It’s gonna be “new cell phone day” for us. Mine has a badly worn / unreliable charge port, wifey’s a cracked screen, and our daughter’s has apparently died / just won’t boot now, tho’ it takes a charge.
By mid-week we go back to summer for a good while, though dew points stay below 65° F, so, it shouldn’t be TOO uncomfortable, and hopefully I can open up the windows at night to cool the house down / not use the AC ($$$$$$$). Hopefully also all these garden plants that are suddenly doing so well will be ok. No rain, so, the well pump will continue getting a workout.
Daughter-san got here very late Saturday @ 4 pm - the original target was 1:30 pm. So, we hurried on in to T-Mobile, got the new phones* and had them set up, contacts transferred and such, and made a quick stop at both Wally World and Aldi. Aldi had “Korean” pizzas on clearance - they are actually not too bad.
*We get 4 phones (T-Mobile promotion - best deal - $100 for 4 lines, plus $100 up front for the one phone being a flip phone & we’ll need cases for the smart phones). There are only 3 of us, and my brother in CA for now has declined to hop on, so to speak. So, I get the flip phone for general use and the smart phone for backup and the few times I actually need a smart phone. The new flip phone does a LOT of what the smart phones do! Even the downsized new smart phone models, esp. once in a protective case, are too big and still too fragile for me to carry around in a pocket while doing most of the things I do (including gardening). All set up, and with a “Korean” pizza from Aldi in hand, we then headed home to try out the new phones and service here, and...
No signal in the house on the ground floor. I mean, NO signal. The signal close to the house, say, within 30 ft., is dead too. Signal upstairs is very weak (1 bar “in and out”) at the “strong” spots / times. PHOOEY!
The new phones, even my new flip phone, have a feature by which the phone(s) can connect to our Wi-Fi router, and calls get routed by the Internet, to their destination. But that only works within range of the router (and the “extender” in my daughter’s room.) Our exterior walls are masonry, so, that basically means “within” 20 ft. of the house.” I do have a 2nd “extender” that I can place in a heavy plastic storage unit that’s on the back side of the house, but, I need to run power to it.
In practice, this means having to remember to switch back and forth between transmission / reception modes. With unlimited data from our ISP (I think - better check), I don’t think we’ll run out, as we don’t watch movies and such on our phones.
The kicker: We have good signal (3 bars on the flip phone) from the T-Mobile tower(s?) if I go the ~200 ft. (”east”) out to the garden and beyond. And if I cross the road on the other side of the house (”west”, TOWARD the silos) I get two bars. It seems like a repeater out in the garden(!) would work well, but, since I already have the wi-fi extender, then I just need to remember to turn on the cell-via-internet- when I’m in or near the house.
Sheesh!