reviews By CombatCritic On Yelp And TripAdvisor ... And Don't Forget To Subscribe To TravelValue TV on YouTube

Title: Garbage ... I Will Never Waste My Money On Apple Products Again

Key Words: Apple, macbook, pro, MagSafe, power, adapter, 60W, MacIntosh, computer, iPhone, 5C, Mac, phone, product, broken, review, CombatCritic, TravelValue, travel, value, tech

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