Testing the Monthly Flat Rate on the Vodafone Mobile with the HTC Magic.
We continue what we already started in our search for the most gluttonous smartphone. This time the protagonist will again be the HTC magic but we change the operator, we will analyze benefits and data consumption with the Vodafone Monthly Flat Rate.
This rate has a monthly cost of 12 euros without VAT and in the configuration magicwith the APN from Vodafone Live! It promises us unlimited browsing and without speed reductions.
And it is that after our previous test it seemed to us that the magic is a huge data hog, we want to make sure if a true unlimited flat rate like the Vodafone or we can “make do” with other options that are cheaper a priori but that include a surcharge above the franchise or drops in connection speed.
For all of the above, we do not intend to represent an average user, we are going to try to consume as much as possible, take it to the limit to be able to see how far the data consumption reaches on these computers.
We will monitor the data consumed with the NetCounter application since the Magic does not have a built-in data counter. We would have liked to contrast it with the consumption recorded by Vodafone but unfortunately the operator does not include this information in its client area known as My Vodafone, something that should be implemented.
What use will we make? Regarding mail, we have configured a gmail account in the native Magic app plus others two IMAP accounts in the mail app. Also an Exchange email account with the application Road Sync. The Exchange account is in push mode Monday through Friday and syncing every four hours on weekends or weekday nights. the email accounts IMAP sync every hour.
Synchronization is configured Calendar and Contacts with Google web services. Other installed applications that influence data traffic are Google Maps, GTalk, NewsRoba feed reader (123 subscriptions), qikto upload videos to the Internet and TwitterRide, Twitter client. So much NewsRob What TwitterRide they are set to automatically sync every half hour.
Nothing of Facebooknothing of Spotifylet’s say that the profile is a mixture of professional and private use, in any case closer to a work profile and mobile information than uses that are more recreational
We have carried out the test for a week using the magic as our only data device, without the use of WiFi and in locations distributed throughout Spain, from the center of Madrid to peripheral rural areas, passing through medium-sized cities and commuting in the bird Madrid Barcelona.
Overall user experience
The phone as such has already been talked about at length, I personally am a great defender of physical keyboards but with this phone we can live without it, knowing its limitations, in addition precisely the absence of a keyboard makes it very manageable and easy to carry around. shirt pocket, always at hand. Your operating system is Android in “pure state”, without accessories or masks, I like it and I don’t miss it Sense or things like that, but hey, these are all opinions, let’s move on to the data.
coverage and speed
During the whole week of testing we have used the phone in 3G, occasionally it lost the 3G signal and went to GPRS but as we have mentioned before, it has been a serious mobility test and reaching areas with orography that is more than difficult to handle the mobile. In any case, we have not found handling difficulties or problems attributable to the network. What is curious is that we have carried out various speed tests with the application of xtremelabs available in the Market and we have never achieved download speeds higher than 1500 kbps download and 200 upload. If other users have done this test, it would be interesting if they commented on their results, since I am surprised that I have not achieved greater speed. In any case, as I say, the handling has always been fluid.
data consumption
Already in our previous test with another operator many readers were surprised by the data consumption. As we said at the beginning of the entry, we have tried to make the use more intensive, if possible, and we have been in the environment of 100 MB of total traffic per day (including down and up). This traffic has been divided into 85% download and 15% upload.
Conclusions
With all that said, the conclusion seems obvious, we were not testing the phone that others have already taken care of, but to see how far the data consumption was stretched. We seek to answer the question of whether we need a Flat rate really or if with what is said of “moderate use” we could get by with solutions limited in data volume that, once exceeded, penalize us with speed reductions or prices that are no longer so advantageous. And except for a major failure of the consumption meter application, it is clear that the Vodafone Flat Rate and the magic They fit very well, being able to ignore limits is a guarantee in this case.
