The Beanster Blog

My SMART SIM card has been residing in the XiaoMi Mi3W coming up on a month now. This decision was made since I was not getting LTE at home or at the office anyway. The Mi3W is a H+ (3.75G) device only. Yesterday I saw SMART boasting about LTE-Advanced (they are calling it 5G) more false advertising and empty promises from SMART. I have decided to keep my SMART number for awhile longer because changing numbers is such a chore and to cover my bases. I do miss iMessage on my SMART number tho, I guess WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger will have to do. Meanwhile on the iPhone 5S I have had my newly minted Globe account with a recycled number which means SPAM text even without giving out my number. Changing the number is an unnecessary expense that I would rather not have so I guess I am stuck with this number. I have not been using it heavily since I have a 1.5Gb cap on my current plan. This actually made me think about how my iPhone uses data. I went into Settings -> Cellular -...

The Globe SIM card has activated at 6:38PM. I was able to link my existing free Spotify account and convert it to a Premium account. So I have Spotify Premium until January 21, 2015 2:43AM to be exact.  Spotify Premium works across all devices even if it was registered via Globe. So it is working on the Mi3W which is currently using my SMART SIM card.  Now on to the all important data. Do I have LTE at home?  The answer is yes and the speed is good. This is a definitely a point for Globe and against SMART.  Let me recap,  At Home in Mandaluyong city:  Globe = LTE  SMART = No Service or GPRS or 3G with no data / slow data. At Work Marikina city: Globe = TBD, I need to test it.  SMART = 3G acceptable speed Note: with my plan I have 1.5Gb of data or 1500Mb that means 50Mb for 30 days. Not much for a heavy user but I think this will be sufficient for testing and emergency purposes. 

Got myself a Globe line after 2 yrs.  I hope I don't regret this.  I chose the lowest plan possible which is P299/mo which has a P500 PV (peso value). For my combo I chose GoSurf 499 which includes. 1.5Gb data Spotify Premium  So basically I have 1 peso left on my plan and everything else is on top. I do not expect to exceed 1.5Gb as this is a secondary line and not my main one.  According to Gerry (or Jerry) the sales person at Globe Center V-Mall My LTE SIM card should be activated in 3 to 5 hours.  Spotify Premium is free for six months only, after that I can choose to continue the service for 129PhP/mo via Spotify or Globe (I haven't checked) Data allowance is not affected by using Spotify. I am skeptical that this is the case. I mean will they monitor the traffic on my device and mark Spotify's usage as free while the rest of my consumption is counted against my allowance? [edit: reading between the FAQ lines it seems Spotify Premium w...

My 2nd month of free 300 Mb from Samsung & Globe expires tomorrow. Month 1 = 230 Mb Month 2 = 208 Mb Average = 219 Mb I'm not going to continue the prepaid service and will swap out the SIM for the sales hot line number. I think the Always On 300 (250 Mb / 30 days) flexibundle for freedom plan should be enough for emails and such since I have wifi in the office.