Sunday, October 17, 2010

T-mobile myTouch 3G without data plan for beginner

I have been a cellphone geek; There's something so sexy about smartphones that make me fall in love with them ...ok that was a bit exaggerating, but I have been a big fan of Windows Mobile phones for a long time because they are so useful, in term of features rich and the ease of customization. But lately, there are much hypes going for Android phones that made me curious, so I got an upgrade from T-mobile for a HTC myTouch 3G Android and I'm telling ya ...it works wonderful!
Ok, let's start from the beginning. For those who are reading this because you're interested in the myTouch 3G, you should know there are several version of myTouch 3Gs phones. Mine is the 2010 model, with Android 1.6, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top of the phone. There was a problem at first when I was trying to activate my phone. I don't have a data plan ($30/month) and it seem like any Android phone requires an Google activation with a valid Gmail account. There's conspiracy that Google is trying to control the world, like SkyNet in the Terminator movies, someday it will take over the machine and slave mankind D: ...Anyway, I couldn't activate my MT3G phone because I don't have a data plan. There are 3 solutions to that:

1) "You can borrow a friend's SIM who has data plan" I quoted as many people keep saying that in many forums as the best answer to the solution ...and it's NOT! Are you kidding? I can't find anyone who has data SIM card. Most people in my area have Sprint, Verizon, At&T, or iPhone. And most of them have CDMA phones with NO SIM card; and of course, when I found one with a SIM card, they don't have data plan :/

2) Second solution is activating a data plan and then cancel it, which I did. Just login to Tmobile.com and go to "add service" to temporary add data to your phone. Notice, it may not let you add data plan if you have an old obsolete phone model as your default phone; Click on change my device or something like that and pick a T-mobile Wing, or any model that has internet compatibility. After adding service, it will take affected within an hour. Now, the activation should work. How long does it take for the phone to activate once you have data plan? ...less than a second. Don't forget to login back to Tmobile and cancel data plan right away if you don't like being charged $30/month.

3) The third option is spooky. Some say that you can root it or flash it with a new Android version and it doesn't ask for activation, which I doubt it because Android is Google's base OS. It doesn't matter if you replace it with a different version or not. Beside, I'm a newbie to Android so I have no clue how it works. I don't want to risk it and end up with a brick phone D:

Other than that, there are many mythes flying around on the net, like touching the four corners of the screen will bypass the activation process, or just hit cancel to quit the activation, bla bla bla...which are either lying or obsolete information.

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