Here's my thoughts. Two weeks ago I purchased a N-Gage for my 10 year old son from EB. The phone came with a T-Mobile SIM and information on how to turn on the pre-paid service. So the first problem I had was the information for getting the phone activiated had expired 3 months ago.
So next I tried to set up the prepaid service on my carrier ATTWS. After spending about 3 hours trying to get it turned on I gave up on ATTWS. .
It is my feeling Nokia has done a bad job with the release of this phone at least in the US. Now none of the US GSM carriers have a method of handling these devices. I spoke with about 25 people and mom of them seem to understand what needed to happen to turn it on.
Now look at the N-Gage QD, unless I missed this, I did not see the 850Mhz feq. This might be a major problem over here in the US. As two of the 3 GSM carriers are requiring all new phone to have this 850Mhz band support. So will Nokia release a version of the phone with this feq for the US?
I almost returned this phone because of all the problems I was having just getting the thing turned on.
My suuggestion is for Nokia on the N-gage site have the tootl to turn on the service although they do not seel the service they have to help make the process as easy as possible or it will not sell well here in the US.
With the relationships Nokia has with all the carriers, I would think it would be very easy for them to set this up and again make things easy for the people who buy these devices. THey could look at special rate plans for GPRS service on this devices to promote the game play.
I'm hoping someone from Nokia will read this and understand what people are having to go through to get this phone up and going. As I ctands right now I'm not so sure I would tell other people that they should get this phone for thier kids.
If anybody wants to discuss this in greater details just let me know.
Corey McLaughlin
www.smartphoneminds.com
hey Corey,
I'm not a nokia rep, just wanted to put that out there. I do, however, work for gamestop (eb's competitor) as well as an n-gage user myself. The problem you are having is actually quite simple. When nokia made the n-gage, they made it with t-mobile in mind. However, it is a tri-band phone. Which means that as long as other carriers have the ability to broadcast on any one of those 3 signals, it will work with them. You said in your post that you ATTWS, which if i am correct is a branch of AT&T. I originaly started off with my n-gage on cingular wireless (knowing that the phone was made for t-mobile but able to work on others). For a while it worked great, and then a lot of problems came into play. i could not get a signal what-so-ever. So i went to the cingular store near me, spent about 5 days on the phone with them and determined what the problem was. Cingular's primary signal (which the n-gage was compatible with) was switched with it's secondary signal (which the n-gage was not compatible with).
As of right now, all this seems trivial to you i bet, however, this is all very important. cingular put in a bid to buy At&t a couple months ago. As far as i know, they did buy them out, which means that now all At&t wireless phones run off the same signal as cingular does (which will not work with the n-gage). T-mobile is pretty much the only carrier in the U.S. that does support n-gage.
The other problem you might have, is that you are attempting to use the sim card that came with the phone. The solution to this is to take the phone to your carrier's local store and tell them to sign you up, but you need a sim card. This new card will have all the information on it that you need to use the phone.
Hope this all helps,
Aniron
coreymcl wrote:Now look at the N-Gage QD, unless I missed this, I did not see the 850Mhz feq. This might be a major problem over here in the US. As two of the 3 GSM carriers are requiring all new phone to have this 850Mhz band support. So will Nokia release a version of the phone with this feq for the US?
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US version of N-Gage QD has 850 band.
Yes I did finally go to a T-Mobile Store and get it setup. The problem again was nnobody seem to know what plan I can get on a prepaid. Since it's for my son I did not want to turn him lose on a play just yet. Yes, I am aware Cingular is buying ATTWS. Which again goes to my point. Nokia needs to address the bands this phone uses if it truely wants to make a statement in the US.
I personally don't think they have thought through the US strategy very well. I hope I'm wrong and they surprise me with all the great things they are doing. But from what I see now. Nokia has alot of work to do. This is why the N-Gage is catching so much negitive press. I sure hope Noklia folks read this and that this information to heart.
Just my 2 cents
coreymcl wrote:Which again goes to my point. Nokia needs to address the bands this phone uses if it truely wants to make a statement in the US.
they do address it, it's on one of the first pages of the instruction manual.