This is an amazing little box.

It was straightforward to set up. Unbox it, plug it in and charge it for a while. See a white icon on the screen that looks like a battery. But it's not - it's a SIM outline. You can't turn it on until you insert a SIM. Unplug it, use the SIM tool to pop out the tray, insert the (separately purchased on-line for $10 from T-Mobile) T-Mobile micro SIM, plug the tray back in.

Hold the power button in ~ 3-4s, feel the vibration thingy, then see the screen light up. Give it a few seconds to boot up, then it shows a screen of WiFi WAPs found. Pick the appropriate one, enter the key (feel the vibration thingy with each registered keypress).

It asks if you have a Google account. Yes, I do, I enter the name, password, read a couple of check boxes (backup your device, etc.), and let it do its business. Seems to be working.

With a SIM inserted, it seems to work as you would expect on WiFi.

I next go to http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com and buy the $30/mo (100min/unlimited texts/5GB data) plan. I enter the data from the T-Mobile SIM card, the phone info, our area code and I let it give us a new phone number (I don't want to try transferring a number yet). I give it a credit card number and check various boxes, then create a T-Mobile account. I don't have it do automatic billing nor save the CC info as we want to try it before making a long-term commitment. Pretty painless.

I then download Speedtest.net from the Play store to see how the scores are. Below are the results from yesterday and today:

Ping (ms) Download (kb/s) Upload (kb/s) Location Time
535 5122 328 Upstairs 8:30 PM
581 4283 187 Upstairs 9:11 AM
89 3975 280 Downstairs 9:13 AM
1035 7466 529 Downstairs 9:16 AM
1126 7571 1965 Downstairs 9:17 AM
1195 4111 232 Upstairs 9:20 AM
1177 7144 867 Outside 9:22 AM
1087 2488 255 Outside 9:23 AM

Most of the time I had 0-1 signal-strength bars, but sometimes I could get 2 bars by holding it by the bottom and tilting it a particular way. We seem to be in a marginal service area, which is what I suspected. But even then, I'm very happy with the download speed. There may be some magical way to hold it to maximize the signal, but it may just be random.

The OpenSignal Android app says the following:

WiFi: 57 ms ping, 2229 kbps download, 1493 kbps upload
3G: 47 ms ping, 2511 kbps download, 471 kbps upload inside
3G: 339 ms ping, 4656 kbps download, 335 kbps upload outside.

In the Advance view, the dashboard shows the network strength as -109dBm, HSPA at the moment. I'd probably be more inclined to trust the OpenSignal data. It's a neat app - it shows a compass with the direction to the nearest tower, etc. (I don't like the permissions it wants, but I have no data on it yet, and it claims to make everything anonymous, but there you are).

So far, so good. (It still has the plastic protection film on the front and back, so more later about the screen, feel, etc.)

Cheers,
Scott.