Refer-A-Friend $25 promo card - how to use it.

If you happen to refer someone else, and receive a promo card in the mail, this is what you can do with it. Take it to a T-Mobile store, have them sell you a Direct To Account amount of $25, and then pay for it with the promo card. You will be responsible for sales tax, so you still need your own money for that.

Here's part of the receipt. You can see at the bottom where I made two separate payments.

7.125 percent sales tax. Holy Schneikies!

Of course this is only necessary if you want to have the amount added to your account balance. If you prefer to buy an accessory instead, then you don't need to know all of this.

(I tried to remove all confirmation numbers, account numbers, and other personal information from the image. Please let me know if I missed something.)

I have already scratched my screen.

I had my Nexus 4 for only about five months, but I still managed to drop it a few times, and it would occasionally have some company in my pocket. I didn't use a screen protector on it, and still that screen is in perfect condition.

Now as I mentioned in an earlier post, I dropped my Nexus 5 twice on Sunday. Since then I dropped it one more time. Now it has a 1/4 inch scratch on the screen. I'm guessing it's from the last time I dropped it. That was Monday night and it landed on a snowy street with some sand and ice mixed into the snow. I'm a little bit annoyed, but perhaps I will need to get a screen protector for this one after all. The screen is nice and bright so it should still shine through another layer of plastic too.

I'm happy the screen survived the two drops so well. This last drop happened when I was sliding out of my car, and therefore it had some lateral motion too. That's why I'm assuming it's the culprit. 

New Richmond, WI

As I drove around the area of my hometown in western Wisconsin this week, I kept an eye on my phone's cellular data connection. Now that I have an LTE phone once again, I am more interested in where T-Mobile LTE is available. The little 900-person town where I was raised still only supplies me with an abysmal "E" for EDGE network, which I believe is 2G technology. (Most people who live out there would never use T-Mobile for this very reason. They would more likely be on Verizon or US Cellular.)
Like most men, I needed to run to Walmart on Christmas Eve morning, and the nearest one is in New Richmond, WI. When I pulled into town, I learned that not only does New Richmond now have a Walmart store, but also LTE data!
When I was growing up, New Richmond was a town of just a few thousand people, and it is still not a large city, but it is getting to be an interesting place. Several years ago, the state of Wisconsin built a freeway from New Richmond to Houlton, WI, which is across the river from Stillwater, MN. What is significant about that freeway is the new bridge being built over the St Croix river at Stillwater. The new bridge will be completed in about 2 years. At that point New Richmond is going to explode with industry because the new bridge and freeway will offer the St Paul/Minneapolis area quick and easy access to New Richmond's cheap land and wide open space.
To me this is exciting because it is so near where I grew up. The city of Stillwater has been an annoyance for me because it is a bottleneck for any traffic from Minnesota to my home area. It has restricted urban sprawl from covering that area and stifled the local economy. Now that the new bridge is becoming a reality, it will be exciting to see the growth of industry and economy in New Richmond, Somerset, and even Houlton, WI. I believe the area will look a lot like Anoka, MN, where I work. Hopefully without the creepy occult vibe though (Anoka is the "Halloween Capitol of the World," which attracts a lot of weirdos). Obviously bigger companies recognize this potential too. Big companies like Walmart and T-Mobile.
This is not my usual subject matter for this blog, but the presence of LTE in New Richmond piqued my interest and made me want to write about it. I was actually pretty shocked to see "LTE" displayed on my phone. This also shows that T-Mobile is pretty serious about getting their LTE coverage in lots of places.

My first 72 hours with the Nexus 5.

Well, almost 72 hours. Close enough. I ordered the phone on Wednesday morning, it shipped Wednesday night. It was being stored in the UPS warehouse in Kentucky, so it arrived quickly. The package was waiting at my front door in Minneapolis when I arrived home after work on Friday.
The phone feels lighter than the Nexus 4, and it has a nice fit in my hand. I chose the white one and it looks really sharp. It still has a black bezel, just the back cover is white. The contrast of the black and white looks classy to me.
I put the phone on the charger immediately. It was almost at full when I received it, so it was ready to go by the time I finished showering and getting ready to go out. I put my SIM card in and I didn't even have to re-register with T-Mobile. It was simply ready to use after I restarted the phone.
That night I used Google Maps to navigate, and I could immediately see the difference in the data rate. With the LTE connection, the map is able to reroute almost instantaneously. It probably helps to have such a fast processor, but the Nexus 4 had a pretty good processor too. So I think the HSPA+ data connection was the limiting factor.
On Saturday I took the time to install SwiftKey Keyboard. I might not keep it. The higher resolution screen caused it to resize and now the keyboard is too large. It takes up more than half of the screen. Maybe I just need to play with the settings, but I'm not happy with it at the moment.
An interesting change is the reduced number of panels on the home screen. The Nexus 4 had 5 panels. The Nexus 5 has only 3 panels, and one of them is filled with Google Now. I haven't decided if I like it or not. I was actually thinking that I had way too many shortcuts on my N4 and a lot of times it was just as easy to open the app menu and find the app I wanted alphabetically. The main panel was the one I used the vast majority of the time. So I was irritated by the change for a moment, but in actuality I don't really notice the change. I was able to set up the main panel exactly like I had it on my N4. Now it actually feels pretty much the same. I am considering taking that second panel and removing any shortcuts I have there, and dedicating it to widgets only.
Speaking of widgets, they no longer appear next to the apps in the app menu. Now they are set up by long-pressing the home screen and then choosing "WIDGETS" at the bottom of the screen. At first I was afraid there were no more widgets, but I found something online that showed me how to find them. Without my calendar widget I would have been pretty upset!
Overall it feels the same to use this phone as it did to use the N4. It's almost the same size and the buttons are all in the same place. For some reason the USB port is flipped upside down, but that only trips me up when I'm plugging in the charger. Otherwise everything feels the same. It just looks more vivid and bold because of the brighter, higher-resolution screen.
Even though it's plastic, the phone seems to be pretty tough. Yesterday I was volunteering at my church. We had our Christmas services, and last night was the one time each year when I help with parking. Because I was working outside, I was not wearing my normal pants. I was wearing some bright red warm up pants (over a couple other layers) and their pockets were not a good place for a phone. The Nexus 5 has nothing grippy on it whatsoever. Because of this, the phone fell out of my pocket twice. It landed on a concrete floor both times. It must be pretty tough. It survived both drops without a scratch... on the screen anyway. We went inside to warm up between services, and it fell out as I sat down. It only fell about a foot or so. This first drop made the cover loosen slightly. I had to press the cover down and then it snapped back into place. The second drop was higher because I was standing. I was in my garage and while I was removing my boots it popped out of my pocket again. Nothing came loose but I see there is a slight ding in the plastic bezel. It's more like a tiny scratch.  I am impressed with how tough this phone appears to be, but I'm also glad that I found a rubber case for it on eBay last week. It was only $4, and it should arrive in a couple of weeks. Until then I will continue to be more careful with my new phone.
There seem to be a pretty good number of LTE towers around here. Unfortunately that does not include the outer suburb where I work. Hopefully that will change some time this year. I still have the "H" on my screen so I am getting the HSPA+ version of 4G here at work.
Overall I am pleased with this phone, but the two reasons I wanted a different phone were the slippery glass back on the N4, and the lack of LTE support. Now I have a phone with a plastic back, but overall the phone is even more slippery than the old one. And I don't have LTE at work yet. The rubber case will fix the slipperiness, and hopefully I will see LTE in the future. Yes I could have bought a case for the N4, but this is my Christmas present to myself!
I'm driving home to the Wisconsin backwoods for Christmas. I'm not expecting to have LTE coverage out there, but I will keep an eye on it to find out for sure.

On it's way

Apparently Google was under-promising so they could over-deliver. My Nexus 5 shipped yesterday evening, and UPS says it will be delivered tomorrow. Hopefully that means I can open up the box tomorrow after work, and get the phone on the charger. Then I will be ready to start using it on Saturday. I'm excited!

Happy day!

Today I received my tuition reimbursement check. It's nice to have some money again! Now that I have the cash, I ordered a Nexus 5. I went with the white option, and 32 GB. I've always owned black phones so it will be fun to have a change. And since there is no SD slot, I went with the larger storage option. It's an extra $50, but I prefer to have it and not need it verses needing it and not having it. I made the same decision for my Nexus 4 and my Nexus 7. It's always nice to have plenty of storage.

I'm looking forward to having LTE access, and a longer battery life. I will be sure to post here about my experiences.

Whenever I order something, I always want it right now. I'm sort of childish in that way. Before I ordered, the site said it would ship in 1 to 2 days, but then after I placed the order, they told me it will ship on 12/23. The order was placed at 9:30 am on 12/18, so that would be 3 days, not 1 to 2 days. I am hoping they are just under-promising. Either way I just need to be more patient. It's not a gift so it doesn't matter if I have it by Christmas anyway. First World Problems!

I can see clearly now...

Having received the Android 4.4.2 update, it is now more apparent why the blue icons were grayed out. As displayed in my screen shot, the blue background now extends under the icons on the lock screen. I still don't like it, but at least it makes more sense now.

T-Mobile Refer-a-Friend follow-up - what's your time worth?

Good news! I was able to squeeze five hyphens into the title of the post! Even better news, I was able to take the promo card I received for the referral program down to the T-Mobile store and get them to apply the $25 to my account. I just had to pay sales tax on that $25 charge. It was good timing because tomorrow is when I will get charged my next $30 payment. But now I won't get charged anything because I still already had over $5 left and this promo card will put me over $30.

I have a T-Mobile store conveniently down the street from me, so it was not a big deal to go there. But if you don't, then is it worth the hassle? Also, it's not something they normally deal with, so don't be surprised if it confuses the employees at the store. The people who helped me were extremely helpful, but it still took a while.

Ultimately they were able to charge me $25 "direct to account," or something like that, and then I swiped the promo card before I swiped my check card. That took care of it and now I won't have to make a payment on my phone bill tomorrow. I'm happy!

Thanks for nothing?

Well I'm not really sure if this is anything to get excited about, or not. I guess I will have to stop over at the T-Mobile store down the street, and see what the heck this thing is good for.

I tried using it a prepaid card to refill my account. It would not let me do that. Maybe I can use it to purchase a prepaid card at the store.

T-Mobile Refer-a-Friend

Apparently one of you has used my Refer-a-Friend link. Thanks! I received an email a few days ago to tell me that my "Promotional Card" is on the way.
A reader contacted me last week to say that he had used my link, but since it takes a couple of months to go through, I think this is from someone else:

I'm not sure if the card will be something like one of those prepaid Visa cards, or something I can use to add credit to my T-Mobile account, or just some stupid marketing junk. Once I receive it and figure out what I can do with it, I will be sure to add a post here on my blog!

Google Voice changes: Good for MMS, bad for GrooVeIP

Many of us who use Google Voice have been wondering if Google even remembers they own this product. We have not been forgotten. In fact, here is mention of Google's plans from last spring:
https://plus.google.com/106636280351174936240/posts/DG6h32BWaQW

With more recent changes in Hangouts, they are slowly merging the two. There was an update describing some changes at the end of October:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NikhylSinghal/posts/MjyncJEbzxK

In May of 2014, Google is locking down Voice and barring 3rd party apps from accessing it. This means that GrooVeIP, Spare Phone, and Talkatone, as well as other 3rd party apps, will probably cease to function at that time. This is bad news for people who make use of these services. They never worked very well for me anyway. Skype was better, and you can still use Skype as a workaround because it does not access the Voice app directly. However, I still feel like the most reliable solution is to use the T-Mobile prepaid $30 plan and add a few extra dollars if you are going to use more than 100 minutes.

The good news is that Google Voice will start supporting MMS sometime in the next few months. In fact, T-Mobile already supports it. I shared a photo via messaging by texting from my cell phone number to my Voice number, and I received a text message in Google Voice saying, "MMS Received," and then the actual picture showed up in my Gmail. This is a great improvement for me. I have in the past had friends complain about not being able to text me a photo. Now they can!

Speaking of Skype, I will probably be ordering a Nexus 5 in the next month or so. I really want LTE support, and the better battery life. Once I have it, I will give Skype another try. I am hoping that with the LTE connection, the new phone will be able to perform well with Skype. Right now I don't know if T-Mobile even has decent LTE coverage in my area. But we shall see...

Nexus 7 on KitKat

Last week my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet was updated too. It has the same change from the blue icons in the upper right to the grayed out ones. I don't like this change, but it's nothing major. My N7 is WiFi only, so that status does not matter to me as much as it does on my phone. Overall I have not noticed any changes that feel intrusive.  I am pretty happy.

Here's a screenshot from right before the update, where the blue icons are still visible:

And here is the new 4.4 version: