39 replies to this topic

[i am not a hacker]

I guess 98GB won't be enough as your are using over 2GB a day.

[DumonKri]

Aha! Seems Virgin do a very similar tariff to GiffGaff albeit with 100mins less talk time. It's pay monthly £12 gets you 150mins, unl.Txt and unl.Data. I'll finally be able to use the phone!

Here's the link to the page if any one is interested.

http://store.virginm...ay-monthly.html

Edited by DumonKri, 04 December 2012 - 12:13 PM.

[flibblesan]

rickywyatt, on 03 December 2012 - 03:47 PM, said:

got my virgin sim this morning form shop topped up £10
2 hours later got this message

virgin
All done! You're now on our Big Data Texts Tariff. We switched you over on 03/12/12

then this

virgin
Thanks for topping up. Your unlimited data and 300 texts will be ready to use from the 1st of next month. They'll last a month.

then this witch I can bleave

virgin
Your unlimited data and 300 texts to other mobiles are ready to use now. Think of it as a special joining bonus. They'll last 45 days.

in acount I see 98gb and 300 text

Exactly what I got from them. I'm finding it to be much faster than Orange and it's been good for downloading films on

[flibblesan]

DumonKri, on 04 December 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:

Aha! Seems Virgin do a very similar tariff to GiffGaff albeit with 100mins less talk time. It's pay monthly £12 gets you 150mins, unl.Txt and unl.Data. I'll finally be able to use the phone!

Here's the link to the page if any one is interested.

http://store.virginm...ay-monthly.html

Thanks for the link. As for giffgaff.. I'll never go back. They've had several outages this year thanks to O2 and I hate the way they only do customer service through a forum. Useless when an outage means you have no DATA services!

[DumonKri]

flibblesan, on 05 December 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

Thanks for the link. As for giffgaff.. I'll never go back. They've had several outages this year thanks to O2 and I hate the way they only do customer service through a forum. Useless when an outage means you have no DATA services!

Yeah tell me about it. The value is what keeps me using it. But i think i'll get a better signal where i am using virgin's and orange's network, especially as the two cities i live in got selected for 4G.

Just to mention the virgin pay monthly only sim means you have to give them your direct debit details. It's essentially a monthly contract that you can cancel whenever you like. So a bit different to giffgaff but i set that up with auto payment so doesn't really make much difference.

Being able to use this phone has put me off buying a nexus 4 for a while. I'll wait to see what happens in the mobile phone market at the start of next year.

[BlueMoonRising]

Do Virgin sims default to the former T-Mobile masts or Orange?

[Roger Barnett]

I guess you guys bought your phones on PAYG, which allows you the luxury of now choosing a package like virgin's?
I'm on an orange 24 month contract so I guess i'll have to sit it out? Just thought i'd check in case I've missed a sneaky loophole

[DumonKri]

BlueMoonRising, on 05 December 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

Do Virgin sims default to the former T-Mobile masts or Orange?

Not sure. On the virgin coverage page it there are two network coverages, apparently Virgin's and Orange's (I don't know if they mean T-mobile really when they put "Virgin")

It says that if the signal get's worse in when using the Virgin network it will switch to the Orange. Check on the site, i can't access it at the moment.

I'd be interested to find out if i could just use orange's as that seems to be the stronger of the two.

Quote

I guess you guys bought your phones on PAYG, which allows you the luxury of now choosing a package like virgin's?
I'm on an orange 24 month contract so I guess i'll have to sit it out? Just thought i'd check in case I've missed a sneaky loophole

Yes i believe most are using PAYG.

Edited by DumonKri, 06 December 2012 - 12:07 AM.

[flibblesan]

BlueMoonRising, on 05 December 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

Do Virgin sims default to the former T-Mobile masts or Orange?

At the moment it'll favour the T-Mobile network (shown as EE). Most areas of the UK have the same masts for Orange & T-Mobile so it shouldn't make much difference. However if you find the T-Mobile signal to be low you can set the phone to manually connect to the second EE connection which should be Orange (hard to tell now they are both EE.. annoyingly).

In my area the T-Mobile is much better than the Orange signal so I manually set phones to connect to T-Mobile.

[BlueMoonRising]

flibblesan, on 06 December 2012 - 12:34 AM, said:

At the moment it'll favour the T-Mobile network (shown as EE). Most areas of the UK have the same masts for Orange & T-Mobile so it shouldn't make much difference. However if you find the T-Mobile signal to be low you can set the phone to manually connect to the second EE connection which should be Orange (hard to tell now they are both EE.. annoyingly).

In my area the T-Mobile is much better than the Orange signal so I manually set phones to connect to T-Mobile.

I tried that since I have a T-Mobile mast about 250 yards away but when I go into town (we're fairly rural here) I can't get a signal at all (presumably because they're Orange masts in town. Usually at home it connects to an Orange mast just off the coast from Edinburgh and sometimes even South of Edinburgh, I'm in Fife which is to the North of the Forth so it's a bit annoying really. I usually leave it on 2G only to get a better signal.

[jikobutsu]

Maybe you could use tasker to switch apns when you are at that weak signal place. Dont ask how as I am still noob at tasker myself but, I believe this would be possible. The way to go would be, when you reach the gps location, tasker will switch to orange apn.

Edited by jikobutsu, 06 December 2012 - 09:14 AM.

[BlueMoonRising]

jikobutsu, on 06 December 2012 - 09:13 AM, said:

Maybe you could use tasker to switch apns when you are at that weak signal place. Dont ask how as I am still noob at tasker myself but, I believe this would be possible. The way to go would be, when you reach the gps location, tasker will switch to orange apn.

Hmm, I've heard of Tasker but that would mean leaving GPS on all the time as well and to be honest I expect my phone to just work rather than messing about with apps and battery draining settings.
I wonder if EE will ever change the id settings on all of it's masts to either 132 or 133(from memory) so the phone doesn't have to choose.

[mully1999]

Hi there,

Apologies if I am off topic or this is covered before!

I have a San Francisco, one of the first batch which just got killed by the dog. A friend was going to give me one of these handsets cheap second hand and I wondered if I would I be able to shoehorn my current Orange (non micro) Sim into it?

I don't really want to spend a lot but like the look of this handset, so doing this lets me keep my current pay monthly tariff which suits my needs perfectly without having to purchase a new monthly contract \ pay go OSD.

Is this possible? also are they easy to crack open to replace sims etc?

Cheers,
M

Edited by mully1999, 11 December 2012 - 09:09 PM.

[i am not a hacker]

mully1999, on 11 December 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Hi there,

Apologies if I am off topic or this is covered before!

I have a San Francisco, one of the first batch which just got killed by the dog. A friend was going to give me one of these handsets cheap second hand and I wondered if I would I be able to shoehorn my current Orange (non micro) Sim into it?

I don't really want to spend a lot but like the look of this handset, so doing this lets me keep my current pay monthly tariff which suits my needs perfectly without having to purchase a new monthly contract \ pay go OSD.

Is this possible? also are they easy to crack open to replace sims etc?

Cheers,
M

You can just put your Orange SIM card into the Orange San Francisco providing that it is a normal SIM Card and not a micro SIM. It is easy to replace SIMs, just pull off the back (which you do anyway at the start), take out the battery, and place the SIM in. If it is a Micro SIM, you can just get an adapter for a pound off the internet which converts the Micro SIM back into the normal SIM. It just puts a plastic case around it really

[mully1999]

Excellent thanks for the info I'm gonna go with this then, looks like a nice phone looking forward to getting it now

[BlueMoonRising]

i am not a hacker, on 11 December 2012 - 09:18 PM, said:

You can just put your Orange SIM card into the Orange San Francisco providing that it is a normal SIM Card and not a micro SIM. It is easy to replace SIMs, just pull off the back (which you do anyway at the start), take out the battery, and place the SIM in. If it is a Micro SIM, you can just get an adapter for a pound off the internet which converts the Micro SIM back into the normal SIM. It just puts a plastic case around it really

mully1999, on 11 December 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Hi there,

Apologies if I am off topic or this is covered before!

I have a San Francisco, one of the first batch which just got killed by the dog. A friend was going to give me one of these handsets cheap second hand and I wondered if I would I be able to shoehorn my current Orange (non micro) Sim into it?

I don't really want to spend a lot but like the look of this handset, so doing this lets me keep my current pay monthly tariff which suits my needs perfectly without having to purchase a new monthly contract \ pay go OSD.

Is this possible? also are they easy to crack open to replace sims etc?

Cheers,
M

Perhaps it's just me but I read your question differently to "I am not a hacker". Since this is a San Diego forum I'm presuming you HAD a San Francisco (your dog really ate it???) and now have an option to get a San Diego? If so then the San Diego takes a micro sim which pops into a sim tray at the side. The back is "non-removable" (sort of). Just pop into an Orange shop and ask for a replacement micro sim or you can cut it to size with either scissors or a sim cutter which is cheaply bought.

[mully1999]

Yes thats correct dog destroyed my San Francisco, I had a rubber protector around it which I think she mistook for a toy, so its pretty much beyond repair. It had a normal sized sim within it that I use on the Dolphin 7 12 month tariff, perfect for all my needs never get close to exceeding minutes \ data \ texts on it.

So I was hoping to just get this OSD and pop the back off and put my sim into it.

Sounds like I will have to semi force the back off, any tricks to this?
Also I will have to cut my current sim to size, no problem \ issue doing that.

Last thing I wasn't sure of was if the phone would reject my Dolphin 7 sim because it isn't a plan they sell with the OSD in the first place?

Cheers,
M

[i am not a hacker]

No the orange sim will work regardless of the plan as long as it isn't 4G

[nadezz]

Just want to check something. Virgin is a pggyback networking using the EE masts. An orange salesman claimed that 3G virgin speeds would be slower than the 3G EE speeds. Was he just blagging this (as I assume). Or is there some form of prioritizing when it comes to piggyback networks?

[BlueMoonRising]

mully1999, on 13 December 2012 - 04:00 PM, said:

So I was hoping to just get this OSD and pop the back off and put my sim into it.

Sounds like I will have to semi force the back off, any tricks to this?

Last thing I wasn't sure of was if the phone would reject my Dolphin 7 sim because it isn't a plan they sell with the OSD in the first place?

You don't need to pop the back off at all. It has an iPhone like sim tray in the side. In fact that is how you pop the back off if you want to put an SD card in, pop the tray out and use your thumb nail in the gap.

Your Dolphin plan wont be a problem either.