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What does a typical month of phone usage look like to you?

How long do you spend on the phone a month?


  • Total voters
    27
I'm on a family plan with smarty, I like that all the lines can all be switched in terms of allowance just from the main one, whilst keeping the other "view only" accounts active so my kid can check his data without charging me £10000000 in add-ons by accident. There's 4 of us, I have 120GB for £10.80, partner is on 8GB for £6.40, eldest is 60GB for £9 and youngest is 4GB for £5.20.
It all works really well and if anyone ever runs out of data I can quickly buy a dirt cheap add-on (they also never expire which is nice - youngest has a 5GB Addon incase his actual plan runs out; it hasn't yet so it is just sat waiting incase he does, he isn't a very heavy user at the moment compared to my eldest but I'm just waiting for that to change with teenager years).

Total bill for us all is £31.40 and it all works great. 5G, VoLTE, WiFi Calling, the whole shebang. I love smarty, it's never failed any of us yet and I get a useable signal in so many more places indoors than any other EE user here thanks to B20 and B28 which EE refuse to deploy.
I can’t understand for the life of me how I’ve been having such a bad experience with smarty for the last few weeks. I used Three on a contract from Oct 2021-Nov2022 and when I switched to EE it was only really because I found their roaming better, but trying the Three network again via SMARTY it just feels really really sluggish, fails to complete speedtests at main train stations eg London Bridge or East Croydon, I strongly feel that SMARTY is depriotised compared to main Three because it feels like I’m using Three in 2017 again most of the time

I also find it’s incredibly slow to latch onto their 5G for some reason (set to 5G On), and before that while on 4G I’ll struggle to start a Speedtest or if I do get 20mbps even though I’m between 3 POWs and go well over 1000mbps once connecting to 5G

I take the train up to London atleast once or twice most weeks for work, and with Three it almost feels like they have no service - 3/4mbps the whole way up now, even though it never felt like this when I used it before, but EE loses connection for a max of 8 minutes of the journey

Is there some kind of limitations using it in dual sim that would cause this
 
I can’t understand for the life of me how I’ve been having such a bad experience with smarty for the last few weeks. I used Three on a contract from Oct 2021-Nov2022 and when I switched to EE it was only really because I found their roaming better, but trying the Three network again via SMARTY it just feels really really sluggish, fails to complete speedtests at main train stations eg London Bridge or East Croydon, I strongly feel that SMARTY is depriotised compared to main Three because it feels like I’m using Three in 2017 again most of the time

I also find it’s incredibly slow to latch onto their 5G for some reason (set to 5G On), and before that while on 4G I’ll struggle to start a Speedtest or if I do get 20mbps even though I’m between 3 POWs and go well over 1000mbps once connecting to 5G

Is there some kind of limitations using it in dual sim that would cause this
Perhaps it's just worse where you are jon1 not sure, but I have a Smarty SIM in slot 1 and a three SIM in slot 2 of my mobile, and it never seems sluggish on either. 5G works great too for me.

Never noticed any speedtest problems either. (Ookla)

I get exactly the same performance on both SIMS, so don't think Smarty is depriortised as far as I can see.🤷‍♂️
 
I’m on Three paying £28 for 2x MBB Unlimited (remember the £3 deal?) and 2x Unlimited lines.

Across all lines, 3 month usage is on average 300 mins, 50 SMS and 1.3TB data.
 
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I’m on Three paying £28 for 2x MBB Unlimited (remember the £3 deal?) and 2x Unlimited lines.

Across all lines, 3 month usage is on average 300 mins, 50 SMS and 1.3TB data.
Oh we don't talk about the £3 deal jackandrew1995.:oops:
 
My last month of usage:
  • 44 Minutes
  • 1 Text
  • 5 MB of Data
That's not because I don't use my phone. Just that I use apps to call and message people, and do so over WiFI. If we count VoIP Minutes then I would be at about 600-700 minutes a month.
 
My last month of usage:
  • 44 Minutes
  • 1 Text
  • 5 MB of Data
That's not because I don't use my phone. Just that I use apps to call and message people, and do so over WiFI. If we count VoIP Minutes then I would be at about 600-700 minutes a month.
How do you find the audio quality? I can't abide whatsapp calls, but their video calls seem fine on my data which is weird. WiFi calls are always half decent on three. The only app I would use to call people is whatsapp, Snapchat is out of the picture as I rarely use it.
 
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How do you find the audio quality? I can't abide whatsapp calls, but their video calls seem fine on my data which is weird. WiFi calls are always half decent on three. The only app I would use to call people is whatsapp, Snapchat is out of the picture as I rarely use it.
Which do you think should be best quality Bubbles VoWiFi or VoLTE?
 
Which do you think should be best quality Bubbles VoWiFi or VoLTE?
VoLTE 100%, it is prioritised within the mobile networks naturally to make sure it's all ok whereas WiFi networks can have bad connections, packet shaping, all sorts of dodginess going on which can affect the quality. Most of the time they're ok, but if you're on free WiFi or very low bandwidth broadband etc they can f(_)ck over quite quickly. Especially when on a call whilst leaving the house, some phones seem to hang onto the WiFi until it's literally non existent and you can hear the calls deteriorating and then completely restoring when switched to mobile data. I've seen the WiFi hanging issues primarily on pixels and samsungs. My nothing phone doesn't seem to do it which is nice.
 
VoLTE 100%, it is prioritised within the mobile networks naturally to make sure it's all ok whereas WiFi networks can have bad connections, packet shaping, all sorts of dodginess going on which can affect the quality. Most of the time they're ok, but if you're on free WiFi or very low bandwidth broadband etc they can f(_)ck over quite quickly. Especially when on a call whilst leaving the house, some phones seem to hang onto the WiFi until it's literally non existent and you can hear the calls deteriorating and then completely restoring when switched to mobile data. I've seen the WiFi hanging issues primarily on pixels and samsungs. My nothing phone doesn't seem to do it which is nice.
That's good to know because I always have VoWiFi turned off.
The 4G signal here via three isn't too good but not bad enough to affect the calls it seems. (y)
 
That's good to know because I always have VoWiFi turned off.
The 4G signal here via three isn't too good but not bad enough to affect the calls it seems. (y)
Three seem a lot more resilient for calls on low signal than EE do. If I've got 1 bar of signal, generally I can still make a clear coherent call

Had a call with -129dBm in the middle of nowhere and it was still crystal clear.

My kitchen and bottom floor of the house is part underground and I still get 4 out of 5 bars signal via B20 whereas all other networks cut to no service. If I'm in the bit thats not underground it aggregates with B32 and pulls about 50meg.
 
How do you find the audio quality? I can't abide whatsapp calls, but their video calls seem fine on my data which is weird. WiFi calls are always half decent on three. The only app I would use to call people is whatsapp, Snapchat is out of the picture as I rarely use it.
I mainly use Telegram for my calls. And the audio quality is perfect. Crystal clear.

I actually switched to using this app not so long ago after 3G started to get shut off and my phone no longer let me disable VoLTE. Calling on 3G used to sound great. But the new VoLTE/VoWiFi technology is awful and I couldn’t get along with it. 4G Calls often sound as poor as 2G, and long calls are impossible since it keeps falling silent and then reconnects but with a slightly longer delay each time it happens. On my previous network all VoLTE calls would auto disconnect at 29:50 call duration on the dot too.
 
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I mainly use Telegram for my calls. And the audio quality is perfect. Crystal clear.

I actually switched to using this app not so long ago after 3G started to get shut off and my phone no longer let me disable VoLTE. Calling on 3G used to sound great. But the new VoLTE/VoWiFi technology is awful and I couldn’t get along with it. 4G Calls often sound as poor as 2G, and long calls are impossible since it keeps falling silent and then reconnects but with a slightly longer delay each time it happens. On my previous network all VoLTE calls would auto disconnect at 29:50 call duration on the dot too.
What networks are we on about? I've never noticed these issues on three or Vodafone.
 
What networks are we on about? I've never noticed these issues on three or Vodafone.
The two networks you just mentioned were the ones I was talking about as it happens.

Vodafone was the network that would ALWAYS cut me off at 29:50. Three was the network that gave me 2G Audio quality. And both of them had the issue where it would keep dropping out for a split second at a time and add a longer and longer delay to the call as time went on.

Three VoLTE quality was exceptionally bad in my home area. It admittedly improved in other locations but the sound quality never managed to beat the 3G quality I previously had at any time.

I'm using CMLink (EE) Right now and their VoLTE is decent. Far from perfect. But just about good enough to do a phone call over the mobile network when absolutely necessary.
 
Their app is great and it's bang on in the way of features and how it works, with the group owner being the one to manage all the plans and allowances with all the group members also having their own view only accounts so they can check the basics like data allowance but not charge me any more cash (I'm from Yorkshire). It's also nice that you don't have to have all the contracts in your name as you would with an EE or BT family plan, there's no contract at all so it doesn't do anything to my credit score Vs having 4 or 5 lines all in my name.
Could be being stupid here but I remember BT Mobile introducing some kind of system like this where you could have "users" who can only view allowance, I don't think EE has it - SMARTY's system is definitely better here though, and they have a much easier (and cheaper) way to buy roaming day passes and addons vs Three's own

Should I be "ageing" my connection to Three the network maybe? I really don't want to just call it a bad network because I used it for a year not very long ago and it can't have gotten worse because theres only been more POWs going up around me... I can't understand it.. I also see speedtest upload freezes on this SIM aswell - what I mean by this is the speedtest will start uploading to e.g 14.87 and just freeze their for either a few seconds, the rest of the test, or the test will fail. Happens 75% of the time on my EE and Three SIM

I didn't have any of these issues when I had to use SMARTY on my Samsung S20 FE 5G for a few days (3wks ago), after testing the waterproofness of my iPhone, which I replaced and now have upload freezing - starting to think maybe a device issue?
 
I mainly use Telegram for my calls. And the audio quality is perfect. Crystal clear.

I actually switched to using this app not so long ago after 3G started to get shut off and my phone no longer let me disable VoLTE. Calling on 3G used to sound great. But the new VoLTE/VoWiFi technology is awful and I couldn’t get along with it. 4G Calls often sound as poor as 2G, and long calls are impossible since it keeps falling silent and then reconnects but with a slightly longer delay each time it happens. On my previous network all VoLTE calls would auto disconnect at 29:50 call duration on the dot too.
I use Telegram aswell and notice issues with it just randomly timing out or not working on Three but other than that, for the last 5 years I've been on BT Mobile, EE, Three, Virgin Mobile and Sky and apart from (intermitent) bad call quality on the EE networks I've rarely had a call drop (Sky actually seemed best for holding them when going rural e.g train), I wouldn't say 3G calling is better than 4G calling or that 4G calling is as bad as 2G. And if i'm staying in the same place or travelling through an area with any amount of reasonable coverage, I can make a call that lists >1hour without any problems
 
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