On a recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, me and fellow travellers wanted to stay connected without paying huge money for roaming or shoddy hotel wifi. So I looked into getting a Mexican SIM card for my iPhone. Its not quite as easy as prepaid in the US or Europe, but the good news is that if you want to get online while visiting Mexico it is relatively simple and inexpensive.

Actual calling tariffs in Mexico are very confusing. They’re based on regions and, depending on where you call within Mexico, your calls could be very cheap or very expensive (like long distance in Canada). You’re also charged extra if you travel outside of your very small home region. So I decided to skip native calling and texting altogether, and opt for data-only instead. VOIP, email and app based texting.

There are a number of cellphone companies in Mexico. Telcel, Movistar, Isuacell, Nextel among others, but Telcel and Movistar have the most widespread 3G networks that are compatible with iPhones and other unlocked GSM devices. And between those Telcel is said to have to greater coverage at somewhat higher cost.

I was ready to try out either Telcel or Movistar, but it turned out that we drove past a Telcel shop first. It was right on the big highway in Bucerias (Nuevo Vallarta area). There are plenty of these little stores and you shouldn’t have trouble finding one. We went inside and I explained what I wanted to do. There was a language barrier, but in my case a salesperson’s friend was visiting and he spoke perfect English. You might want to write down or save a couple phrases in Google Translate before heading to the shop.

I’ve read online that some have had to go into a big city and have their passport scanned. But in my case they just had me write down the spelling of my name, the hotel I was staying at and we were good to go. Activation was done over the phone.

The SIM card was $149MX (just over $10CAD). There’s plenty of data plans to choose from, but I went with the 1GB/7days for $199MX (about $15CAD). They activated it for me it was working right away. If you need to reload your account to buy more data or check your usage you can do it from the Telcel self-serve website. The site accepts international credit cards.

Coverage was OK. It worked just about everywhere, except inside the lobby of the hotel where there were some dead spots. It was mostly 3G but I saw Edge sometimes too. Speeds aren’t amazing but better than the hotel wifi.

I used the Personal Hotspot feature on my phone, and we had up to 5 devices surfing and emailing harmonioulsy.

I’ll post more info and screenshots soon. Please go ahead and try out my demo or download Kodi for MyBB below. If you notice any issues tell me about them in the comments.

Creative commons attribution as usual.

Open the demo.

The Spice is not a top of the line Android, but overall a useful handset and a great value. Others have complained vehemently about the phone. And I agree that it has some flaws, but with a little work and patience it can definatley hold its own.

Hardware

Its actually a pretty decent looking phone, especially compared to other Motos like the XT720/Milestone. Its has a smaller Palm Pre or BlackBerry Torch form factor; portrait touch screen with slide down keyboard. The exterior is almost entirely plastic with a few metal accents. Despite this it feels reasonably solid, although it does seem a little slippery. I would suggest getting a case or skin for this phone if you trend to drop things easily.

I’ve never been a big hardware keyboard user, but the keyboard on the Spice actually seems pretty nice. After a few days I can type on it at almost the same speed as a BlackBerry Curve or iPhone keyboard.

The camera does alright in well lit conditions. And it’s brutal in low light conditions. I’ve posted will soon post a few sample pics at the bottom for your viewing pleasure.

The screen is reasonably bright and a decent size, but it does have a pretty low resolution. The LED notification light (a la BlackBerry) is a very nice touch. This phone comes with the BackTrack feature, basically a touch pad on the back of the device, and I agree with other reviews that it useless but unobtrusive.

Battery life seems OK after some software modification (see below). Its not the best, but I’ll report back in a few weeks. It was a struggle to install and remove the battery because its a little too big for its compartment.

Software

The Spice runs Android 2.1. As I understand it 2.2 had a lot of performance improvements, so its too bad Motorola has yet to push an update. This is the only Android handset I’ve owned so I have little to compare it to, but it runs pretty well after some modification.

I rooted my Spice with SuperOnceClick version 1.7 (somewhat difficult), and used the Titanium Backup app to remove Motorla’s FlashBack software (its filename is spicey.apk). This went a long way towards solving performance issues other Spice users have complained about. The other modification I made was to download Launcher Pro, which made the home screen experience much snappier.

Android does a really good job of keeping your info in sync. I’ve got it hooked up to my Google Apps email, contacts, and calendar. It also works well with Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Unfortunately syncing media like music and photos does not seem as easy (with a Mac at least).

Service

I think the service is almost the best part of this deal. Mobilicity’s plans are awesome, its great to have unlimited service and it really does change the way you use your phone. You don’t have to worry about minutes, or how many texts you’ve sent, or how many YouTube videos you’ve watched, or even long distance. And to top it off the cost is a fraction of what you’d pay a Big 3 carrier.

But in some suburban places (like in parts of my home), phones struggle to get a Mobilicity signal. Given how much you pay its understandable. You can even overcome this kind of issue by leaving the phone somewhere with a good signal and using a Bluetooth headset (one’s included with the Spice). What I’d really like to see on Mobilicity, though, is UMA or similar technology.

If you have any questions or comments about the Moto Spice or Mobilicity leave them here.

So lets devise that plan that nets you visual voicemail that works on any handset, most carriers and doesn’t cost you anything extra. For this to work you’ll need data and push email account on your phone. You’re plan must also support conditional call forwarding. And finally we’ll need an account at freephoneline.ca (where the real magic happens here).

The first thing you should do is setup your account at Free Phone Line. These guys offer a free Canadian phone number, voicemail, long distance and more. Follow the instructions and make sure you choose a local number. Once your account is created and verified, we can start to setup the voicemail. The first thing you might want to do is record your voicemail greeting. Download and open the FPL softphone app on your computer, dial *98 (or click the voicemail button) and follow instructions to record your greeting.

Now you should configure the system to email the voicemails to you. On the FPL website, make sure you’re logged in and click on the Change Details page. Set the “Correspondence Email” to your push email account, and at the bottom of the page set “Enable voicemail to email” to copy or forward. Copy will email your voicemails to you and keep a copy on the FPL server (so you could dial in and check if you wanted) and forward will simply email you the voicemails and then delete them from the FPL system. Click save.

Test what we have so far. Call your FPL number, leave a voicemail and make sure it gets pushed to your phone.

OK, now for the tricky part. Get your mobile and dial these three sequences to connect your phone to the FPL voicemail:

1. Dial *67*[FPL phone number]# and SEND “Call forward if busy”
2. Dial *61*[FPL phone number]# and SEND “Call forward if not answered”
3. Dial *62*[FPL phone number]# and SEND “Call forward if unreachable”

iOS 5 email notification

Now your phone should be setup with the FPL voicemail system. Test the system in three different ways to make sure all missed calls go to your new voicemail. Call your phone and let it ring until it goes to voicemail, call your phone and ignore the call by pressing the end or sleep keys, and call your phone while its completely turned off or in airplane mode.

If all of these tests send you to the right mailbox, and all your VMs are pushed to your phone then you’re all done! Another benefit is that you’ll be able to access your voicemail from any device that has your email account.

Notes

• Some email providers may accidentally mark your voicemails as spam. Test your setup, and if you have trouble receiving your voicemails at your correspondence email try checking the junk folder.
• If you are with Rogers / Fido and have a voicemail package you might have trouble with the conditional call forwarding setup. It may be necessary to disable voicemail or remove your voicemail feature completely.
• Depending your plan minutes may be deducted from your monthly bucket. Also, if you’re roaming you may be charged a roaming minute for each time someone hits your voicemail. I suggest never roaming with your Canadian SIM and buying local SIMs instead.

Header photo by Emrah Ömüriş.

But once and a while I run into strange errors when trying to boot my VM’s. Errors like “VERR_SUPLIB_WORLD_WRITABLE”, which basically mean the file permissions on some component of VirtualBox are too general.

You can fix most of these errors by opening up Disk Utility (Spotlight search or Applications > Utilities). From there select your system hard drive (likely Macintosh HD) and click Repair Disk Permissions. This process may take a few minutes. When its done restart your computer, open up VirtualBox and you should be good to go!

If you still have trouble, open up the Applications folder and find the VirtualBox app. Right click and open the Get Info screen. At the bottom in the permissions section, make sure “Everyone” only has read access.

Header screenshot by Rafa Espada.

• Open Realize’s global.css in the ACP
• Select the Advanced Editor tab
• Search and replace all mention of #quick_login with #ql_condense

Edit: There’s also a small update for Dark Intentions which fixes the white header image problem in 1.6.3.
Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

My experience is based in the Greater Vancouver Area, so yours may vary based on where you’re located. So far I’ve found that:

• Pages load quickly (faster than iPhone tethering, slower than cable Internet)
• YouTube videos are watchable in 480 and 720p
• Pings are OK (avg. 150-250ms)
• VOIP works fine
• Works on Mac
• No disconnects so far
• Signal strength is better than I expected

My cable connection was down the other day, so I shared the connection from the stick over WIFI and that worked fine.

The plan is $29/month for unlimited service (for a year anyway). Technically it can be throttled after 5GB, but from what I hear that’s rare unless you hit 50GB+. If you prepay two months you can get the data stick for free, and there’s no contracts.

Beware some have complained about slow speeds and disconnects in congested areas. I’m yet to experience that, but I imagine it would get old fast. Regardless, if you’re in a WIND zone and looking for a data stick you should definitely consider these guys.

If you’re in a coverage zone it usually works well. But outside the coverage area, in some basements, or in the odd dead-zone you will be kicked onto the roaming network (Rogers). And even at $0.20/min, $0.10/text or $0.10/25kb, that can quickly become an expensive proposition.

Roaming occurs most often deep indoors, at places like home, work or school where you are probably already connected to WIFI. And I have to admit its a little sad to know that answering a call or replying to / receiving a text will cost extra when you have a perfectly good Internet connection available. So I believe that one of the most customer friendly actions the new carriers could take is to enable UMA service for all clients with compatible handsets.

UMA is a system that lets subscribers make calls and text over any WIFI network. It would not only allow customers to avoid roaming in their basements, but also help them save money outside the coverage area–even when travelling abroad. UMA works on BlackBerry and [some] Android devices with more coming soon. I’ve used it on Rogers and T-Mobile, and it was a seamless experience.

1: At least compared to putting towers up everywhere at once. There is licensing and other costs associated with UMA.

It turns out you can! Just update your devices to iOS 4.3 or later, then enable both Personal Hotspot and Bluetooth on your phone. Open up the Bluetooth menu on your iPad and pair with your iPhone. You’re carrier may require a plan add-on to enable tethering. It’ll sync up and show the Personal Hotspot icon at the top of the screen. Congratulations, you’re connected.

The setup was seamless, and certainly easier than others methods I’ve tried. Pages and videos load reasonably fast, and emails come through without delay. And, because this is essentially Bluetooth tethering, it has a relatively low draw on the battery.