Mike Southby

* 17-11-2009 Updated APN settings for o2 Pay As You Go with working MMS at bottom of post *

I’ve had my G1 for a while now and so far so good with everything apart from the T-Mobile signal.  According to T-Mobile, the coverage in the village where I am living should be good but my G1 can barely muster 1-2 bars signal strength on a good day.  On a bad day it doesn’t get coverage at all.  Now this is not a new thing, previously I lived in Swindon and even there I struggled with signal even though according to their spectrum charts the signal should have been good.  Previous to the G1 I used a Nokia E71.  The E71 was even worse, where perhaps the G1 has 2 bars of strength; the E71 struggled to get anything.  I attribute this in part to the stupid notion by Nokia of putting an aerial inside a metal frame, a great idea hey?  What is interesting with both phones is that when you go outside, the signal improves significantly to the degree that it is as good as suggested by T-Mobile even 3G works!

So I have come to the conclusion that whilst I love my android, T-Mobile has to go and I’m going to use o2 again, which I know to work properly where I live.

This means that I have to unlock my G1.  According to my research, there are a couple of ways of doing this.  Firstly, I’m lead to believe that once you have been a customer of T-Mobile for around 90 days, they will give you the unlock code that you need on request, after all you may need the code for a legitimate reason such as putting a foreign SIM in temporarily if you’re travelling abroad.  I tried this approach and whilst on the face of it the answer is yes there seemed to be a lot of red tape and conditions, not really the answer I was looking for when I have already paid for the phone twice over in subscriber costs.  Secondly, there are a lot of companies advertising online that claim to be able to offer you the unlock code for a fee.  After doing a lot of research and checking out other people’s experience, I decided to use a company called www.unlock-tmobileg1.com who will supply you with the code you need within 24 hours for a fee of £15.99

Here’s the steps you’ll need to go from a T-mobile G1 to an o2 G1:

• Perform a factory reset of your android.
• Slide out the keyboard and open the left hand side notch to unlock the battery cover, then take it off.
• Insert your T-Mobile SIM if not already done so and the battery.
• Press the MENU button whilst you turn the phone on, keeping your finger on the MENU button until the phone boots, you’ll notice that it now boots up in SAFE MODE.
• Press the EMERGENCY DIAL button and dial *#06# which will give you your IMEI number, this should be 15 numerics in length.  Make a note of this as you’ll need this on the website to get your unlock code.
• Head over to www.unlock-tmobileg1.com and follow the instructions to get your unlock code, using the IMEI number you’ve just got in the above step.
• Back on your phone, return to the main screen and press the MENU button, this will pop up the APN button, press it.
• Go to the APN settings, you’ll find the APN for T-Mobile.  Press MENU again and press NEW APN.
• Use the following settings:
  O2 Pre-Pay
  NAME:  o2 uk payandgo
  APN:  payandgo.o2.co.uk
  PROXY:  Not Set
  Port:  Not Set
  USERNAME:  Vertigo
  PASSWORD:  password
  SERVER:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
  MMS PORT:  8080
  MCC:  234
  MNC:  10
  APN TYPE:  Not Set
  O2 Post-Pay
  NAME:  o2 uk postpay
  APN:  wap.o2.co.uk
  PROXY:  Not Set
  PORT:  Not Set
  USERNAME:  O2wap
  PASSWORD:  password
  SERVER:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk
  MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
  MMS PORT:  8080
  MCC:  234
  MNC:  10
  APN TYPE:  Not Set
• Now switch off your phone and wait for your unlock code.
• Now you can insert your new o2 SIM card and switch the phone back on normally (for the sign up to work and to link with your Google account, make sure the SIM is data activated).
• Your G1 will now ask you for your unlock code, make sure you get this right as entering it wrong 3 times will make your phone hardware lock.
• Once unlocked, your data service will be active as per the APN settings you entered in the above steps.
• You can now customise to your choice the settings for things such as homepage etc.

I had my unlock code back within 5 hours which I thought to be a pretty good service, given the stated time is 24 hours.  One tip though, remember to check the days exchange rates before you buy.  Why? because it may be cheaper to select to pay in US$ at the checkout, OK so you will only save about £1 at best but in these troubled times every penny counts!  As a service, I’d recommend these guys, quick turn-around and they do exactly what they say on the website, no fuss, no hassle.  Easy payment too using PayPal.

You should now be able to fully enjoy your G1 again and the annoying ‘No Network Coverage’ message will be a thing of the past.

Enjoy!

____________________

I’ve now managed to get MMS to work, the settings are:

O2 Pre-Pay
NAME:  o2 uk payandgo
APN:  payandgo.o2.co.uk
PROXY:  Not Set
Port:  Not Set
USERNAME:  payandgo
PASSWORD:  password
SERVER:  Not Set
MMSC:  http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk:8002
MMS PROXY:  193.113.200.195
MMS PORT:  8080
MCC:  234
MNC:  10
APN TYPE:  Not Set

*UPDATES FOR OTHER NETWORKS BELOW*

My G1 is not a phone.

That may sound like a strange start for a phone review but bear with me; the G1 is a small computer that happens to have reasonably good phone functions.

Almost every review of the G1 which you find on the internet compares it to the iPhone.  The main difference highlighted between the two is that the iPhone has a more consistent experience (Apple have always been very good at this given the hardware and software are designed to run together in-house) compared to the G1 which whilst very good, at times feels a little ‘beta’ in comparison.  Whilst this is a fair point, sometimes the beta tag has its advantages, like giving you cutting edge technology and features even if not quite ready for mass market yet.

Using the G1 is a satisfying experience hardware wise.  Despite the criticism of its aesthetics, it fits nicely in your hands (well it does mine anyhow, if you have particularly small hands you may find it a little large but this is true of many new phones) and feels solidly built.  Sure, the hinge will always be a weak point, but any modern phone can be damaged easily.  And, while Apple is all about minimalism, HTC is all about function; so, you get a touch screen, buttons, a full keyboard and a trackball.

The trackball is particularly useful.  Despite having a full touch screen, I find myself using the trackball far more often when browsing or selecting menu options, as it is just faster and more precise.  The keyboard is also quite nice, though I must admit that it’s not as much of an advantage over the iPhone as you may be lead to believe.  Any phone text-entry format is less than ideal and requires getting used to – a physical QWERTY keyboard will be slightly nicer and have a less steep learning curve, but I don’t think for example it is much quicker than even T9 if you are used to that.  For one, the keyboard is quite small to type with.  The main advantage of the keyboard ties in with my opening point – this is actually a small computer in disguise.  For regular text entry the keyboard isn’t that special, but for entering symbols and numbers it’s much better than any phone I have used previously save for my Nokia E90 which was fab.

The G1 is all about Android.

Already there are many Android apps out there, and I have no doubt that we’ll see more and more as time goes on.  There’s the official market (much like Apples App Store) and several other stores popping up offering useful apps brought about by the fact that anyone who wants to can just make an .apk file and distribute it as they see fit.  That’s the beauty of Android.  For a developer, Android is an appealing platform – it’s open yet able to be used for profit, centralised yet resistant to rules and censorship.  For the G1 specifically, the main limitation is that you can only install apps to the internal memory.  This forces you to pick and chose what apps you actually want, and to go with apps that are smaller as well.  This may seem annoying, but it’s not that bad – if apps are that big chances are they are pretty badly written anyhow (remember apps can still store their data on the memory card).  The internal memory still allows you to install maybe up to 50 apps so it’s not all bad.

Living with the G1 as a phone is a pleasant experience, the core functions work very well; the phone itself, working with contacts, messaging and calendar are all very well catered for and work better than I was expecting.  The quality of calls, both for me and the person on the other end are on par with the best Nokia have to offer.  The screen too is a vast improvement over previous HTC devices (I have owned a few previous Windows Mobile incarnations).  If I was to pinpoint one area where HTC could improve, and this is a big one, it would be battery life.  Using the phone for a variety of tasks throughout the day, the battery will need charging every night, nowhere near the time claimed between charges, but then I have never owned a phone that lives up to its promises in this regard.  Is this a problem though?  Well yes and no really, for me it’s not a huge problem as I have a charger at home and in the office with a charger available in the car should I be running out of power.  I just find it annoying that in this day and age manufacturers will not (as opposed to cannot) put more effort into battery life.

So, should you go get a G1?  It depends – if you’re a gadget lover (and live in a area with decent T-Mobile coverage), then yes, it’s good hardware, a great platform, and a lot of promise for future development.  If you just want a normal phone though, you might be better off looking elsewhere.