I’m a gadget freak and I have no problem admitting that. But I have another problem… I’m a T-Mobile subscriber. Yep, you know what that means. No cool phones, no 3G (yeah it’s on its way - whatever), and a lot of iPhone lust.
While waiting it out for THE NEXT BIG THING in tmo WinMo goodness, I broke down and picked up a little Nokia 5310 MusicXpress for $50. While I’m fairly pleased with the call quality, the size & form factor of the phone, though I can’t install any frickin’ apps. I shouldn’t be surprised after all. It’s T-Mobile.
Never mind that I have the full Internet plan. It’s not like I’m trying to rip off free IM on the $5 ‘net plan. I pay for Internet & Hotspot access. And I use it. My previous phone, an MDA that still works, allowed me to install that IM app to access Google Talk. It allowed me to install a different browser like Opera, it allowed me to install Weather software, RSS readers, digital "wallets", mapping & gps, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, music players, movie players, and so much more that I can’t describe it all.
I don’t expect to do much on this phone other than talk and play music. But it would be nice to at least get email delivered to it - whether I can respond or not doesn’t matter. Because if I get an email from a client - I’ll simply call them back as it’s usually important. What tweaks me is that the inbuilt email app, I’ll use that term loosely, simply does not allow me to add any POP or IMAP account. If it’s not GMail, Yahoo, HotMail, or whatever other webmail service, you’re out of luck. Perversely, my email account is hosted by Google for Domains, but the setup "wizard" only accepts GMail accounts. Stupid. Even paying the $0.15 (US) per email wouldn’t bother me so much if I could at least have it work.
So while I’m waiting (again) for a decent (?) phone & 3G service, I have to forgo email. What happened to the days when T-Mobile was out front? When they rolled out GPRS nationwide before anyone else? When they actually had interesting phones, instead of 18mos. old models?
Kinda loosing the faith here. I only stick around because I have so many family and friends on T-Mo: parents, in-laws, sister & BIL, family & about 10 friends. I’m seriously wondering if I should return the darn phone (I have 3 days left in the 2 week trial) and go to AT&T. I could at least look at the Tilt or wait for the iPhone or… or… or…
Ok, I think that’s enough <rant> for this post. Anyone else have something good to say about tmo at the moment? I need a little propping up here. 
I feel your pain. But less we forget T-Mobile only fell behind in the 3G race because of Spectrum issues, after they won the 1700mhz AWS spectrum they got right to work on building their 3G Network. Now that network is set to launch this October and several 1700mhz AWS handsets are already in production. The real question is whether or not companies like HTC and Nokia will create Quad-Band GSM devices that also feature Quad-Band UMTS/HSDPA handsets that feature teh 1700mhz AWS functionality needed to work on T-Mobile in the U.S. I would have to say we should at least see some tri-band/tri-band devices considering HTC’s love affair with tri-band offerings. I think T-Mobile will offer a good 3G program at less than the competition though.