UMA question
 

I am going to get my college son a smartphone. His Verizon reception is spotty and he often goes outside to get better reception. All of the buildings (dorms, libraries, etc.) have Wifi. He often spends a substantial time on the phone with 2 or 3 people (he dictates papers over the phone). So, I thought a phone with Wifi would be perfect. The Google T1 with the physical keyboard (he prefers and is not really a techy kid) and a nice screen looks very good (and he uses gmail as his primary email). It has Wifi but not UMA. Does that mean that he can make calls on Wifi as long as he doesn't walk out of the dorm (or library) but that they will disconnect if he leaves the building and he'll have to redial on the EDGE or GPRS network?

I have a Blackberry with UMA (on T-Mobile) which enables me to make calls through Wifi (and I also use Google Voice). If I got him a Blackberry, could he make calls on Wifi and then walk from library to dorm without interrupting his call? Are there other advantages of UMA?

I'd say the Blackberry is a good phone (I have the 8320 though it is my fourth Blackberry) but that the G1 would be better for him just in the physical setup.

As far as I know, you need an "UMA" enabled phone and only TMO has them. If you have the H@H plan, UMA calls don't come out of your bucket of minutes.

Unfortunately the android phones from TMO are not UMA enabled....I wish they were - I'd dump my BB 8830 and switch!

I have not had good luck with the UMA to TMo EDGE transition personally with voice calls

Am I correct that with the Android phones, you will have to disconnect and call again if you walk from inside to outside and the the UMA phones, you can walk out and you may or may not need to dial again?

My experience with the latter is a littler different than GoingAway's. I don't lose the calls typically when making the transition at home, but I don't have H@H. But, I don't usually look at when the switch is made. Have others found that the transition works or doesn't?

I have had very good luck with UMA phones to bridge spotty service or places with no reception. Blackberries are your best bet. I had some issues, but recent software fixes has mad the technology perfect. I have had no problem going on and off wifi.

The phone has to support UMA. There is no cost to use UMA. However, if you pay $10 extra month all calls on wifi with UMA are free. Calls do have to start and end on wifi.

Remember the phone will need to be preset with wifi. Also the wifi signal has to be strong because phones have weaker wifi cards then laptops. Lastly, if the wifi is heavily used or has poor signal call quality will decrease significantly. Sometimes if I am downloading larges files and doing allot of work where I have my wifi network stressed or running out of bandwidth I have to turn off wifi because the call starts to suffer.

However, when UMA is used it is great. All your calls, emails, text messages go thru. It is literally like extending a tower near you. Best of all if you roam international and use UMA you do not charged roaming rates (as long as you start a call on wifi and remain on it for the entire duration of the call without getting off wifi – u can turn off automatic switchover for UMA and/or cell network).

I was in a really small town last week. No T-Mobile out there, but the hotel had wifi and my blackberry was able to login. I had UMA and made and received several long phone calls and sent a dozen texts and emails. Without UMA I would have had zero coverage (I wasn’t in a roaming area).

I am answering the question posed about call hand off when using a third party VOIP solution on an Android phone to TMobile. While you can can do third party VOIP with SipDroid on Android, these calls are not tied to your TMobile account. You won't get messages and your calls won't go through your Tmobile account. It is essentially a different phone number.

It is possible with a lot of tweaking to come up with a system that will automatically poll your VOIP connection and transfer it to your mobille phone when you lose the connection. The hand off won't be perfect. The best thing you could do would be come up with a system that allowed you to manually transfer the call when you were walking out of the building. If you use Google Voice, this feature is included for free. Just push * and you can transfer a call.

UMA is clearly your best solution. You won't have to transfer calls and you probably won't drop them. Since your son is traveling between a few buildings on campus, he will quickly learn the cellular drop zones and will know adjust a little to deal with them. There is a tunnel near my house where I always warn people that I will probably drop the call and will call them back if I drop the call.

Same here.

When I first started using my UMA enabled BB 8830 at home with H@H program, the hand-off from UMA to edge was excellent. Over time, it's became less and less reliable.

I did get new (refurbished) BB from TMO after about 9 months but still poor hand-off. YMMV.

DTSM, have you checked to see if there is a firmware upgrade?

Can you do this from the handset?

Android does not currently support UMA.

I've got a 8320 ... my daughter has one at school as well (for the reasons in the OP). She has no issues roaming to edge (nor do I). this was fixed in 4.5.81 (but might need the service tables reloaded).

If you use android and wifi, you'd be using something like Skype. You can't roam between wifi and UMA as they're different networks and phone numbers. Receiving calls that was is also problematic ... unless you get Google voice and route to both numbers. But... I do believe you'd have to pay for a new # for skype (or whatever the VOIP solution of choice is).

Net: if reception is an issue, and swtiching to a carrier with good local reception is not an option, UMA is probably the best choice.

Some upgrades can be done over the air, but I think that a full OS requires you to tether the device to your machine and run Blackberry Desktop Manager.

Wirelessly posted (goingaway's phone: BlackBerry8900/4.6.1.231 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

Thanks

Thanks. I think I'll get him a Curve 8520 (trackpad probably reduces the chances of Blackberry thumb relative to trackball of 8320, which I have).

Actually, 4.5.81 has this capability... but only for future upgrades to officially supported releases. If you install a beta or other unofficial release, you lose the OTA capability. You can also OTA upgrade firmware if you've got BES.

Might want to consider the 9700 pending pricing info. It's due this week. Feature-wise, it looks like the 8520+3g.

Big mistake. you should get him the brand new 9700 with 3G. I just got it and it is great. It is only $70 more than the 8520. I was told that if you start a call with UMA and then it moves to Edge the whole call will be free. If you start on Edge and move to UMA you will pay for the whole call.