A few days ago I mentioned my new phone. As some observant readers gleaned, it’s a Samsung Galaxy Note. This 5.3” monster Android phone also has a Wacom active digitizer for much more accurate inking. And Samsung has promised an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich the first quarter of 2012!

I bought this device unlocked from my friends at GSM Phone Source. This model (GTN-7000) works on AT&T bands, including HSPA+ (more on that in a minute). It does not support LTE but, hell, here in L.A. I’m still waiting on LTE for my HTC Jetstream. HSPA+ is good enough (again more on that soon).

The first challenge for all of us early adopters is not getting kicked off the AT&T voice network. You see, AT&T’s internal database of IMEIs erroneously identified the Note as a 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet, which supports voice (and does so in Europe) but AT&T permits on its network as data only. If you’re interested, you can read about both the saga and the solution. While AT&T has been panned for its customer service, when you read these threads (my posts are by genghiskhent, duh), you’ll see AT&T did step up to the plate and fix the problem.

While there no long was a danger of being kicked off the voice network, for data I was stuck in the 3G slow lane. HSPA+ isn’t really 4G (though carriers do advertise it as such). It’s more like 3.5G. And 3.5 is better than 3, right?

The key is to access an APN that supports HSPA+. In order for your phone can access that APN (which has the exotic name “phone”),  you first have to be on the right data plan. I’m on a metered 4G Smartphone plan. So far so good.

But not good enough … yet. Your phone has to be properly provisioned to access the HSPA+ APN. Bottom line is you need to talk to tech support (as opposed to customer support). A very friendly and helpful tech named Todd helped me out. So now I can access the faster APN. Thanks Todd!

I realize there’s a lot of technical mumbo jumbo here, and believe me, I skipped over a lot of details so this wasn’t overwhelming. If you have questions, please post. And Todd, if you happen to see this (I did mention the blog to him), feel free to post a comment, if only “Hello.”

Soon I will post on my actual usage of the Note. Until then …

No, not the pink marker. The phone. it’s the newest arrival to my gadget harem. Do you recognize it?

I rebooted my HTC Jetstream because – like marriage – it seems a good idea at the time. I then entered the dreaded HTC Jetstream reboot loop. The device boots to the lock screen. Slide to unlock. Reboots. Consulting Mr. Google, I learned I was not alone. The problem may have to do with the SIM card; one suggestion was to remove it. There were other suggestions, some not printable.

Anyway, I was rebooting in landscape mode. Something possessed me to rotate the device to portrait mode. Amazingly, that worked. Later, I saw some posts from others this worked for also. Not sure why this worked, but it beats a reboot loop.