Haha
Did you have a good quality CDMA smart phone and have since sold it for a better phone? If you still have yours, it’s now too late. It seems that all major cellular carriers that supported CDMA (Verizon, Sprint(T-Mobile)) are no longer accepting CDMA activations AND they are phasing out CDMA support in 2022. T-Mobile in Jan, Verizon in Dec.That means… any CDMA phone will no longer be able to work with cellular networks. Smart phones at least can use WiFi. But older flip phones? Now JUNK. Useless… well, except for things like travel alarms! I have an old LG Lotus that was an amazing little QWERTY flip phone with dual LCD’s and dual speakers. Really nice sound for its size. Back when the only way to get sound files available for ringtones required the file to be sent via the cellular network, I had loaded quite a few good ones. I use that as a backup travel alarm and it’s terrific. Otherwise… now that thing won’t even be able to make Emergency Calls—no network visible at all.
edited for clarifications
I appreciate the heads up X, but could use more info please!
If this is true, I would have expected some type of notification from Verizon by now, if not months ago! How did you learn of this rather major development?
Is the phase-out period supposed to only begin this coming January, or be completed? If it's just the beginning, does your source provide a scheduled completion date?
Hopefully the rumor about the iPhone 13 having satellite capability is true. Maybe that’ll become cheaper than the regular carriers with Musk’s satellites or something.
I had an old LG Prime (original, not the 2) that I loooooooved. Sleek, disappeared in a pocket, worked like a champ, wonderfully dumb.
Got notice late in the year (early November??) that it was no longer gonna be supported by AT&T by the end of the year, and that I had to get a newer one or lose service come January.
Literally on the 31st I caught a sale on AT&T phones that was expiring that day, got a Zsomething (poopooed brand owned by ChiComs, forgot offhand, damn), and no time to trek on out to the AT&T store, so ordered one online to get my foot in the door.
Came like 2wks later, played musical phones for that 2wks ’til I got it.
Point being, if you’re on their email list, you’ll get notice there, usually 1-2mos before the cutoff.
Several tech websites have indicated this, like The Verge. Jan 2022 is for T-Mobile. Actually, with Verizon it’s end of 2022. LINK. And of course, Verizon has confirmed this as well, HERE.
Really doubt that. Satphones require a lot more power to operate. Not feasible to do it in such a small form factor as a pocketable smartphone.
Yeah, I believe the satellite connection is more like an emergency beacon like some survival watches have as apposed to being able to make a phone call through the satellite link. Actual sat phones are quite large and expensive.
Now that would be a terrific feature—kind of like a panic button. Lots of scenarios where that could be useful.
Hmm… excellent points. I wonder why no one has figured out a way to bypass cell towers to either transmit data and voice directly to other devices or even form a mesh network. My iPhone obviously has the ability to send/receive data using 4g and 5g frequencies to/from a tower that’s miles away.
The distress beacon things (Personal Locator Beacon) doesn’t have the bandwidth for voice calls. It only sends your GPS coordinates. I don’t know why they didn’t make it also able to include some text from you: maybe to stop people from using it for chatting. But it looks like the rumor was false and the iphone 13 won’t have any sort of satellite comms. The last msg of this thread has a link with details:
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=299858
Thats old and incomplete information.
I don’t see anything newer here, about the Iphone 13 and satellite communication. Did I miss something? I only scrolled back one page.
Ming chi later clarified that the satellite use would be only for emergencies and only when there was no cell signal. It would not be a satellite phone.
Its all still rumors as there has been no official reports on the feature.
I’ve seen a lot of folks on BLF discussing LED and driver design, implementation, measurements, etc…. and it has me wondering how many of them are professionals like engineers or tradesmen who are in the industry and how many are just hobbyists/enthusiasts who have just learned via DIY. Anyone here have a feel for that?
Ok, this sounds like a PLB and I guess it makes some sense. Too bad they can no longer use the headphone cord as an antenna, since they got rid of the headphone jack…
Some like Barkuti and Tom E used to work as engineers for big electronics companies and Lexel trained as an electronics engineer. Toykeeper was a software coder.
I think the flashlight specific field is too small and specific so you get these knowledgeable people from larger adjacent fields who like flashlights that find it easy to learn driver design and firmware coding. I’m pretty sure 99% of the forum members just pick up things here and there and get a good feel for it. The number of people that can design their own driver is quite small. Maybe 10 or 15 people? Maybe 20?
Anyway, thats my guess.
Is there a good place to buy lens (sans AR coating) for Convoy flashlights? I’d rather skip the work of manually scrubbing my lens clean.
Thanks, Jason! I was hoping you might reveal some good stuff. I’m psyched to know that we’ve got some real domain experts in our midst, even if they’re retired. Their knowledge is really impressive. It does seem like a wonderful hobby born of professional experience for such folks. Using your trade know-how and wisdom for a personal passion… nothing much else quite like it! These people and the diehard hobbyists who are learning and sharing are making this hobby so fascinating. And the small time flashlight makers keeping an eye out are learning from all this. Real “test subjects” taking their product, running it through paces using professional insight & discretion… it’s basically free QA for just the cost of a flashlight. Not a bad deal!