Be Patient When You Finally Get A Pro 1

[Hook 2,943]

My recent adventure getting Verizon to work made me realize that drawing hasty conclusions about such a new and different phone is not a good idea.  You might decide to return the phone before you've given it a real chance.  There are a lot of smart people on this forum.  If it weren't for @Polaris @david and @silversolver and probably some others I'm forgetting, I never would have stumbled on my solution to the Verizon problem.  And they don't even have Pro 1s yet.  Give it time. I feel bad because I helped generate a "This doesn't work with Verizon" moment, which turned out to be false, but it was thrown at @Waxberry in Twitter. 

This phone may be retro, but it is also a new frontier.  We need to take our time to get help with any issues we find and take time to ensure we've done everything to work them out. There are far too many cases for the small group at F(x) Tec to have worked them out.

My apologies to Chen and folks for whatever small bit of damage I did. 

And very heartfelt thanks to all the smarter than me fellow voyagers here.  I am soooooo in love with this phone!

[Polaris 423]

11 minutes ago, Hook said:

My recent adventure getting Verizon to work made me realize that drawing hasty conclusions about such a new and different phone is not a good idea.  You might decide to return the phone before you've given it a real chance.  There are a lot of smart people on this forum.  If it weren't for @Polaris @david and @silversolver and probably some others I'm forgetting, I never would have stumbled on my solution to the Verizon problem.  And they don't even have Pro 1s yet.  Give it time. I feel bad because I helped generate a "This doesn't work with Verizon" moment, which turned out to be false, but it was thrown at @Waxberry in Twitter. 

This phone may be retro, but it is also a new frontier.  We need to take our time to get help with any issues we find and take time to ensure we've done everything to work them out. There are far too many cases for the small group at F(x) Tec to have worked them out.

Very well stated.  I  think you are right on point, give it some time, and we'll all work on solutions; it's just too new right now!

[Zamasu 258]

I feel like this was sold as a standard Android phone with a keyboard though, something that just works out of the box. You can't expect everybody to want to muck around with APNs and the like, that's what I thought the pre-production and the like was for. I do think people in general can be more patient before drawing conclusions and posting things on the internet, but it's a valid opinion to think it  should just work without needing to do things people have never done with other phones.

[Hook 2,943]

5 hours ago, Zamasu said:

I feel like this was sold as a standard Android phone with a keyboard though, something that just works out of the box. You can't expect everybody to want to muck around with APNs and the like, that's what I thought the pre-production and the like was for. I do think people in general can be more patient before drawing conclusions and posting things on the internet, but it's a valid opinion to think it  should just work without needing to do things people have never done with other phones.

Yes and no.  I think for the most part, the Pro 1 does work right out of the box.  There are some bugs being picked up in the software, but that's to be expected even with big companies, especially when the users are so tech savvy (the ones finding the bugs).

As for getting US telco stuff right, small companies and international phones have always had trouble with that because, frankly, you can never do all the testing required.   The big boys like Samsung, Apple and Google have the clout to work directly with the big Telcos and get their phones to all the big telcos and have the right setup.  If a small company like F(x) Tec were to provide Verizon with a Pro 1, they'd probably stick it on a shelf and ignore it-- not a large enough company to do the work to get it pre-approved. I'm not saying I actually know how these things are done, but I don't think my characterization is far off. 

So, in the US at least, if you don't want to go mainstream, you are going to have to do a little work. I've been having to do this with out of the box phones since 2009 when I first went to a smartphone (from Nokia) and didn't want a contract at a time when almost no one allowed having data without a contract in the US.

[Zamasu 258]

2 minutes ago, Hook said:

I think for the most part, the Pro 1 does work right out of the box.  There are some bugs being picked up in the software, but that's to be expected even with big companies, especially when the users are so tech savvy (the ones finding the bugs).

Well I disagree, this seems to just be a semantic discussion at this point.

4 minutes ago, Hook said:

As for getting US telco stuff right, small companies and international phones have always had trouble with that because, frankly, you can never do all the testing required.   The big boys like Samsung, Apple and Google have the clout to work directly with the big Telcos and get their phones to all the big telcos and have the right setup.  If a small company like F(x) Tec were to provide Verizon with a Pro 1, they'd probably stick it on a shelf and ignore it-- not a large enough company to do the work to get it pre-approved. I'm not saying I actually know how these things are done, but I don't think my characterization is far off. 

So, in the US at least, if you don't want to go mainstream, you are going to have to do a little work. I've been having to do this with out of the box phones since 2009 when I first went to a smartphone (from Nokia) and didn't want a contract at a time when almost no one allowed having data without a contract in the US.

Not just going to believe that because of a forum post, but also can't be bothered to do actual research regarding that. I never heard of that needing to be done, but to be fair I also never followed a phone this closely before.

[silversolver 849]

1 hour ago, Zamasu said:

Well I disagree, this seems to just be a semantic discussion at this point.

Not just going to believe that because of a forum post, but also can't be bothered to do actual research regarding that. I never heard of that needing to be done, but to be fair I also never followed a phone this closely before.

As a fellow US customer, I can ASSURE you that his statement is entirely correct. You have basically 2 options here: get a phone from a giant company directly through the carrier of your choice, in which case it will "just work," or get the phone of your choice and try to fiddle and coax it into working with said carrier. AT&T is possibly the only US provider operating more-or-less with vanilla GSM, so no surprise, it "just works." Everyone else is marching very much to the beat of their own drum, and getting your phone not designed for that beat to march to it can be a hassle.

[Craig 1,435]

12 hours ago, Zamasu said:

You can't expect everybody to want to muck around with APNs

In the US if you expect a phone to just work without mucking around, you buy it from a carrier.  If instead you buy a retail/international version of a phone, or move a carrier-provided phone to a new network, there's often some effort involved.  Setting APN is trivial.  For example, it's on the instructions that came with the SIM card I used, right on the package.  The only instruction in fact.

 

 

And of course described in detail on their website. https://support.freedompop.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026010513-APN-Configuration-Steps-LTE-SIM-Card 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Craig