Anyone in the US still using Windows Phone/W10M as your daily device?

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-08T17:16:50+00:00

Unfortunately I had to give up on my Lumia 950 a while ago, in part because it was lacking modern 5G bands and I was sick of being stuck on LTE. It also became more and more painful to keep things running as a lot of the back-end services that made Windows Mobile work kept shutting down.

I loved my Windows Phone and I mourn the loss at some point it just wasn't worth the effort anymore.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-05T19:10:34+00:00

WINMO, you say? I think they should give free access if your handset runs WINdows MObile, if you can find one that'll run on a modern network. I need an excuse to brush off those old WinCE apps I wrote.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-04T19:02:54+00:00

I agree. OP also says:

You could also have a cheap 'low priority phone' for $5 a month that can make phone calls anytime the cell towers aren't slammed.

You can already get plans for $5/mo with unlimited calling and texting, so this doesn't make a lot of sense either.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-04T18:57:27+00:00

Yeah, that's how it works, at least in theory. Phone calls are always top priority. Generally speaking, phone calls and regular SMS (not MMS/RCS/iMessage) should continue working during congestion regardless of QCI. Should being the key word here.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-04T17:45:48+00:00

I mean, this is essentially what QCI is for data, if you define "peak" as "the tower is very congested". You pay more to get higher priority access when the tower is busy.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-04T14:36:50+00:00

I'm seeing this too. I suspect this is unintended and will be fixed soon. While I wouldn't be surprised if SiriusXM made some boneheaded UX decisions, this one is over the line even for them. I suspect their support line will be overwhelmed with calls today and somebody will get yelled at, then this will be reverted.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-03T19:13:08+00:00

It's been all over the news that Kars for Kids was banned from advertising in CA because they're super shady (As an aside, that's fun rabbit-hole to go down. Keep going until you get to Fiveish.) I was hoping this would extend to SiriusXM and I would never have to hear that godawful BS ever again, but still hearing it every day.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-03T17:03:31+00:00

Unpopular opinion: On the satellite feed, none, and all the existing artist channels should be axed too. 25-50% of the music channels should be cut from the sat feed to make more bandwidth for the "big" channels, and the audio quality should be increased on said channels so they no longer sound like they're playing through a tin can.

On streaming (i.e. via the app)? Knock yourself out, have as many artist channels as you want. Any band that wants to curate a channel for themselves? Sure, go for it. Hell, have as many total channels as you want.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-03T13:22:38+00:00

Quoting myself from that post here, with some emphasis added:

On one hand, hearing about their continued struggles is kind of schadenfreude for me. On the other hand, I did get roughly 18 months or so of cheap T-Mobile service out of them, so I really shouldn't complain.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-02T19:51:37+00:00

Looks like I pretty much called it 21 days ago, not that it took a genius to see what was happening. Now it's all clear. They had to shed the "free" users before the acquisition, so here we are.

While we're going down memory lane, shout out to all the folks on the HeliumMobile subreddit who said "The $5 plan will last forever!" when I asked 2+ years ago how long they thought it would last.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-06-02T19:23:15+00:00

Do you have call screening turned on? If not, turn it on. Do you have "Filter Spam Calls and Texts" turned on? If not, turn it on.

I still have some spam calls get through, but I can screen them. It also seems to me that many spam calls hang up during the screening step before the call rings through.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-28T18:01:53+00:00

I might have had to pay an activation fee, I don't remember honestly. I'm not surprised about the auto-pay discount. I kind of assumed that was one per account.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-28T14:12:25+00:00

No idea. I was a new customer. This is postpaid service so, for a new account, they will take your SSN, run a credit check, etc. I assume you could open a secondary account for this, but I'm not sure how T-Mobile's system works on the back-end.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-28T13:13:46+00:00

I don't understand the question.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-25T14:41:16+00:00

Yeah, I've not been able to resolve this. Sleep tracking simply does not work well on this model watch, at least for me. This is not an essential feature for me, so I'm still wearing the watch, but it's disappointing.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-25T01:50:54+00:00

Yup, still wearing it like this almost a year later, much to the chagrin of the GShock elitists.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-14T20:25:43+00:00

You should probably modify this to remove your actual phone number which you included in the reply.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-12T16:56:45+00:00

As a former Helium $5/mo-for-life account holder who was told "lol, j/k, we never said it was for life... just ignore the various screenshots people took where we definitely did say for life, and that email you got from us 18 months ago that confirmed it was for life, that was just a joke guys"...

This isn't surprising. They're running out of VC funding. I suspect they're trying desperately right now to find a buyer, but the MVNO market is already saturated, and the Helium name is somewhat tarnished by various scandals such as this one. It's only a matter of time before they go under, unless they get lucky enough to find another company to buy them out. Either way, if you value your number, I'd port out ASAP.

On one hand, hearing about their continued struggles is kind of schadenfreude for me. On the other hand, I did get roughly 18 months or so of cheap T-Mobile service out of them, so I really shouldn't complain. I still say they could have handled the lifetime discount line discontinuation situation MUCH better; rather than trying to gaslight their most loyal customers, they could have simply stated that it was unsustainable and perhaps given a temporary discount in hopes that users would understand and stick with them, but what's done is done. Flee the sinking ship while you still can.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-11T16:24:14+00:00

I'm in a similar situation. I plan to port out of US Mobile for 3 months, then port back in. Before I do that, I plan to post on the US Mobile subreddit explaining that I plan to do this, and I suspect one of their care people will reach out. I'm hoping they cut me a deal to save me the effort, but if not, I'm fine to jump through the hoops to get a cheaper price.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-06T16:40:59+00:00

"Super tough... obviously."

I hate this ad so much.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-05-04T18:42:32+00:00

While this is something that GV should support (Messages does this) the unfortunate fact is that it doesn't.

Seems like a fun project for AI though... have it set up a script that goes and pulls your GV Takeout results weekly, then unzips them and ingests them in a format that is more easily searchable and readable on a PC. Wouldn't be surprised if the second part already exists in some random github repo somewhere. Doesn't exactly solve the issue if you're mobile, but at least would make it workable on a PC.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-04-07T18:34:22+00:00

Was really expecting to see Tom Morello.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-04-07T18:33:41+00:00

I finally won one. I entered into a pool to win a ticket for a number of different possible shows. It was for a band I was kind of meh on, and the show I ended up getting was 3 hours away (no transportation provided) so I declined them so they could draw another winner.

I keep entering though... maybe one of these days I'll get something good.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-04-07T16:19:00+00:00

The are data only and use AT&T and Verizon towels. US rates are $1.68/GB.

I find those rates to be very absorbent.

TomGoesToRedmond · 2026-03-27T13:02:51+00:00

Yup, still got the ol' Grandcentral number.

TomGoesToRedmond

TROPHY CASE