Icon on Bell/Virgin Canada

[Mr Pootawn]

Hello all,

I'm posting this for fellow Canadians who are interested in the Icon for use on Bell/Virgin.

I was deciding between the Icon, 1520 and 930 and ultimately decided on the Icon. Reason being, I got a brand new one for 350 Cdn all-in on ebay and couldn't justify the added cost for the 930 or even the 1520.

This is a great phone so I won't bore you with accolades that have been stated elsewhere, just want to discuss features on Bell/Virgn

1. Call and SMS
-Work great, no issues whatsoever out of the box. No issue with call quality or anything like that

2. Internet and MMS
- this one was a bit trickier. I added the internet apn settings and quickly got data working. However, the 'add mms apn' option was disabled on this phone. Luckily, I was able to download Nokia access point which allowed me to send and receive mms picture messages. A nice feature.

4. LTE and other
- Not surprisingly, I do not get LTE speeds, instead I get H/H+, not bad, but disappointing. The other strange thing was that I originally had the phone set to Highest speed: LTE. In this setting, the Icon would go in and out of service, think I had no service. Strangely, even when the phone said no service, if I tried to make a call it would immediately connect no issues. Receiving calls were a non-issue as well. However when the phone mistakenly thought it had no service, outgoing texts were an issue. Luckily, when I changed the highest speed to 3G this problem was eliminated and I now get service as I would expect.

Is LTE worth the extra $250 I would have spent to get the 930? For me, probably not but just know going in that in Canada, you're not going to get LTE with the Icon.

 

[MameTozhio]

I would also probably expect similar results from TELUS and Koodo.

Access point app download if anyone needs it - access point | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (Canada)

 

[anon(5334066)]

I myself have one on Bell. Like you said, downloading access point fixes the MMS issue.

When I first got it, I had DP 8.1 installed and whenever i was in an LTE area, it would say no service, but a speed test confirmed i was connected to LTE (speeds of 30 mbps).

However, after one of the updates received to the DP, my phone now says LTE when in range, so it's now 100% functional on Bell. If you don't have the Preview for Developers, you should consider looking into it.

 

[Mr Pootawn]

I heard there was a screen issue with the DP? If that's no longer an issue, I will definitely get it. I had DP on my old ATIV S and I miss the swipe text.

 

[anon(5334066)]

I heard there was a screen issue with the DP? If that's no longer an issue, I will definitely get it. I had DP on my old ATIV S and I miss the swipe text.

Only issue I have is that the screen occasionally takes like 3-4 seconds to wake up when the power button is pressed... Installed live lock screen and the problem is pretty much gone. I imagine that will be fixed with the Denim update later this year.

I'd say it's worth it.