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Comment by blinkingled | Hacker News Reader

Unreasonable expectations - Buying an unlocked, generic, carrier unspecific phone and expecting it to work great out of box on T-Mobile. Little knowledge or inclination - not sure which one, but of course he had either little knowledge not to buy unlocked phone OR little inclination to find out that TMobile Voicemail app in Play store. What's wrong about what I said? And people can be that way - I am hardly insulting him for it - just saying not an user that'd do well under the given circumstances.

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Voicemail shouldn't be a carrier specific experience. Is there something so differentiated about the t-mobile voicemail experience vs. the verizon voice mail experience? Shouldn't there just bean android voice mail experience that the carrier can direct at their back end as appropriate?

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a core feature (like voice mail) should work out of the box with no additional installations on my part.

The author implies he wanted an app to get his Voicemail like iOS. Nowhere does he say VoiceMail didn't work. The regular voicemail stuff just works on any stock Android GSM phone - you get a notification for new ones and you can tap that or long press 1 to go to carrier voice mail box for your old VMEs. I have that working on 5 different unlocked phones at the least on 3 different carriers. If you want an app - yeah you gotta find it in app store if your phone wasn't a carrier branded version - the app needs to do carrier specific things to get your voice messages and present you a list.

How is it unreasonable to buy a phone and expect it to work? Anything less than that is either the carrier screwing up a phone that works fine or HTC screwing up by not having a phone that works without the carrier's help. It is bad user experience, which is what his post is all about

It worked - I have always used unlocked phones and you do get voicemail notifications without doing anything further. (There are still possibilities of issues if you bought European model it won't have US Carrier's APN Settings etc. but that's hardly reasonable to expect.) He wanted T-Mobile VoiceMail app to be bundled with it and also WiFi calling - both are carrier specific features which would have worked fine if he would have bought the right phone -T-Mobile HTC One. Expecting that to work on an unlocked, carrier unspecific phone designed to be LCD on as many GSM carriers is nothing but unreasonable.

>He wanted T-Mobile VoiceMail app to be bundled

no, he wanted voicemail. T-Mobile decided to require a different app.

> It took me forever to realize that I had to download the T-Mobile voicemail app to get my voicemail

That's all he says. Nowhere in the post he says voicemail didn't work - he implies he wanted an app to get his Voicemail like iOS. The regular voicemail stuff just works on any stock Android GSM phone - you get a notification for new ones and you can tap that or long press 1 to go to carrier voice mail box for your old VMEs.

He never says like iOS. you are inserting that. he says he never realized that, in order to get his voicemail (and i read that as to get it in any way shape or form), he had to download t mobiles app.

>He never says like iOS. you are inserting that.

Nitpicking much? iOS started the Visual Voice Mail thing. No GSM, non-iPhone user is used to using Visual Voice Mail App - they pretty much tap the VME notification or long dial 1 to get to voice mail - that still works on any unlocked Android with any GSM carrier.

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