Will the carriers kill the mobile revolution?

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I rented a car for the first time, I drove with one eye on the odometer because I was paying by the mile. Those days are long gone, but with all-you-can-eat data plans rapidly disappearing, more and more of us are downloading with one eye on the data meter.

 

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Consider a typical metered plan: An AT&T tablet user can use up to 250MB a month for $14.99 (see the plan for yourself). Go over your 250MB and you’ll pay another $14.99 for the next 250MB, which bring you to $30. However, a recent survey by Nielsen found that the typical user of an Android device consumed 582MB per month, for a total of $45 a month on that plan (to be fair, AT&T does offer a 2GB plan for $25). iOS users averaged somewhat less — 492MB per month — and unlike with voice plans, unused data allowances cannot be rolled over.

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And I’ve just mentioned the easy-to-understand part of the plan. It turns out that there are huge gotchas hidden in the fine print that vary the actual charges based on the device you use. For example, AT&T and Verizon Wireless expect smartphone users who connect to corporate email to pay $15 more per month for the same amount of data.

Sure, carriers have a right to recover costs, and there certainly are data hogs among us who should pay for their gargantuan appetites. But charges keep going up. Verizon Wireless CFO Fran Shammo said in May that his company will ditch its $30 unlimited data plan this summer. Can Sprint be far behind?

If the telecommunications industry were competitive, the market would keep the carriers from raising prices even faster. But it isn’t competitive now; in most cities there are few choices for serious business users. If AT&T succeeds in swallowing T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless advances in its plan to smash the smaller, regional carriers, the market will be even less competitive and the mobile revolution will slow to dial-up speeds.

4G faceoff: ThunderBolt vs. Galaxy

However, it’s worth noting that the ThunderBolt weighs about 5.8 ounces – about 30% more than the T-Mobile Galaxy S 4G. It’s also somewhat thicker – slightly over a half inch. The extra heft is unlikely to cause a problem unless you carry the device in a shirt pocket. Part of the reason for the extra thickness is likely due to the “kickstand” that can be swung out from the back of the device. This is primarily intended to allow video viewing without having to hold the device at the correct angle while you watch. However it also proved useful when using the phone while navigating.

 

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Unlike some other CDMA-based phones, notably the Verizon Wireless iPhone 4, you can use voice and data simultaneously with the ThunderBolt as long as you’re using LTE. The device has a number of other useful features, including a WiFi mobile hotspot, support for DLNA which allows you to access DLNA-equipped servers on your network, and an 8 megapixel camera on the rear. The front camera runs at 1.3 megapixels.

While Verizon Wireless describes the display as “immense” it’s only slightly larger than the display on most other similar Android phones. You can see the difference if you hold the devices next to each other, but short of that the difference is not obvious. The ThunderBolt’s more noticeable difference was in screen sensitivity where it was possible to trigger a letter on the keyboard without actually touching the screen. You can open the applications screen by touching an arrow at the bottom of the screen, and then swiping your finger up and down to expose the entire list.

A more significant difference when using the devices side-by-side is the level of performance. I downloaded identical files from Gmail to both devices from a variety of locations that had strong 4G signals. As long as I was in a 4G area for both, the ThunderBolt was consistently faster by a wide margin. Normally the difference was about double – the ThunderBolt was usually twice as fast in downloads, sometimes faster.

While it’s unlikely that most people will spend a lot of time in varying locations downloading photos of the Frankfurt, Germany, airport data center as I did, the fact remains that the improved performance made the ThunderBolt able to deliver data-intensive results more quickly and seamlessly. This was obvious during navigation, for example, when the phone had to fetch new information from its cloud-based servers and did so without any obvious delay. Video streaming was smooth and usually without interruption, but the same was also true of the Galaxy S 4G.

One quick note of caution: During the period of this review, the Verizon Wireless LTE network went down nationwide. The ThunderBolt, instead of automatically reverting to 3G, fell back to an earlier version of EVDO, known as 1X.

To get back to 3G, you have to enter the settings menu and tell the phone to use EVDO Rev. A. If you do that, you’ll get the standard Verizon 3G network, and most functions will operate normally.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear that most users will know how to shift the phone to 3G operation manually, and as a result will be stuck with 1X for data speeds. This works, but it’s fairly slow.