Looking For Suggestions

[Patrick Henry]

Hello all, new to the forum and smartphones in general. I recently switched carriers from straight talk to Cricket for reasons in the sake of brevity I won't go into here. So when I ported my number and made my switch I was offered the Samsung Galaxy Amp 2 for free when I switched over and ported my number. I promise I won't complain much since the phone was free. But it came with 8GB of internal storage and I added a 32GB SD card. However, right out of the box there was already over 7GB of internal storage used. All of the pre installed apps cant be moved or deleted.

I don't know what is hogging up all the memory on the phone. But it's gotten to the point where I can't even open up the gallery due to the lack of storage. I lurked here and read as much as I could for tips on how to free some of it up to not much avail. I cleared the system cache, disabled some of the pre installed apps, moved what few apps I've installed and anything else I could to the card and gained me a little room. But not very much unfortunately.

So it looks like I need to start researching phones which brings me here. My wife has a BLU Studio Energy 2 that she really likes. But for some reason since the switch to cricket she hasn't been able to send or receive picture messages. And I guess the cricket support team hasn't been much help to her. So I'm in need of suggestions for another phone. Something that's not going to break the bank because I'd hate to break a phone that costs hundreds of dollars which is the reason I kept my dumbphone so many years. I'm an HVAC technician. So it's a lot of climbing ladders, and other things that are rough on phones. So I need something as durable as possible. Perhaps something that I can get a screen protector and good case such as an otterbox for extra protection. Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Unforgiven]

My wife has a BLU Studio Energy 2 that she really likes. But for some reason since the switch to cricket she hasn't been able to send or receive picture messages.

For this little piece, check, APN settings for cricket. You can change them under settings | Wireless & Networks (more) | Cellular Networks | Access Point Names. Just fill in the settings (google cricket APN settings) that are filled in. Anything without a value just leave blank. You may be able to copy them from your phone.

I would check Cricket's BYOP (bring your own phone) policy and guidelines. If you can use unlocked phones then you have a lot of options. Huawei's Honor X7 is a decent cheap ($199) phone I just bought my son for Christmas and is unlocked.

 

[Patrick Henry]

For this little piece, check, APN settings for cricket. You can change them under settings | Wireless & Networks (more) | Cellular Networks | Access Point Names. Just fill in the settings (google cricket APN settings) that are filled in. Anything without a value just leave blank. You may be able to copy them from your phone.

I would check Cricket's BYOP (bring your own phone) policy and guidelines. If you can use unlocked phones then you have a lot of options. Huawei's Honor X7 is a decent cheap ($199) phone I just bought my son for Christmas and is unlocked.

Thank you for that. Her APN settings are the same as mine. I just verified it. Cricket says you can bring any unlocked phone that is compatible to their network. I'm assuming it's a GSM network. Her phone was unlocked when she bought it. Everything works fine except for the whole picture messaging thing.

 

[Unforgiven]

Picture messaging is certainly APN settings. Check that they match what's on the bottom of this page:
https://www.cricketwireless.com/sup...ice-byod/customer/bring-your-own-android.html


If you can get unlocked phones then that's easy. I'm using a Moto X4 unocked on MintSim (which uses T-Mo system) but I could switch it to AT&T, Net10, or I guess Cricket. Same thing with that Honor 7X I mentioned earlier. It takes a sim, you pop out the sim tray and put it in and the phone works on their network. The sim is what's registered to the network, not the phone.

 

[Patrick Henry]

Picture messaging is certainly APN settings. Check that they match what's on the bottom of this page:
https://www.cricketwireless.com/sup...ice-byod/customer/bring-your-own-android.html


If you can get unlocked phones then that's easy. I'm using a Moto X4 unocked on MintSim (which uses T-Mo system) but I could switch it to AT&T, Net10, or I guess Cricket. Same thing with that Honor 7X I mentioned earlier. It takes a sim, you pop out the sim tray and put it in and the phone works on their network. The sim is what's registered to the network, not the phone.

Yes sir, they're all the same. Same on my phone and what you posted for me. I suppose that's why crickets tech support hasn't been able to figure it out. She gets text messages just fine. Just not picture messages, very strange IMO. She doesn't seem very concerned about it though. But I would want it fixed if it was mine.

 

[Unforgiven]

Yes sir, they're all the same. Same on my phone and what you posted for me. I suppose that's why crickets tech support hasn't been able to figure it out. She gets text messages just fine. Just not picture messages, very strange IMO. She doesn't seem very concerned about it though. But I would want it fixed if it was mine.

Just for explanaitions sake, SMS (Simple Messaging System) uses dead space between cellular packets to send a brief amount of text, thus no data. MMS (texts with images, group texts, etc.) are too large to use this otherwise unused bandwidth and therefor use data. The APN settings tell the phone how to connect to the cellular provider when sending MMS (Multimedia Messaging System).

When you get your new phone, we'll make sure to get yours working so you are happy. Then you can make the same fix on your wife's and get some good husband points.

 

[Patrick Henry]

Just for explanaitions sake, SMS (Simple Messaging System) uses dead space between cellular packets to send a brief amount of text, thus no data. MMS (texts with images, group texts, etc.) are too large to use this otherwise unused bandwidth and therefor use data. The APN settings tell the phone how to connect to the cellular provider when sending MMS (Multimedia Messaging System).

When you get your new phone, we'll make sure to get yours working so you are happy. Then you can make the same fix on your wife's and get some good husband points.

Well, we've been married for over 20 years now. I don't know if there's any more points to be gotten at this point, LOL. I took a screenshot of hers. You can't see it all, but most of it is there. Thank you so much for the advice, I really appreciate it. It'll be sometime after the new year I imagine before I get a new one.

 

[Unforgiven]

Just hit up this thread when you get a new phone and we'll dig in and get it sorted.