Most cellular companies price Internet access with usage increments measured in hundreds of megabytes (MB), but more often in gigabytes (GB).
Some cellular carriers make it easy by only offering unlimited data as an option. This is good news: As you customize your phone to keep up with your friends and access your favorite sites, the cost of access won’t increase. There are no big surprises in store for people who choose this plan, even if it comes at an initially higher price.
Other carriers just offer very large “buckets” of data. In any case, it can be a challenge to figure out how much data you are going to need without going over the limit and paying a usage penalty. Some carriers try to help you by giving you some tools to estimate your usage by estimating the number of e-mails, web pages, or multimedia files you plan to download.
These plans are a bit iffy. One option is to go with the lowest increment of data, unless you plan to be downloading a large number of videos. You can use some of the tools I cover later to see how much data you’re actually using.
Another school of thought is to go for an increment or two of data larger than what you think you’ll need. After you’ve built up some history, you can call your carrier to scale back your usage if appropriate. An upgrade to the next bucket runs about $10 monthly.
A popular option is to combine your usage of voice, text, and data with that of your family members. The family unit on the plan gets to share a fixed allotment of voice minutes, texts, and data. This works well, as long as a responsible person checks your usage during the billing period!
If you travel internationally with your Galaxy S6, you should check with your carrier about your billing options before you travel. Voice and text are usually not too bad when you roam internationally. Data is another story.
Rates for data when you’re roaming internationally can be very high. You can end up with a very unpleasant situation if you don’t check the rates and plan accordingly.
Don’t forget that some web-based services charge subscription fees. For example, WeatherBug offers a consumer service that gives you weather conditions, but it also offers WeatherBug Plus that provides more information – with a monthly fee to subscribers with no ads. Yup, if you want WeatherBug Plus on your phone, you have to pay the piper. Some of these services can be billed through your cellular carrier (check first), but just make sure you’re willing to pony up for the service.
With a few exceptions, such as an “unlocked” GSM phone, each phone is associated with a particular cellular company. (In this context, a locked phone can work only on its original carrier.) Maybe you bought a secondhand phone on eBay, or you got a phone from a friend who didn’t want his anymore. If you didn’t get your phone directly from a cellular provider, you will need to figure out which provider the phone is associated with and get a service plan from that company. Some Galaxy S6 phones sold in the United States all have the cellular company’s logo on the phone printed on the front. That makes it easy to know under which carrier a phone will operate.
If there’s no logo on the front, you’ll have to figure out which cellular carrier it can work with. The quickest way is to take the phone to any cellular store; the folks there know how to figure it out.
To narrow down the possibilities on your own, you need to do some investigation. Take off the back of the phone to find the plate with the model and serial number for the phone. If you see IMEI on the plate, the phone is based on a technology called Global System for Mobile (GSM); it’ll work with AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS (or all of them). If you see ESN on the plate, the phone will work with Verizon, Sprint, or U.S. Cellular.
Surviving Unboxing Day
When you turn on your phone the first time, it will ask you a series of ten questions and preferences to configure it. Frankly, they are trying to make this book unnecessary and put me out of business. The nerve!
The good folks at Samsung are well-intentioned, but not every customer who owns a Samsung Galaxy S6 knows, from day one, whether he or she wants a Samsung account, what’s a good name for the phone, or what the purpose of a Cloud service, such as Dropbox, and how it would be used.
You can relax. I’ll help you answer these questions – or, when appropriate, refer you to the chapter in this book that helps you come up with your answer.
On the other hand, if your phone is already set up, you probably took a guess or skipped some questions. Maybe now you’re rethinking some of your choices. No problem. You can go back and change any answer you gave and get your phone to behave the way you want.
The following are the kinds of questions you may be asked. These questions may come in this order, but they may not. They typically include the following:
✔ Language/accessibility: This option lets you select your language. The default is English for phones sold within the United States. Also, the phone has some special capabilities for individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability and think you might benefit, take a look at these options. They have really tried to make this phone as usable as possible for as many folks as possible.
✔ Wi-Fi: Your phone automatically starts scanning for a Wi-Fi connection. You can always use the cellular connection when you are in cellular coverage, but if there is a Wi-Fi connection available, your phone will try to use this first. It is probably cheaper and may be faster than the cellular.
At the same time, you may not want your phone to connect to the Wi-Fi access point with the best signal. It could be that the strongest signal is a fee-based service, whereas the next best signal is free. In any case, this page scans the available options and presents them to you.
✔ Date and time: This is easy. The default setting is to use the time and date that comes from the cellular network and the date and time format is the US style. Just tap on the next button and move on. This date and time from the cellular network is the most accurate information you’ll get, and you don’t need to do anything other than be within cellular coverage now and again. If you prefer non-US formatting, such as a 24-hour clock or day/month/year formatting, you can change your phone any way you want.
✔ Sign up for a Samsung account: Go ahead and sign up for an account. The Samsung account offers you some nice things to help you get your phone back should you lose it. All you need is an account name, such as an e-mail account, and a password.
✔ Google account sign-up: “Google account” means an e-mail account where the address ends in @gmail.com. If you already have an account on Gmail, enter your user ID and password