Nine Hundred Frequencies of Solitude

Fueled by the fact that my contract with Rogers Wireless (a major Canadian mobile phone carrier) I have been researching smartphone options and carriers and was intrigued by a new starter ( www.windmobile.ca ). WM is 3G only (on the new AWS frequency 1700MHz). This triggered my searching for a phones supporting it and  I noticed a very interesting (and somewhat ironic) trend.

See, common 3G frequencies are : 900, 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100. With the exception of the famous and colorful Nokia N8, most 3G phones do NOT support all of them. In Canada, most 3G phones seem to support either the big three (Rogers, Bell and Telus) or the little ones (Wind, Mobilicity and Public) in a mutually exclusive way. To complicate things further, the little guys do not currently support old-fashioned GSM calling (their networks are pure 3G) which means buying a 3G phone that supports the big three automatically means that you can NOT use it with the little ones even for voice service (unless ur ok with roaming charges).

Shopping for a lil-3 supporting phone in the GTA unlocked market continues to be somewhat challenging (despite Wind being around for almost 2 years now). The following smart phones are known to exist (either in general or at least in some variant) in the GTA:

• Nokia N8 (universal support - only one I know of so far)
• Samsung Nexus S
• HTC Nexus One
• SE Xperia x10
• HTC HD2
• Nokia n900 (beware the NAM version only supports 3G with the big 3)

There are probably others floating around but perhaps harder to find, including some conventional (non-smart) phones. There is also a relatively good collection of phones now directly from the lil-3 and some of them (eg. Mobilicity's Samsung Google Nexus S) are actually sold unlocked.