Friday, November 26, 2010 11:08 PM
I finally got around tonight to getting my sim card from Rogers (Canadian 3G cellular telco)*. I bought my Focus unlocked from Expansys, so I get to avoid the annoyance that is cellular contracts.
So here are some things you need to know about setting up your unlocked phone with a different provider, specifically (obviously) Rogers:
You will require to hard-reset your phone.
After putting in the SIM card, I looked *everywhere* for a setting that would let my device see my SIM card. No dice, displayed that no SIM was detected. I pinged some peeps on Twitter and looked online, and all pointed me to the same conclusion: a hard reset is required to have the phone recognize the SIM card (If there’s another way without a hard reset, please leave a comment! But regardless, this did work for me).
The thing about a hard reset is that it reverts your phone to its factory condition, meaning that all data is lost. So make sure you’ve backed up your pics, videos, files, etc. For applications, once I was logged in to my Live ID I had no problems re-downloading them (although I’m not sure if the marketplace saw this as counting as a new device – there’s a limit).
You will need your carriers APN settings.
Once my phone resetted, I was instantly connected to the Rogers cellular network – no extra steps required for this! But Data, now that’s a different story.
What is an APN? From Wikipedia:
Access point name (APN) identifies an IP packet data network (PDN), that a mobile data user wants to communicate with. In addition to identifying a PDN, an APN may also be used to define the type of service, (eg connection to wireless application protocol (WAP) server, multimedia messaging service (MMS)), that is provided by the PDN.
When you go to the Cellular option in the Settings area on the phone, there’s a button at the bottom saying “Add APN”. When you click this, you need to enter in the Rogers APN info. What is the Rogers APN info? I found this blog post that shows the values for using a T1 Android phone on the Rogers network, and they work for the Focus as well. You just need the APN, Username, and Password (and yes they all look like sample data – internet.com, wapuse1, wap…really?! – but yes, that’s what they are!). Voila, this will get you internet.
What about Messaging?
I don’t have an answer for this yet. This is the only thing that I don’t have working. The obvious action would be to add the APN for Media Messaging (listed in the blog I mentioned above). The problem is that it seems WP7 only allows for one APN to be entered at a time, you can’t add multiple. So need to dig a bit deeper on this one. Others are experiencing the same thing as well, and on different makes…its a WP7 OS issue, not a device issue.
In Closing…
This process wasn’t anywhere as nasty as I thought it would be, other than the feeling that I need to take a shower because I’m back on with Rogers (Canadians have a strong Tolerate-Hate relationship with our telcos). But who knows, maybe Rogers will surprise me. I do like that I’m not on a contract, even if I paid more up front for the phone. Interestingly, Rogers is selling the Samsung Focus without any plan for $699.99! Even with the shipping fee, its cheaper at Expansys.
Once I get messaging working, I’ll let you know!