Anyone seen Oldbooks1? Is he sailing around the world? I miss his interesting and well informed posts.
Seems like most people are missing !
You said it.
I've been wondering the same thing. Hope all is well with him and his family. The forums are not the same without him!
***Exactly--hopefully he's on a long trip giving the pc a rest.
Maybe we should bait him with phones for silver. Limited time offer lol. Bet he shows up.
Seems r+ forum is dead again.
For me I will stick with cellnuvo. I have enough silver for my usage.
I am getting used to the lower stress of cellnuvo.
R+ with there midnight sales and lock into a plan. They pray to get a better deal
I have been bogged down in more mundane and less exciting things than a big trip although that sounds very appealing and have one coming up soon.
At the moment I am trying to help an older lady buy her first ever Smartphone (she wants an iPhone) and I would like to have her avoid killer overage charges. She is determined to stick with PagePlus and wants to get the 1GB plan for $29.95. It is more data than she should need but she could easily rack up large overages since she might not effectively manage data usage, especially in background mode at $0.05/MB. So there is no flexibility on carrier choice or plan--she does not want to move to the 3GB plan which offers unlimited 2G and thus avoids overage risks.
There are two issues on which any advice would be appreciated:
- which model to get:
she is thinking of 6s but currently has an iPod and really likes the size of that device. I have suggested to her that she look at the SE and 6s side by side in the Apple Store and if she really cannot decide then to get one and if that does not work to switch to the other within the 14 day return period.
Regardless, the sim free model would be the one to get.
Is there a better way to look at this?
- on overages (other than selecting a different plan) this is the best I can think of:
a) make sure Wifi Assist is turned off by default at set up--she has wifi access at home.
b) try to turn cellular data on only as needed
c) control permissions on the most data intensive apps
d) install a data tracker ( I know that there can be major differences between carrier records and phone usage and that only the former matter but it still might help).
Since I do not use any such app myself I wonder if anyone knows one that might be especially suitable for a technophobe like her?
I found this list online but there may be others as well that are worth considering.
Any other suggestions that might be helpful to her would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Hello, @Oldbooks1! Glad all is well with you and hope you have a great trip.
I can't offer any advice on which iPhone to get for your friend, but as far as her PagePlus situation goes, I have a suggestion: I'm sure you have already tried to explain to her that would only get approximately 1224 MB of data on the plan she wants, vs. unlimited data on the 3GB plan, for exactly the same price, and once she went over that 1224 MB on her plan, she would be paying more than she would with the higher allotment plan. Indeed, it would cost her an extra $102.40 to get the same amount of data on her 1GB plan as she would get by upgrading for only $10 more per month, and by upgrading she could permanently avoid any concerns about overage charges!
Being a cost-conscious senior myself, also relatively new to the world of smartphones, I can relate to wanting to keep my expenses low, but it seems to me that the extra $10 per month would be "cheap insurance" against unlimited charges that could easily occur if she were to accidentally change or undo any of the settings you are kind enough to arrange for her on her new phone. Maybe she could resign herself to that, in exchange for the "sleep factor" and peace of mind that she would gain by knowing that her monthly fee would remain constant. (For what it's worth, I have a similar arrangement available on my carrier, Twigby; once I use up my high-speed data, they can throttle it down to 2G speeds so I won't be hit with any overages. Because I monitor my usage extremely closely, I haven't taken advantage of this feature yet, but it's nice to know that it's there if I ever decide to relax and quit watching my usage so closely.)
Good luck to your friend on her new phone and here's hoping she finds the right plan for her needs. And thanks again for your post -- it's great to see you back on the forums!
As to the data intensive apps, be sure to keep an eye on Googlo Photos. I recall the horror stories about that app's usage on R+.
With it being her first smartphone you could suggest to go on the 3gb plan and after a few months she can see how much data she really needs. If it is close to or above 1gb then she should stick with the 3gb plan. If it is a few hundred mb only then she can change to the 1gb one. Sometimes you just have to let people make their own mistakes especially when they are determined one way or another. You could mention the 3gb plan is $36 with autopay.
The iphone Se should be perfectly fine for a first smartphone user. For an older person I would steer them towards a 6S with the larger screen but either will be fine. Many older people manage better with a smaller phone.
Shame she wants to stick to pageplus. Boom has some great value plans. There are no taxes too.
Thanks to everyone who offered ideas on how to help my older friend move to the iPhone world.!
She is up and running and very happy.
Getting there turned out to be a saga and here is a puzzle for anyone to solve.
I gave her step by step instructions on what to do and offered to go with her and get things set up. Instead, she (Bravo!) went and did everything on her own. Then she sent me a message of which I provide the key part below:
"So I bought the phone and have it set up and a new account with page plus. But I can't hear anything on phone calls--very light. My bars at the top left say TFW instead of LTE? I can't enable LTE voice and data. I only get voice"
Feeling this had to be a simple problem I set out to help. Countless emails later and having exhausted every trick I learned on Social we agreed to meet at the Apple Store to try to fix the problem.
Who can stop what the issue was?
TFW indicates the provider. Usually it shows the bars/dots then the provider name and then LTE/3g. I guess since it is pageplus and they are owned by Tracfone that makes sense. Did she have data turned on? Maybe no sim in there? Or an error inputting the sim number when registering it with pageplus?
These were indeed among the things I checked and data was, in fact, turned on, the phone did have the correct sim and it is working properly.
At the time we were working on this, I did not have access to the phone and could not check things directly so I was relying on what she said in her emails. The only similar case I had was a family member who has exactly the same phone on PagePlus which has always worked perfectly, and which shows Verizon as carrier.
And turning it off and on didn't help?
Are they on a 3g only plan?!
I assume you had her do a ##update#
Turning off/on did not help.
She is on a LTE plan.
Yes, all the standard provisioning steps were followed and PagePlus then pushed a new profile to the phone and that changed nothing.
PagePlus confirmed everything was set up correctly.
While I had no way of knowing at the time MEID and ICCID were correct.
Give up?
She was still on a call and LTE turns off when you are on a call
No.
okay I give up
I was so mad at myself when the "solution" was found. Bear in mind I never actually saw the phone before the problem was "solved."
The Apple employee took the box, looked at the phone, asked her to remove the plastic protective covering and try it.
Bingo, everything worked.
I never felt so stupid.
I honestly thought of that but didn't say it. Thought it was far too silly to suggest :S