Got My Yackie Card - And It's Working Fine

[snidely]

My review:

Incoming call, about 3 min., was surprisingly good quality. Not landline quality, but pretty damn good. If it is this good most of the time - Yackie will be excellent to use. System passed ID of originating phone.

Outgoing - about 2 min. was not as good as two very short test calls I made a few days ago. Voices broke up a little - but after 30 seconds quality did seem to improve. Since outgoing calls are twice as expensive - if you know the call will be more than a minute or two, you should have the party call you back.

There is a long period of dead air (10-15 seconds) when calling the Yackie number. They seem to have now installed a recording asking you to wait while the call is being conneccted - BUT - the recording doesn't kick in until after 10 seconds of dead air.


Voice mail - The default recording says something like "you have reached number xxx (numbers have no relationship to anything) please leave a message". Very easy to put in a personal greeting. VM pickup and prompts were landline like quality.
Important feature: If someone calls and doesn't leave a msg., you get an SMS in a few seconds saying "call recvd. fm. number xxx, no msg. left". If a msg is left, the SMS will say "call recvd. fm. number xxx, dial *151 to listen".
This feature saves you the expense of listening to the msg. before calling!
I assume there is no way of accessing VM other than via the Yackie phone.


SMS: Test msg. to/fm. my U.S. T-Mobile phone went thru in just 2-5 seconds.

The only way I found out the Israeli number which is needed to send an SMS to the Yackie phone - was to send an outgoing SMS to my T-M phone. It displayed the Israeli number on the incoming SMS. (If you try voice calling that 972 Israeli number you get a recording that says "the number you have dialed is not connected".)

My Yackie SIM is presently in an SE r520m tri-band phone that requires I menu dial outgoing calls. That was/is no problem what-so-ever. Direct dialing fm. my Moto V330 worked well last Monday.

When you get the callback on outgoing calls (delay 5 to 10 seconds), the caller shows as "unknown". You then get a voice saying something like "please hold while your call is connected and you hear a ringing tone". On the test call this AM, it was picked up by Stan so fast it was before the recording finshed.

Would be glad to run any other tests members here suggest.

...mike

[Bossman]

I received my sim today. Nothing else came with it...Just a letter indicating my number. Here is my observation:

I actually talked to Mike Thaler "snidely" . Just to verify that we were experiencing the same issues.

I made a couple of test calls incoming and outgoing using my Nokia 3120 (will test the V551 later). The call quality was fine. I dialed directly. I did not have to use menu dialing. The caller ID was not passed on the incoming call (I called with 3 different phones mobiles and land line) . I know it's not guaranteed to show the caller's ID. Well.... I did get the missed call SMS showing the number of the caller though, if caller did not leave a message. How come this shows the caller's number but thhe caller ID does not, I don't know. The callback came quickly without any problems when making outgoing calls. There is a system message that says "connecting" while someone is trying to call the number. I heard the ring the same time it sounded on the phone I was calling. So, no lag time there.

The VM comes on after about 8 rings or so, this can probably be changed. There is no way to check the balance from the phone. I asked that question in the other thread visited by Cizake. And, Cizake said we could do it. Well, maybe it's not implemented yet or there is a code that we need to dial. I think it's important to be able to check the balance from the phone though.

SMS was delivered in a few seconds. Sent to my sprintpcs and tmobile payg phones.

I discussed this with snidely. Neither of us can logon to the website to do anything. We can't access account information or anything. The only available options is to change password/username. You click anything else, you get a blank screen. So, at the moment there is no way to check balance or topup.

So, some things that would really make this sim competitive: The ability to be able to check balance and topup via the phone. I hope the non-showing of caller ID is just carrier dependent and not an issue with the sim.

BTW, I was roaming on tmobile when I did these tests.

[dg7feq]

I got my SIM-card today as well.

Here is my short test report:

1) SMS: works fine and very fast back and forth. I was connected with Vodafone DE and sent SMS to o2 and the other way round

2) outgoing call: prompt connection, audio quality like any other GSM call.

3) incoming call: when dialing the us-number assigned to the card it picks up immediately and says "connecting" while trying to reach the phone. So always a charged call for the caller even if noone picks up.
But the big problem is: I could not hear myself on the Yackie-side! Just one way works. I tried with the state phone company (T-com) as well with a cheap one. Same result.
Did anybody else experieced this problem before? I hope it was just a temporary problem and i will try again later today.

Chris

[Bossman]

On the first incoming call, I could hardly hear myself on the yackie side. I believe it was because I was in my basement where 3120 barely has signal. On the second call I went upstairs and heard clearly on the yackie side.

Was caller ID passed on the incoming call. The missed call sms alert does always show the number, but the phone itself just always show "unknown" on the incoming call.

I just had chat with the helpline about not being able to do anything on the website at all. They do not have an idea of when that will be fixed. She did say they are working ion it though.

Cizake is probably the best person to communicate with. the help line are just there to take issues and forward to the appropriate person/dept.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by Bossman

On the first incoming call, I could hardly hear myself on the yackie side. I believe it was because I was in my basement where 3120 barely has signal. On the second call I went upstairs and heard clearly on the yackie side.

Was caller ID passed on the incoming call. The missed call sms alert does always show the number, but the phone itself just always show "unknown" on the incoming call.

I just had chat with the helpline about not being able to do anything on the website at all. They do not have an idea of when that will be fixed. She did say they are working ion it though.

Cizake is probably the best person to communicate with. the help line are just there to take issues and forward to the appropriate person/dept.

I'm still in the company and we have all 4 avilable networks end-scale here. So that shouldnt be the problem.

Caller ID was not transmitted on both calls - our companies switchboard sends it 100% though.

Well, lets see what the next tests will show.

Did anybody find out already how to see the remaining balance of the card? There are a lot of codes stored on the card starting with Ambulance and ending with Service but there's no balance check as it seems :meh:

Chris

[Bossman]

As for the balance, the lady I chatted with said it can only be done from the web. In the other thread, I asked, and Cizake said it could be done from the phone. They need to let us know what the code is then.

There are no codes stored on my sim. The only things I see in the sim menu are:

1. Services. This has support, voice menu and voice mail options
2. Langiage. This has about 6 languages or so
3. Menu on/off
4. Dialled calls.

Excerpt from the user guide, there is a paragraph that mentions callerID may need to be activated. I do not understand that. Here it is...

Incoming Call:
There are two options to receive calls:
Via land line
Via your homeland GSM by using "divert calls" feature from your land line number.
When the phone rings, answer it normally by pressing "send."
When caller ID is activated, press #1 to receive the call.
To activate caller ID service, contact Yackie Mobile Support: *606 From Yackie Mobile SIM.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by Bossman

As for the balance, the lady I chatted with said it can only be done from the web. In the other thread, I asked, and Cizake said it could be done from the phone. They need to let us know what the code is then.

There are no codes stored on my sim. The only things I see in the sim menu are:

1. Services. This has support, voice menu and voice mail options
2. Langiage. This has about 6 languages or so
3. Menu on/off
4. Dialled calls.

Excerpt from the user guide, there is a paragraph that mentions callerID may need to be activated. I do not understand that. Here it is...

Incoming Call:
There are two options to receive calls:
Via land line
Via your homeland GSM by using "divert calls" feature from your land line number.
When the phone rings, answer it normally by pressing "send."
When caller ID is activated, press #1 to receive the call.
To activate caller ID service, contact Yackie Mobile Support: *606 From Yackie Mobile SIM.

I did not look in the SIM-Menu.
I looked in the phonebooks on the SIM.
There is one with "Services".
Ambulance
Emergency
Finance
Fire Dept.
Police
Roaming
Service

(all numbers for the local israeli network i guess - police for example is 100)

The SIM menu is as you described.

Chris

[Bossman]

Originally Posted by dg7feq

I did not look in the SIM-Menu.
I looked in the phonebooks on the SIM.
There is one with "Services".
Ambulance
Emergency
Finance
Fire Dept.
Police
Roaming
Service

(all numbers for the local israeli network i guess - police for example is 100)

The SIM menu is as you described.

Chris

The only entry stored on my sim is the one I will really need voicemail +972544151000. The should probably be the same for all the sims.

I called it from the phone and when I answered the call, I first heard a message in another language (probably Hebrew). I was about to hangup, then the announcement in english came.... Welcome to Orange voicemail, asked for the phone number, etc.

[dg7feq]

update: Still have just one way audio on incoming calls.
Talked with the customer hotline and they sent a report to the tech dept.
They promised sending me an email when they checked the issue.

keep you updated here...

Chris

[Bossman]

I consider this a major issue. i.e. The basic functionality is not working. It's very unlikely that you will hear anything back from the helpline or technical folks. If it's so, you may want to contact Cizake to see if he can escalate it.

Originally Posted by dg7feq

update: Still have just one way audio on incoming calls.
Talked with the customer hotline and they sent a report to the tech dept.
They promised sending me an email when they checked the issue.

keep you updated here...

Chris