G1 Episode 2.5 - SNAFU

What, you may ask, happened to episode 2? Well I was in the process of writing up my reflections on a week of T-Mobile G1 ownership but didn't finished before my G1 started experiencing loss of web browser connectivity. I first noticed it this morning but figured it was something to do with me being in the middle of the San Francisco Bay which is a little odd because I had plenty of bars of signal and to all intents and purposes email seemed to be working just fine. I was very busy at work today so didn't have time to play with my phone but on the way home noticed the same problem again - all I would get was a hung browser followed by a "cannot connect with server" message.

After a couple of turn-off, turn-on cycles, some experimentation with WiFi connectivity I eventually decided it must have been something I installed on the phone that did this (which should really be impossible since 3rd party apps are all Java and supposedly can't trash the phone). So reluctantly decided to do a factory reset - if anything it would prove that I could really recover all my email and contacts easily. Fingers crossed.

So I did it... I was surprised how little resistance it put up in the way of warnings - one warning and then I had to put in my visual "join-the-dots" password. After that it took just a few seconds and it was all over, my phone was back to out of the box state.

Unfortunately this did not cure my problem. Although emails started showing up on the phone pretty quickly as it resynchronized with my online account pulling up the browser had no effect, I was still getting the failed to connect error. So I decided to dial 611 and called T-Mobile support. Even though it was 9:45pm Pacific time I was soon talking to a real person and I noticed I had been connected straight to Blackberry and PDA support which hopefully meant I'd skipped up a few levels on the food chain. I was quickly able to relay the nature of the problem and indicate that I'd done a factory rest at which point I was told this was a "known problem" and that "a lot" of pre-purchase users were experiencing this issue. Hmmmmph!

So I asked about the various firmware updates that were available and if I could get one sooner since I was having problems. No such luck, the support person said they were unable to control distrubtion of the updates. I then asked if my lack of web browsing connection might mean I would not get the update - no answer, but a good question she admitted. She then had me check my phone's data connection configuration (APN) and it was the correct one. Since I had already done a factory reset there was nothing else she could suggest for me to try other than wait for their engineers to try and fix the problem.

As it happens about a half hour after I got off the phone with T-Mobile while I was checking to see if my contacts had be synced yet (they hadn't) I discovered the web browser connection was working again. Hmmm - coincidence or did I get a secret helping hand from T-Mobile after I was off the phone?

Oh well, now I have to go off and recustomize the phone all over again which is mostly re-downloading a whole bunch of apps from the market. Grrrrr.

UPDATED: I found out from the T-Mobile G1 forum that this is indeed a known problem - so known that they should have been able to tell me on the phone that it was caused by my account being misconfigured with a trail 7-day only data plan that just expired. I guess while I was on the phone they fixed that without telling me. There is also some discussion that this could be caused by using an existing SIM instead of a new one. As far as I can tell I didn't get a new SIM with my phone so it wasn't my fault.