cricket – TruXter Tech

Cricket Wireless Mass Outages

Posted on2016/06/032016/06/03AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Share this page to help get the word out
Yes Cricket users you have no signal.
People are reporting outages to the Cricket network across the country on a website called ” isdownrightnow.net”
If you just go to the site and search for Cricket, and when you find the page for reporting outages, just sit there and hit refresh and look at all of the people reporting in they have an outage, and look at where they are reporting from.

Doesn’t look like Cricket to AT&T switching is going all that smooth.

the Cricket website is also going in and out and forcing you to re-log in. The amount of time you stay logged in is about 1/5th the amount of time it takes for Cricket’s website to accept your password.

From New York to Texas to California, all of Cricket cell phone serviceis down.
Nation wide cell phone outages.
since 4pm Central, Cricket has been out of service. No calls in or out. If you call your voicemail from another phone, you can log in and check your voice mails. You can even delete them. Nothing much after that. Your phone will still show that you have voicemails that have not been deleted or heard.

Odd that this happens right after TeamViewer gets hacked then Myspace gets hacked.
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How To Block The Spam on Your Cricket Phone

Posted on2016/05/102016/10/08AuthorTruXter2 Comments

Since the new Privacy Policy change at Cricket , they have allowed us to opt out of the advertisement types. Such as; web browser spam, and text message notifications.
We here at TruXter Tech decided to run through them all and opt ourselves out of them all. Here’s how we did it.

To opt out of “Relevant advertising” Click here

To opt out of advertisements on your phone based on your usage and locations Click Here

Phone Spam Opt Out

More Addvertisers to opt out from Click Here

You have opted out of relevant advertising on your mobile device.

To unsubscribe from Cricket’s Email spam Click Here

Federal Do Not Call list Click Here

To stop getting mail from Cricket and their affiliates Click Here

To Opt out of Cricket Text Messages Click Here

Opt Out Cricket Text Messages

Cricket Changing Privacy Policy

Posted on2016/05/102016/05/10AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

Cricket Cell phone carrier changing it’s privacy policy

In a text from Cricket

It’s Cricket Wireless here with an important service update. Effective June 16, 2016 we are changing our privacy policy so we can share your information with our parent company, AT&T. We are also changing the payment grace period. Please visit cricketwireless.com/june for more information.

Grace Period Change

Effective June 16th, 2016, the grace period to restore your service if you miss your Cricket Pay Date is changing from two (2) days to one (1) day. After the grace period you will be charged a reactivation fee to restore your service.

Basically Cricket and AT&T Merged a while back. and you’ve seen some changes. Well those changes aren’t over yet. You are in for a bunch of new spam.
Spam related on your browser history and your locations you frequent or frequently pass.

Cricket’s new policy change is based on AT&T’s policy since AT&T owns Cricket now.

Here is the current standing Privacy Policy of Cricket
any policy additions as of now are found here

How to opt out of Cricket Spam

I don’t like the idea that they can watch everything I am interested in, or things that freak me out so I check it out to see what it is then advertise to me based on my searches. I also don’t like the idea that I can be chasing my dog down the street to get him back home and get stuck behind a fish market trying to get him to come into reach and start getting advertisements based on seafood. Or that I can say the word “seafood” and BAM I am bombarded with seafood ads.

Does Simple Mobile block Cricket Pictures?

Posted on2015/02/082015/02/13AuthorTruXterLeave a comment

cricket_android Okay, first encounter of this so i have to know if others are experiencing the same issue.
I have been sending pictures with my cricket phone to a female friend of mine who is using Simple Mobile and she has not been responding to them. So i ask her why she doesn’t respond and she says she never got them. She is sure it is cricket messing up. So I test sending her pictures with my work phone which is on Verizon and the pictures send fine. Next I send pictures from my Cricket phone to my Verizon phone and from Verizon phone to my Cricket phone and all goes well. Yet not one picture received to the Simple Mobile network.

From what i see all sms text messages transfer fine and fast but to send a picture from Cricket to simple mobile, no go.

Now understand that I am on the version of Cricket that uses the AT&T GSM sim card, not the old Cricket with no sim card (except 4g) using CDMA network.

So if you are experiencing or not experiencing this please respond below so I get a grip on what is happening.

**Update**
I contacted Cricket and this is the tip they gave me to check my my APN settings to verify i am connected correctly. Sadly I am connected correctly. but nonetheless

Cricket Help: I will send you the APN settings , but this will work just for Cricket devices
Cricket Helps: Tap Settings > Mobile Networks (or Mobile Data) > Access Point Names > New APN (may have to tap Menu button to see this option).
Enter the following APN info:
Name: Internet
APN: ndo
Proxy: Not Set
Port: Not Set
Username: Not Set
Password: Not Set
Server: Not Set
MMSC: http://mmsc.aiowireless.net MMS
Proxy: proxy.aiowireless.net
MMS Port: 80
MCC: 310
MNC: 150
Authentication type: Not Set
APN type: default,mms,fota,hipri,supl
Note: on the above APN type be sure to enter it exactly as it is listed& don’t include any spaces!
Tap Save for the new APN.
Go back one screen to the APN list and tap the dot to enable this APN.
Reboot the device.
Test data and MMS.

Nope, did not work.

Cricket’s ZTE Sonata 4G One Month Review

Posted on2014/09/242015/04/24AuthorTech Review Man8 Comments

My one month review of the Sonata 4G from ZTE from Cricket. Aka z740g

Battery – 1785 mAh
Processor – 1.4 GHz Dual-Core Qualcomm® MSM8230
RAM – 1 GB
ROM – 4 GB
Camera – 5 MP (backside only, No front camera)
Resolution – 480×800
OS – Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean)

Preface
So Cricket’s parent company got sold to AT&T and everyone who was on Cricket’s CDMA signal has to switch over to AT&T’s GSM phones. I was on the edge about moving from my Samsung Galaxy Admire II. I knew that we still had 5 months before we would have to make the switch, decided to just go right ahead and not wait until the last minute. I made the change.For more on the Cricket AT&T AIO Merger.
I shopped for the best processor, lowest cost, most storage fastest boot/reboot.

My budget (this is the budget tech review website so deal with it) was to spend between $80-$150. My total cost was $75.78 that covered the phone and my first month on the Cricket/AT&T GSM network.
First app I noticed was a task manager that none of my previous Android phones had, without me having to root the Sonata. Next thing I found is I can move apps to the SD to save storage space on the phone, and yes completely without having to root the phone.

Camera
Disappointing that I didn’t notice there was no front facing camera. but if you need a selfie, you can do a shelfie. Just set the timer (click the gear in camera mode you will see it) and set the camera to 3,5,10 seconds and back up and pose. When done, crop the image.This works well with my case that came with a stand. but again, it takes a whole lot of pictures before you get one decent photo. A BUNCH OF PHOTOS.

There was much more to learn. So I had to dig into the camera and see what it is capable of.
First 10 photos came out very poor.
I even tried a few of my best tricks. Like hold the phone braced firmly against a tree or a wall or rested on a table. Still blurry.
I tried a few changes in the setting but everything by default was set up to the best settings.
The zoom… the zoom was like the first issue of android. A slider bar at the bottom of the screen. No pinch zoom.
The video camera shoots at very high resolution and the slider zoom feature is great. but clunkier and has a bad focus rate as compared to pinch zoom cell phone cameras.
Do not shoot video footage of concerts. The audio is horrendous. The audio/noise filters (maybe???) seem to try too hard to cancel noise and you are left with what sounds like a concert in a wind storm. Here is a comparison of the Sonata ZTE Z740G camera verses iPhone 4s camera.

Actual phone function
Sounds are clear. When people speak you hear everything they say and no one ever asks you to repeat yourself. No chop in audio at all.

Video play back
This phone has the clearest video I have seen as of yet. Loads all sorts of sites and I didn’t have to load any apps to the phone. No plugins needed. Just right out of the box loading every video on Reddit and Facebook I would stumble into. There is a download button on one of the video players . This lets you watch and download a lot of different videos.

Web Browser
Web browser on the ZTE Sonata is frustratingly jumpy. Pages keep loading and jumping all over the place. I suggest you install Opera or Opera mini. Either will be fine and solve this jumping issue. Forget all of the other cell phone web browser. Opera is the king of cell phone web browsers.

Video Games
Have not yet found a game that will make this phone stutter. Every game plays well.

Video display
The screen frustrates me. You have only one angle to view from. Move too high up and you lose visibility. Move too far right and the screen gets white and fonts are hard to read. Move left and screen gets super dark.

Battery life
Ehh nothing special. battery drains just as fast as all of my other phones. You get around 8 hours of battery life if you don’t touch your Sonata. Play any games or browse Reddit or Facebook, you’ll be on the charger in under an hour, completely drained in 2 hours.

Resources
Not understanding this. The ZTE Sonata seems to not handle resources very well. I don’t see anything lagging or stuttering, but looking at the task manager, the Sonata seems to always be using more than half of it’s R.A.M., even if I go through the task manager tabs to disable applications.

Reception

The phone picks up a great signal and nearly never is without a signal. but this is AT&T so we are looking at dropped calls seemingly for no reason what-so-ever.

Function
Along with dropped calls, there is a constant need to reboot. Called Cricket and they told me to just pull the sim card out and replace it. Me being a person who has been on AT&T (who owns Cricket now) a few times, I know better than to do this. You will wear out that sim card pretty quick. The main trick is to get you to do a full shut down and take the battery out for a few seconds (go ahead and leave it out for about a minute) and replace the battery then reboot. This does it for you nearly every single time. No logic in taking the sim card out at all.

Final overall
IMHO this is a decent phone. Looks and feels like a strange knock off of the Samsung Galaxy Admire II.

The back button is in an unusual (sort of stupid) spot, unless you are left handed. In fact a few things about this phone would be beneficial to lefties. Like the power connector. If you are right handed and use the phone for wide screen while on the charger, the cable points straight up. So you are battling the power chord.
App shortcuts keep disappearing. Constantly. but they might just be the apps that have been moved to the sd card. and this could be during updates.

Review score of ZTE Sonata:
Cost: 10/10
Camera: 3/10
Display: 3/10
Video Playback: 10/10
Battery life: 7/10
Resource life: 5/10

Total Score of the ZTE Sonata: 6/10

**update**

Programs are crashing left and right. This thing loses wifi constantly. I get notifications of apps closing like every 20 minutes. I just turn the thing off when I am at work so I am not looking at phone every 3 minutes. There was an update about the same time the Starbucks app updated and everything crashed so I think it is an overall issue with the phone and whatever default programs are on it, one of them updated and is causing complications with other apps. because it isn’t just the Starbucks app crashing.

The camera is a bit better than I expected, there are tons of settings in the menu area, from iso to saturation to contrast setting. This camera is great really.
Dark settings ISO 1600
Bright settings ISO 60
Turn everything in the “image” section down to 1/3 or a tad bit less. Adjust accordingly with location and lighting.

Default image save file type is .png

Mycrk.it Text message

Posted on2014/05/20AuthorTruXter1 Comment

No way I would click a random link, so I took it to my pc and typed in the address from the text message. got a redirect to a legit page on Cricket’s website
which had this video in it.

as we all know, the company that owns cricket is called “leap Wireless” and the company that owns AIO is AT&T. and we all know that AT&T just purchased LEap Wireless, that is why the merger of AIO and Cricket is on going now.
Basically, Cricket people if you go in, you will need to change your plan.
Aio people, will not need to change their plan.

Knowing Aio and Cricket are now owned by AT&T…
Everytime I find a good cell company, AT&T buys them out. Eventually I have to go in and trade my phone for a phone compatible to their signal. and they always offer me “a great deal” where they give me a phone at the “same value” as my previous phone… which means that if I bought my phone in a discount sale at $29, they give me their current $29 phone.. Basically… I have to downgrade drastically because a smart company does not have a decent phone on sale at that time. or a voucher for $29 off of a phone, and all sales will be crap phone.

Count on that big ol brick phone being offered for the value of your current phone.

They have done this to me twice now.

My first phone was AT&T and it wasn’t even good enough to be a nokia brick. It had a metal antenna and couldn’t even play snake. AT&T charged me $120 for that phone. So I later found some off brand company local to my area that was offering new $175 nokia phones if we trade our AT&T phone and pay $25. or something close. so I pounced on it and grabbed one. one month later I am standing in line at AT&T trading my phone in because they merged with the company that stole me away. What did they give me? A phone the size of my shoe.
I couldn’t get a signal anywhere. I called and asked for help and repeatedly got told “hmm that’s odd, no one else is complaining, pay $85 with your insurance and you will get a replacement for that exact model phone”. So I started looking for a new company. I found the one that had that blue alien with the football shaped head and a snorkel on top. Primco… Finally got my first flip phone. It was gold, made by audiovox. Pretty slick looking. Paid $29 for it. with in a year, AT&T bought them up and ……BAM… same stupid Nokia brick..

Here it is after 14 years of swearing I would never go back to AT&T…. They bought out Cricket.

Sanyo Zio Review after 2 Months Use

Posted on2011/09/282011/09/28AuthorTruXter3 Comments

This is a follow up to the original review of the Sanyo Zio that I did when I first traded in my T-Mobile phone. I switched from T-mobile to Cricket.

After two months of using this device, I have to say that I am sure sick of shutting down programs so I can save the battery. Advanced task killer is a great program for shutting programs down. but there is no application that turns other applications off to stay off. So all of the apps on the Zio keep restarting just seconds after turning them off. The best way I know that seems to work. is go into the settings area of the phone, under Applications/ Running Services. Find the Application that keeps restarting and turn the thing off there. Why do they not make the programs any more with menu options to turn the apps off and conserve battery?
The touch screen is all over the place. Typing a message has become the longest, daunting task.
I have no resorted to getting a program called “Hey Tell”. Lets me record a short message and send it through internet. Works great on my wifi system. because I sure don’t get enough signal at home with this thing, to send a voice message.
Search opens everytime I do something that takes a lot of focus.
Sometimes it’s the web browser that opens. I have so much as held the thing with 4 fingers between both hands, so I knew I wasn’t accidentally bumping any buttons.
Everytime I pull down the top menu to get the short cut items of preloaded processes, the top slider gets stuck. The fix is to swipe again as if I hadn’t yet. Frustrating. Now I look like I have a scratch and sniff phone.
some useless apps that run all the time, you have to “root” your Zio just to disable them. and what I mean by disable, you have to remove the apps. Hope android market has the same apps, if i ever want to sell this.
Zio in no way compares to the G1. Google’s G1 blew the Zio out of the water, with older firmware and all.

I sure wish Google would pay more attention to Cricket and make something of them. Just a bit of a nudge with a handful of phones just for Cricket, would be nice. Like the G3 ??????

Review score:
6/10 useability
6/10 signal
9/10 appearance
4/10 battery life
3/10 ease of use
Full score is 5/10

Cricket’s Free Sanyo Zio Phone Android

Posted on2011/07/182011/07/26AuthorTruXter2 Comments

I left T-Mobile.
Yep, I jumped ship. I went back to Cricket.
The phone that I traded my blackberry 8100 in for is a Sanyo/Kyocera zio. AKA KYOCERA M6000.
Since Cricket was giving away the Sanyo Zio if you trade in your working cell phone from your current carrier, I assumed I should.
This phone is not a brand new technology, at all. This phone was originally with Sprint back in early 2010 brought to Cricket in late 2010.
I was on a plan that gave me 300 minutes of talk time at a cost of $49 a month and I still had fave fives. To now, an unlimited everything for $55 a month.
The first thing was to call T-mobile and request my account number. The guy who answered the phone put on a sincere voice and Acknowledge that he knows that typically when people ask for their account number, they are about to leave the company. The guy asked me if there was anything i was in need of, to keep me from leaving. i let the guy know that I was not happy with how I have been treated so i am looking around, and my first step is to get my account number and that I may or may not leave T-mobile. Really, that was exactly true. I could have backed out of getting my phone number ported over to Cricket, at any time. The guy kept asking questions and hesitating, So i had to get stern with him ‘ look, I am considering leaving and you holding out like this is making me want to leave even more, i just need my number and will consider all option”. He said just about everything he could think of just short of “please don’t talk to other people, you will see how good things could be”, what ever he said. I just hung up because I got my account number. and that’s all I needed.

I gave the teller my account number, in less than 3 minutes the phone was in my hand with a temporary number on it. I got a text message and it said for me to text back with a code and my old number will be moved to cricket. I tried and it did not work. After I called the help line, I realized i wasn’t pressing they ‘*’ key first. My bad. Phone number was switched over to T-mobile just like that. Whole deal took less than 20 minutes to complete.

Cricket Splash Screen on The Zio

Ok. Time to grade the phone.
The Sanyo Kyocera ZIO from Cricket, by feel, is a lot like my blackberry, smooth.

Menu on The Sanyo Kyocera Zio Phone

Nice and thin, slick,no buttons to interface, touch Screen, except volume and camera. I have few complaints about
the camera button. Sensitive when I am not trying to touch the camera button, but doesn’t do squat when I hit that button on purpose. Volume buttons are excellent.

Volume Button on Kyocera Sanyo Zio

there is a data/charging connection on the lower left edge.
Headphone jack on the upper left edge, and an SD card slot on the mid right. All have caps.
Large speaker at the upper back
Pin hole mic on bottom edge.
Screen feels like plastic over glass. I could be wrong as to whether it actually is, it’s just the way the Zio feels to me.
Software.
Initial Storage space 180MB
Yes this an Android 2.2.1 system on the sanyo ZIO.

zio software display

But
The pinch zoom feature, does not happen with this phone. Tap and zoom, yes.
Scroll ball, is a bit sticky and sluggish.
Huge Screen Perfect fit for downsized (not re-sized) hd movies
Watched Diggnation, Tekzilla and life Hacker from the revision 3 website and was impressed with the resolution and quality of the images and video, Nearly never a buffer time. sometimes The revision 3 server hiccups.
Camera takes a very high resolution video, even in room lighting. (never great to have just room lighting)
Every application I tried, all work fine.
There is some bloat ware that I had to root the phone to remove. Some bowling game demo and an “uno” game.
Many applications load constantly, you can not go into settings and turn them off like you could with the g1 on android 1.6. So battery life isn’t what it could be.
Nice fade when opening and closing apps. but again, sometimes sluggish. Keyboard seems to be miss calibrated, When you press the Letter ‘o’ you get the letter ‘p’ and so on… If you are a fast texting person, you will get frustrated. Just find the letter that the Zio mistakes you typing, and hit the far corner of the button you intend to pres. Works well that way.

Internet speeds for the Zio – using speed test app from android market
upload 700k
download 400k
That is about what I was seeing on T-mobile with their “Edge”.

Reception
At home and at work, my signal fluctuates between no signal, and two bars. but with that said, I received a call from a friend while I had 0 bars and the phone call sounded fine on my end, and the person on the other end never asked me what I was saying. I never heard anything unusual or anything that would hint of a bad signal, other than the caller’s T-mobile lag. Was sad when we both were on T-mobile, neither knew when to talk.
although I find myself back in 2003, holding the sanyo Zio up in the air to get a signal enough to send a text message. I don’t remember Cricket having this bad of a signal.

Back Of The Zio

internet 10/10
software 8/10
hardware 5/10
reception 5/10 (I gave it a poor score then added some because the phone seemed to work even with no signal)
look 10/10

Full Over all Score is 7/10

And that is enough to make me feel as if I got another great deal.

Another unprofessional review from TruXter Tech Review and the budget Tech review

T-mobile and Me

Posted on2010/09/012010/09/01AuthorTech Review Man1 Comment

After three and a half years with T-Mobile. I am done, again. Yeah I was with T-Mobile a few years back. I left them for sprint. That in it’s self was a nightmare. I later moved to Cricket who really had good service, but the phones looked like garbage and had nearly no features. After a few years I left Cricket and went back to T-mobile. I guess it was long enough that I forgot what I hated so much about T-mobile. T-mobile had a really nice looking phone they were offering for free with a $39 a month contract. That was a great a deal, considering I was sick of the cheap plastic barely functioning phone I had.
As soon as my new Motorola Rizr showed up in the mail, Google released the G1. I had just signed a two year contract and couldn’t change to the G1. Two years later I finally got my G1.
I was happy with all of the features the phone had, The cool aps that let me log into facebook from anywhere, the myspace ap the twitter ap and all of the little games. All of the additional software you add to the Google G1, neat stuff. but now I was paying 92.40 a month. That’s $100 a month for 300 minutes, unlimited internet, unlimited text. My cricket account I had everything unlimited for $59 a month, but a crappy phone.
I got fed up with the T-Mobile bills so I logged into their website and changed my settings. I ditched the G1 and changed to a blackberry I had in a drawer. Knocked everything down to reflect $59 a month. This was on the 18th of august. My bill was due on the 21st. The next day I got text message from T-Mobile showing my bill will reflect the changes starting on the 19th of August. Here it is, today is the 1st of September, my bill shows I will be paying $91 on my next bill. This of course is before tax. So, something is wrong with my account.
Today I make a call to T-mobile by just pressing 611 on my Blackberry. I go through the whole automated voice thing. I get a second voice that comes on and says all of the representatives are busy and they could call me back in 8 minutes if I opt in. So I did. 8 or 9 minutes later I get a call. There was tons of noise. I could hear dishes, lots of laughter. It sounded like either a bar or a very popular crowded restaurant. i was not sure the guy could hear me at all. There is no telling what was going on up there. Probably someone’s birthday. I am not in anyway mad about celebrating at the office. I am cool with that. just bothered by the fact I didn’t get my issue resolved. The guy really sounded like he did not want to take that call. but he was nice. Just not very involved. The guy tells me that it’s just me paying for last month. No I paid for last month and the text message confirmed this. I told him I was considering changing to another plan they have and he brought to my attention that I would not get the phone deals. I laughed and told him they sold me a G1 that was two years old for $100 off of the $400 price they showed on their website while at the same time the same phone was all over the internet for sell for $150 and less. He plaid “oh your cheap, cheap people aren’t cool” bit with me by saying ” Oh yeah if you go to ebay you can get all sorts of used stuff for almost free”. I popped off with ” Well compusa-tiger direct, and fry’s have ebay accounts and well they were not selling used phones” Before he could go off on what ever he was about to get into, I asked if it would just be cheaper if I dropped my T-mobile account all together. He offered some other plan that would have lowered my bill by like $2. I had to end that call. It was getting goofy, so I said “I have to shop around for a new phone and carrier I will be calling later to pay off the contract”. That phone call had to end.
I have to call back tomorrow. I will keep calling back each day until I get this resolved. if they refuse then at the end of this billing period, I will drop their service. I would do pretty well if I drop off the grid again. i have been getting alot of wrong numbers lately and it has been getting worse. So it would be nice to get a whole new number. Seems some moron out there knows nothing but dyslexic people, or he is himself.

so let’s see what T-mobile does. I think it has run it’s course.

Oh, here s picture of my billing.

T-Mobile, unexplainable bill

I added a post on T-mobile’s website