Gosh I LOVED the Nokia 3560, I still have mine, but alas I cannot use it no more.

What's there to miss about TDMA.
Let me guess here:

Poor call clarity? (dull)
Lame phones?
No SIM cards? Yeah, it must be this one!
The colour screen on TDMA phone was superb!
TDMA rate plans ruled! $39.99 for 350 minutes (no rollover) no M2M, but hey! you could get 3500 N&W minutes... 🙄
The preferred nation plans? Where you roamed even though you were still in the US.
Paying for voicemail or call waiting (on some ancient TDMA plans)

Anxiovert said:

The colour screen on TDMA phone was superb!

Hmmm . . . Are you a Canadian Anxiovert? Or are you trying to confuse us all with your imperial spelling?

What the **** does it matter if he is canadian or british or whatever? Stick to the point.

Well, I was on the $99 monthly unlimited plan with no extra charges. When I bought the first razor, Cingular made me port the number over from AT&T..later found out did not have to do that...lost the $99 monthly unlimited plan. My reception was better with TDMA than GSM.

The $99 unlimited plan was for GSM customers only. Howe exactly did you have that plan with a TDMA phone?

🙄 dont feel bad they are forcing everyone off that plan now as we speak!

What's there to miss about TDMA.
Let me guess here:

Poor call clarity? (dull)
Lame phones?
No SIM cards? Yeah, it must be this one!
The colour screen on TDMA phone was superb!



My V60i sounded better than any gsm phone in my market.
Who cares about lame phones when all I wanna do is make/rec calls with a few text msgs thrown in.
The only benefit of a sim is the ability to change handsets at will (very few of my numbers are stored on sim) the drawback is now that if I forget my phone at home, I can't just do an esn change when I get to work.
Color screens are overrated - they are needed for a camera phone but they wash out in sunlight - major pita.

Your right, you can't do an esn change...but hey! you could do a SIM card change that would work!

But why burn through a few sim cards just to have a phone - I just go home at lunch.

I had the Nokia 3560 for Cingular KIC prepaid wireelss and the service was wonderful. I loved the phone, I don't care if it is not as snazzy as newer models, the phone was simply a joy to have and its games, graphics, and ringers were perfect enough for me. To this day I have never seen another phone come with so much pre programmed stuff. New nokias now only get 2 pictures and 10 ringers and a couple of samples of games.

I have been full-blown GSM about a year now. My two big impressions:

1. Robotic voice with echo common all over my area, no matter the phone used.

2. MANY more holes in pure GSM than the "all-over" coverage of tmda+amps.


The techno-wonks at Cingular have been posting forever, seemingly, that if we could only devote more and more spectrum to GSM versus TDMA, then things would be much better. Well, I heard that for the 1st time when things were about 50% GSM and 50% TDMA.

Now, I believe GSM leads TDMA by a 92/8 margin within the walls of Cingular and things still haven't changed for the better, pure phone call experience-wise.

Can you do more things on a GSM phone/network? Of course. Are the phones themselves more adva...
(continues)

Thank you!!! I totally agree with you. GSM is wonderful yes, but TDMA is better and more reliable. It penetrates buildings better. And plus I always had signal everywhere I went.

This statement is idiocy. The coding method (CDMA/TDMA, whatever) does not make ANY difference in building penetration.

The ONLY thing that matters is the frequency being used (850/1900) or whether it is digital or analog. Don't base one location's call clarity on the rest of the country. Take a physics class.

Perhaps Lefty didn't state the physics of the situation well, but he/she isn't far off the mark in that statement.

Go back a few years, say to 2002. Someone owning a tri-mode handset had access to Cingular TDMA + AMPS towers, plus those of ATTWS, plus the AMPS roaming on towers of VZW and Sprint and other regional carriers (including some of them who might be tdma). A person sitting inside a building had, theoretically, access to the signal from many different carriers and likely did have "more signal inside buildings" then versus now.

In 2006, they have their GSM handset, which can pick up two diff bands of GSM signal. They have access, potentially, to T-Mobile GSM signal, regional carrier GSM, and that's about it. Cannot use Cin...
(continues)

From what I know AT&T would never be a player in the market if they didn't convert to GSM. TDMA was an old technology good for voice only. It didn't support anything data wise which is not big and getting bigger nationwide. Yeah some people just want to make calls but you are a dying breed. There are other advantages to TDMA such as international use and a much greater handset variety.

In Arizona, all GSM is at 1900 MHz right now, TDMA spectrum is all on 850 MHz, meaning Cingular cannot have GSM 850 here until TDMA is gone. This is why we suffer here in comparison to every other carrier.

This has to be true with other areas. Sure you might have 92/8 GSM/TDMA, but in a big city where 850 matters (phoenix, tucson) and you don't have it, you are going to get millions of people talking smack about the company.

If you don't have 850 to complement the 1900, you just aren't going to have to calling experience you should be having. And with TDMA still around, we'll never see it.

DITCH TDMA

GSM 1900 = T-Mobile-like service 🤣

Good thing or a bad thing? 🤣

Bad.

You may still be able to get a $29.99 rate plan. Talk to the retention dept. (the ones you get connected with when you try to cancel)

Thanks! I just switched to the family plan though, with my mother and sister so it still works out to be a good deal. I got a discount through my school on top of that so with our 3 lines it is comparable.

Tdma switching also commonly gets you a bonus 200 minutes if you preform a VIP lookup.