Newbie: Please Explain the Vision Service

I have a new Sanyo VI-2300. I was offered the vision service free for
the first month. I went ahead and took it. My old phone was a Kyocera
and I never accessed the internet or downloaded anything. But, I
thought I would have a little fun and explore the vision service and
see what it is all about. If I understand correctly, the service
allows me to access the internet and download screensavers, ringtones
etc. without being charged for the access time, except for the monthly
charge. But, I will get charged for whatever ringtone, screensaver I
decide to purchase from wherever I download them from. The rep told me
about one site 3gforfree.com that was free. NOW, after the one month
free service if I decide to cancel and later decide to download a
ringtone from 3gforfree.com etc. What are the charges? Anything else
I should know about?

Thanks,
Koko

---

› See More: Newbie: Please Explain the Vision Service

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I have a new Sanyo VI-2300. I was offered the vision service free for
> the first month. I went ahead and took it. My old phone was a Kyocera
> and I never accessed the internet or downloaded anything. But, I
> thought I would have a little fun and explore the vision service and
> see what it is all about. If I understand correctly, the service
> allows me to access the internet and download screensavers, ringtones
> etc. without being charged for the access time, except for the monthly
> charge. But, I will get charged for whatever ringtone, screensaver I
> decide to purchase from wherever I download them from. The rep told me
> about one site 3gforfree.com that was free. NOW, after the one month
> free service if I decide to cancel and later decide to download a
> ringtone from 3gforfree.com etc. What are the charges? Anything else
> I should know about?
>
> Thanks,
> Ko

It's going to cost you $0.01 per KB to download. That includes accessing the
site via your phone and the download itself. Now, you can save a bit, by
going to 3gforfree on your computer and have the ringtone sent to your
phone.

Bob

How do those charges show up on the invoice? Just wondering, cause my
daughter likes to download ringers etc. and all I see on my invoice is
the cost of the ringer or screensaver shown as "Vision Ringer
Purchases" under "Premium Services (Non-Telecom) Detail. I never see
any information about KB's that were used. I also don't have vision on
her phone.

Koko

<[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> How do those charges show up on the invoice? Just wondering, cause my
> daughter likes to download ringers etc. and all I see on my invoice is
> the cost of the ringer or screensaver shown as "Vision Ringer
> Purchases" under "Premium Services (Non-Telecom) Detail. I never see
> any information about KB's that were used. I also don't have vision on
> her phone.

I'm guessing that Sprint does not charge Vision kilobytes for connecting
to their ringtone server. The longer they keep you on that site, the more
chance of making a ringtone sale.

--
John Richards

I don't think Vision makes much sense for anything other than a
smartphone.

How many adults give a **** what their wallpaper looks like or whether
they have the new 50 cent ringtone?

I put Vision on a regular phone once, and took it off after two months.
There is no way in crap I am going to pay monthly for ****ing
"wallpaper" on my phone. Good greif. Get a smartphone or get a
dumbphone.

Vision for dumbphones is beyong asisnine, IMHO.

You get to pay to download ringtones and wallpaper .... whoop de ****.

I think the only reason anyone over 25 gets Vision for dumphones is to
use it as a modem, on which your mileage will vary as it's technically,
supposedly, not allowed.

FWIW wrote:
> I don't think Vision makes much sense for anything other than a
> smartphone.
>
> How many adults give a **** what their wallpaper looks like or whether
> they have the new 50 cent ringtone?
>
> I put Vision on a regular phone once, and took it off after two
> months. There is no way in crap I am going to pay monthly for ****ing
> "wallpaper" on my phone. Good greif. Get a smartphone or get a
> dumbphone.
>
> Vision for dumbphones is beyong asisnine, IMHO.
>
> You get to pay to download ringtones and wallpaper .... whoop de ****.
>
> I think the only reason anyone over 25 gets Vision for dumphones is to
> use it as a modem, on which your mileage will vary as it's
> technically, supposedly, not allowed.

I disagree. I have had Vision on all of my "dumb phones" since 2002.
Before that I had the WW option (which I used). While my first Vision
phone was actually slower (at "browsing") than its WW predecessor, each
subsequent Vision phone I owned was faster than the one before. At the
same time, the Vision portal got faster too (on the same phone--less
graphics, etc.).

What did I use it for?

Well, for one thing, my Vision plan is grandfathered, and includes
unlimited text messaging. I forwarded important email to my phone via
text messaging SMS (albeit with either just the sender's name, or a
truncated message). This was enough for me to decide whether to log into
Vision with the phone's browser and actually check the email.

Do note that none of this email was to my ######@sprint.com address. I
used Sprint's "Other Mail" option. I setup access to these "other email"
servers at sprintpcs.com (where it is referred to as "External Mail,"
and kind of buried within "settings"). You can setup up to 5 (POP)
servers to retrieve "Other Mail" from. Once setup, I had complete access
to all of my email accounts from my phone. As you can also specify your
own reply-to address, on the occasions I used the phone to reply to
email (or send from scratch) the recipient(s)'s replies went where I
wanted them to go (i.e., not to my #####@sprint.com address).

I also used the phone's browser, if I had no other 'Net access, to view
sports scores, news, and to even setup remote recordings for my HTPC. As
I am a baseball fan, I subscribed to MobiMLB. This allowed me to listen
to *every* MLB game in two separate methods: one with the home team's
announcers, another with the away team's announcers. This service worked
well.

All of that, and more, with my "dumb phone."

And the only thing I ever downloaded--for a fee--were two games back in
2002. These same games worked with each successive phone till my very
last (where they were already included with the phone--not trials).
IIRC, I paid around $4 each for the games.

And while I am not into cellphone "wallpaper," I did download my own
ringtones. I never paid for any of them (used 3gupload.com when it was
free, then Bitpim when 3gupload was no longer free).

As for tethering? That accounted for--at most--2% of my Vision activity
(I used it maybe once or twice every few months--and even then only
briefly).


--
Mike

Well, Mike. To each his own.

I think Vision cannot be fully utilized without a phone with a
keyboard, and people don't get free SMS with Vision anyore.

I too, used to have emails forwarded to the phone via SMS, but let's be
honest, replying to those emails by pressing a numeric key 4 times to
get one letter is far from a solution.

And while I am glad you got your baseball scores, you could easily do
that now via Google SMS ... as well as getting directions, etc.

With a smartphone, you could surf the whole ESPN site, and read and
actually write full respones to emails .. in addition to the streaming
audio/video.

You just can't do anywhere NEAR with vision on a dumphone, that which
you can do with a smartphone. And if you are a good customer, you
could get the smartphones for a pretty low price.

If you had a need for so many things, I don't get why you wouldn't
simply get a phone which does those tasks well. You kind of
jerry-rigged vision to work for you on the dumbphone, but really, I
would hate to get vision so I could basically fo to 3gupload and check
baseball scores, and read email on a postage stamp sized screen with no
keyboard.

But that's me. And you are you. If it works for you, the more power
to you.

But would I personally recommend vision (which no longer includes
unlimited SMS) to someone buying a dumbphone? No. If it still had
unlimited SMS I would .... but it doesn't.

It just seems like an extremely half-ass solution, and I could not in
good concious recommend it.

But, as you have illustrated, there are always exceptions to every
rule. You worked it to your advantage, and kudos for that.

FWIW wrote:
>
> But, as you have illustrated, there are always exceptions to every
> rule. You worked it to your advantage, and kudos for that.

Thanks. Just for clarification (assuming it's needed) I didn't just get
baseball scores, I got the live audio feed for every game (using either
teams' announcers). Being a transplanted NYer, hearing the Yanks play no
matter where I was, was kinda cool (with the local announcers). Sort of
like crude satellite sports radio.

Now no Yankee remarks, please!

I also rarely sent long emails. Just short one-line replies when it was
urgent. I would rather call the person on the phone than type on a
numeric keypad. It was the receiving part that was more important.

I held off on a smartphone because I didn't really believe in them till
the Treo 650 (though I suspect I would have bought a 600 if Palm hadn't
chosen to go with 160x160 on the screen). I always thought in terms of
PDA-plus-Phone (via Bluetooth, which I never quite got to, with Sprint).
So I generally carried both (most of the time, PPCs for the PDA-side).

Alas, as the Holy Grail of Bluetooth-to-PDA never quite came to be (for
me), I stopped carrying my trusty iPaq all of the time. Finally it came
down to carrying it on business trips only. This is partly why a pushed
the limit with my cellphone--I no longer had the PDA to fall back on.

But the cellphone of course was no PDA. So now I have a Treo and--yes--I
do wish I would have went with a convergent device sooner than I did. I
certainly can't imagine going back to a non-PDA phone.


--
Mike

After having my Samsung i500 for ten months I can't imaging going back to my
Sanyo RL2000 even for just a few days. I plan on upgrading to a Treo 650
after the holidays and keeping the i500 as a backup phone.

"Tinman" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> FWIW wrote:
> >
> > But, as you have illustrated, there are always exceptions to every
> > rule. You worked it to your advantage, and kudos for that.
>
> Thanks. Just for clarification (assuming it's needed) I didn't just get
> baseball scores, I got the live audio feed for every game (using either
> teams' announcers). Being a transplanted NYer, hearing the Yanks play no
> matter where I was, was kinda cool (with the local announcers). Sort of
> like crude satellite sports radio.
>
> Now no Yankee remarks, please!
>
> I also rarely sent long emails. Just short one-line replies when it was
> urgent. I would rather call the person on the phone than type on a
> numeric keypad. It was the receiving part that was more important.
>
> I held off on a smartphone because I didn't really believe in them till
> the Treo 650 (though I suspect I would have bought a 600 if Palm hadn't
> chosen to go with 160x160 on the screen). I always thought in terms of
> PDA-plus-Phone (via Bluetooth, which I never quite got to, with Sprint).
> So I generally carried both (most of the time, PPCs for the PDA-side).
>
> Alas, as the Holy Grail of Bluetooth-to-PDA never quite came to be (for
> me), I stopped carrying my trusty iPaq all of the time. Finally it came
> down to carrying it on business trips only. This is partly why a pushed
> the limit with my cellphone--I no longer had the PDA to fall back on.
>
> But the cellphone of course was no PDA. So now I have a Treo and--yes--I
> do wish I would have went with a convergent device sooner than I did. I
> certainly can't imagine going back to a non-PDA phone.
>
>
> --
> Mike
>
>

>I plan on upgrading to a Treo 650 after the holidays and keeping the i500 as a backup >phone.


The Treo 650 is a mighty fine phone, but do a side-by-side comparison
with the PPC-6700 as well.

The latter is more powerful and might provide better forwad value for
you (Windows Mobile 5, which is the next gen PDA Operating System is
already on this phone).

But the 650 does have it's appealing points as well.

Review the specs on both before making a decision, just to vet all of
your options.

FWIW wrote:
>> I plan on upgrading to a Treo 650 after the holidays and keeping the
>> i500 as a backup >phone.
>
>
> The Treo 650 is a mighty fine phone, but do a side-by-side comparison
> with the PPC-6700 as well.
>
> The latter is more powerful and might provide better forwad value for
> you (Windows Mobile 5, which is the next gen PDA Operating System is
> already on this phone).
>
> But the 650 does have it's appealing points as well.
>
> Review the specs on both before making a decision, just to vet all of
> your options.

While I could probably get by with either device--if faced with that or
no PDA phone at all--I've been hearing several reports of people dumping
their PPC 6700s and going back to the Treo. Yea it probably happens both
ways, but one case got my attention.

According to a thread on Treocentral, PDA phone hacking guru Shadowmite
has gone back to using a Treo 650:
"Originally Posted by Shadowmite
I left my ppc-6700 for multiple reasons. The biggest being, I just was
not satissfied with it after having been a treo 650 owner. I kept with
it for longer than all the other converts. I had it from Sep 20th to Nov
23rd. During that time I struggled to get myself as happy with it as I
was with the treo. In the end, though I was happy with it, I still just
wasn't as happy with it as I wanted to be. It's size seems larger than
the treo the more you hold it dispite the first time it seeming very
very small. The keyboard slider is WAY to loose as everyone else had
said. Thus everytime I held it to my ear or pulled it out of my pocket
it would open a bit."

Shadowmite was mentioned in this month's edition of Laptop Magazine:
"http://www.shadowmite.com/LaptopMag-Hacker-Heros.pdf"

Do note that I saw this in a thread on Treocentral (in a thread from
someone else who switched back from a 6700). I cannot seem to find it on
shadowmite.com, but I'm not sure the searching ability there is all that
stellar. Still, I cannot claim that comment is true without seeing it on
the site itself. The thread I found that quote in is here:
"http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=102174"


IMO, the big difference--for me--is the keyboard (and I don't mean the
so-called "looseness" of the 6700's). When I was testing a 6700 I felt I
would end up using the stylus a lot more than the keyboard, due to the
slide-out design. And now that I've been using a Treo 650 for a couple
of months, I definitely feel I prefer having the thumb-board there all
of the time. I rarely use the stylus on my Treo at all--but it's nice to
have for certain things (OK, I like Mega Bowling!).

YMMV, IMHO, etc., etc.


--
Mike | Most people don't realize that large pieces of
| coral, attached to the skull by common wood
| screws, can make a child look like a deer.

>While I could probably get by with either device--if faced with that or
>no PDA phone at all--I've been hearing several reports of people dumping
>their PPC 6700s and going back to the Treo. Yea it probably happens both
>ways, but one case got my attention.

I have no doubt that this happens. I actually went from my Treo 650
back to my Treo 600 because it's responsiveness was better for my day
to day messaging needs ... and callfilters actually worked well which
was indispensable to me.

I still own a 600, a 650, and a PPC-6700. I got the 600 and the 650
the first week they were available. I was one of the first hundred or
so owners of both devices. I was one of the first batch of people to
get the PPC-6700 ... it aint easy being on the leading edge.

When going from Palm OS to Windows Mobile, it can be VERY annoying.
Everthing is changed, nothing is done in the same way, and it takes you
10x longer to get the same task done. During the first couple of
weeks, I too longed for the familiar feel of my Treo.

However, as I got more and more used to the 6700, and then went back to
my Treo, the treo started annoying me. I had to close the web browser
to make a phone call, I had to close my calendar to look up a contact,
I had to go to the phone app to answer a call and exiting the
application I currently had open, I could no longer use my super-fast
Wi-Fi connection at home, the pictures taken on my Treo looked awful
compared to those taken with my PPC. I can handwrite notes, record
notes with a button, or take them out with the keyboard (which really
is not that bad ... I can type at least 10wpm faster on the PPC
keyboard than the Treo) ... all natively. The software available for
the PPC is generally more sophisticated.

And once you get fully used to multi-tasking, it is VERY hard to go
back to a single-tasking OS. It is somewhat like using windows, then
going back to DOS. Except for some well-written programs, there is no
multitasking. Exiting blazer to do something, then going back to
blazer is so painfully slow, that I haven't used blazer in ages. You
can't just quickly switch tasks in 1/2 second.

But, it is more complicated. And they keyboard is not omnipresent.
It must be pulled out. With the Windows Mobile Voice Command, I almost
never use a stylus unless playing a game. I speak to the PPC and tell
it to play certain songs, certain artists, certain genre's, which
program to open, who to call, where to call them (home, work, mobile).

It has a 5-way joystick and a start button that eliminates the stylus
for day to day use one you fully figure out how to use it ... which
admitedly does take some time.

The way I look at it, the Treo competes with a blackberry, a PPC
competes with a laptop computer.

There are going to be people rabid on both sides of the fence, and
nobody is wrong. It's like arguing which color is better ... blue or
green.

Some are going to switch to one, and g back to the other. That happens
with everything. The Treo 6xx line has been in people's hands for 1-2
years. The PPC only a month or two. So it will be awhile until we get
a feel for what people really prefer. Newer platforms are adopted
slowly, and Windows Mobile 5 is brand, spanking, new. Palm OS is 10
years old. So, the longing for the familiar does not suprise me. Some
people can't wait to switch back to Windows after trying Linux and
vice-versa.

If I could only have one device, at this point it would be the
PPC-6700. Hands down. Does it have some things that I wish were a
little different? Of course. Every device I own does.

I like the keyboard ... now. I hated it at first. You will hate the
keyboard for the first month. Then, you will probably have trouble
going back to the Treo's keyboard. The keys on the PPC are roughly 4x
larger than that on the Treo. And the slider isn't that bad. I wish it
was spring loaded, but it's not what I would call a deal breaker.

I guess my point is ... you can't go wrong with either phone.

Just compare and give each one a fair shot, and make a decision based
on preference. And you have to factor in a learning curve to get the
full use from Windows Mobile 5 which is much more powerful than the
Palm OS.

Also, I don't think I can emphasize the Windows Mobile Voice Command
enough.

I press one button, ask it what my appointments are, and it reads me a
list of all upcoming appointments. The range of tasks the phone can
perform with the simple press of one button and your simply telling it
what to do are amazing. It is also amazingly accurate with few
misunderstandings of what I am saying. And to take a quick note, I
press the button right below it and record the message in my own voice.

When you first get the device, it is stylus-dependant, but you can
actually configure the device to the point were you barely have to
touch it at all (sylus OR buttons).

At this point, I atually touch the WM device much LESS than my Treo to
do things like play music, open programs, search for contracts, call
people on the phone, check my battery level and signal strength, and a
number of things we all do daily.

Previous PPC devices were very sylus dependant, but Windows Mobile 5
will let you do almost everything you can do on a Treo without ever
touching the stylus ... and sometimes even more without a stylus.

I think this is an often overlooked and/or underexploited feature of
the new OS.

In article <[email protected]>, jr70
@blackhole.invalid says...
> I'm guessing that Sprint does not charge Vision kilobytes for connecting
> to their ringtone server. The longer they keep you on that site, the more
> chance of making a ringtone sale.
>

They certainly did when I worked there.

Remember, KB isn't time sensitive. Once you've loaded a page to look at
it, you're not using KB until you select a new link.

--
RØß
O/Siris
-+-
A thing moderately good
is not so good as it ought to be.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue,
but moderation in principle is always a vice.
+Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792+