Deaf phones 2020

There are Ig-Nobles, there are Golden Raspberries - and for the sixteenth (!) Year in a row we "reward" the biggest bloopers and absurdities of telecommunications by handing out Deaf Telephones.

This is the sixteenth consecutive year in which we award the greatest telecommunications stars of the past year. As every year, your vote will be decisive and you will choose the winner of the poll. Therefore, do not forget to vote in the poll. We will present the voting results on January 8.

We hesitated whether to let go of our ranking in this difficult year for everyone, but no - let's not spoil 2020 even more. So we release the inner scoffers and begin editorial appointments.

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Prepaid of the Year

Głuchy Telefon in the Prepaid of the Year category goes to T-Mobile Polska, the owner of the Heyah brand. We start with a thick pipe, but it cannot be otherwise, because too much blood has spoiled our readers with the new red paw offer - Heyah 01.

The July premiere did not announce anything bad - you pay a month, you do not pay a month - sounded red-flooded advertisements. Already in September, however, we had a different slogan: you bounce off the BOK for a month, and you are trying to escape for a month. A thread on our forum about the Hayah 01 was boiling with user complaints.

First of all, there was no active LTE in the offer. And it could not be turned on either through the website, in the application, or with some magic code. You had to call the hotline hoping to find someone competent ... and it was extremely difficult. People from the service office often did not know the offer completely, not to mention the knowledge of how to start LTE in this offer. There were often statements that the use of Heyah 01 is only through the application. In short, we don't have your coat and what will you do to us? How's what? I'll get out of this crap ... and here's a stop. Not so fast.

First of all, when you run away from Heyah 01, the network continues to charge the account ... Just porting the number is not enough, an additional instruction is required. And the situation of a client who decided to flee to another network and suddenly had two active cards with the same number - one in Heyah 01, the other in Virgin Mobile - turned out to be total absurdity. More about the adventures of Heyah 01 customers and the operator's comment can be found at this address.

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Promotion of the year

Głuchy Telefon in the Promotion of the Year category goes to Multimedia Polska. The promotion of Multimedia is one of those old-fashioned ones. Over the years, there are fewer and fewer glaring stars in the regulations, but here it is worth being aware of what you are buying ... or rather renting.

Nice package, not too cheap, but wait a minute - a TV as a gift and it's already bearable, quite 40 inches. The problem is, the TV is not yours. At the end of the contract, we will take your TV set - we read in the title of the popular news by Marian Szutiak. Just like cost-effective set-top boxes, the TV set is also rented. At the end of the contract, you have to give it back, otherwise we will face a contractual penalty.

And now the final of this strange promotion - the penalty is small and worth paying. In the 2-year option, the contractual penalty is PLN 49 (say: forty-nine zlotys), and when the contract is terminated after 36 months - crazy PLN 1. Nothing but to terminate contracts ...

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Smartphone of the year

The Deaf Phone in the Smartphone of the Year category goes to the Huawei brand. It was the most difficult of this year's category, because it was difficult to find one device that would disappoint us the most. There was Motorola claiming on the brink of an epidemic that stereo speakers are more important than NFC, or praising the G8 Power Lite for a 5000mAh battery, where this turned out to be a downside to the phone ... but that's not enough. There were Oppo loading mid-range processors to supposedly flagship models - not much. Former producers with macro cameras with a resolution of 2 Mpix - not enough. There was a reheated iPhone SE 2020, which discharges in the middle of the day - not much. There was also Huawei [enter any model here].

And although we cheer Huawei with all our strength to develop the App Gallery as soon as possible or to somehow get along with the new US president on removing the blockade of Google services, the software of this brand's phones is still insufficient. Last year, we withheld the nomination of Huaweia, and we could no longer afford it. Anyway, it is not without reason that phones for the masses, the P40 Lite and P40 Lite E models received final grades of 3.5-4 out of 10.

The App Gallery doesn't have everything that the Google Store has got used to and will not have. Huawei needs to build a large part of the application from scratch and make them competitive with Google services. And this continues and will continue for a while. A good example is the still imperfect Petal Maps.

The ignorant customer will be surprised by the sheer volume of ads in app stores, redirects to strange sites, and other wonders that separate them from downloading their favorite apps. If it downloads these applications at all. Damn it, if it's some entertainment applications or silly games, but it is difficult to treat Huawei seriously nowadays. No sane person will download from unauthorized sources programs where security is key. This is too much of a risk for the company and a powerful brake for some of the brand's enthusiasts so far.

It is sad because all this year's Huaweia phone models are top quality equipment, some of the best photos on the market, beautiful design and ratings close to the maximum, if not for this one Google drawback. The editors subtracted from the final marks - in accordance with their conscience - even 4-5 points. It's a bitter reward ... like this whole year.

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Service of the year

The Deaf Phone in the Service of the Year category goes to Orange, Play and T-Mobile, for 5G based on DSS technology, which in practice is often slower than LTE in the same location. And it is not surprising, since it is used by the above-mentioned of operators, the technology has at best only 38.5% of 5G. Everything else is aggregated LTE. On the promised up to 390 Mb / s, up to 150 Mb / s is real 5G, the rest is solvent (LTE).

We used to measure the sugar content in sugar, now it's time for 5G - it is close to 40% that Poles associate well with, but still a weak drink. With Plus, up to 600 Mb / s after 5G is almost pure spirit ... but the Greens would also be riding DSS, if it were not for 2600 MHz TDD lying fallow.

But let's come back to the winners of this category. In addition to 5G up to 390 Mb / s, they also offer good old LTE-A. Such up to 600 Mb / s, even called by some proudly 5G Ready (which we laughed about a year ago). And it happens that in a given location it is worth turning off 5G so that the Internet speeds up. The new enemy of the good? Or maybe there is no new one yet?

See: The fastest 5G in Poland - our test. December 2020

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Brand of the year

The Deaf Telefon in the Brand of the Year category goes to Garmin. In July, unexpectedly, athletes around the world stopped exercising. What happened, you ask? Garmin Connect suddenly stopped working and the exercise was no longer relevant. Because why run aimlessly if the effects of the trek are not registered by the system? Why do anything if you can't quickly share the results of our efforts on Facebook?

Garmin's systems fell victim to a cyber attack, and the criminals demanded as much as $ 10 million in ransom. Garminophilous Anna Rymsza from our editorial office was really outraged when she had to take off her favorite watch and replace it with another one. Garmin was silent for a long time, and the crowd of athletes went wild on the net, unable to get any information. Has the data on their miles of pain been lost? Will they still be able to run and play sports like they used to?

The deadlock lasted until the end of July, and when the athletes began to grow fat, the system suddenly revived. The colossus generating over $ 3 billion in revenue a year fell on its knees and ... paid the ransom. The data was successfully decoded, Garmin became so beautiful and sporty again, only this, you know, disgust ... remained.

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The event of the year

The Deaf Phone in the Event of the Year category goes to the Government of the Republic of Poland for smuggling under the "anti-crisis 3.0 shield" the decision to suspend the 5G auction and in one fell swoop the President of UKE, Marcin Cichy. One of the last actions of the President of UKE was thus the annulment of the auction for radio frequencies in the 3.6 GHz band, after which he was to leave the office (within 14 days from the entry into force of the new law).

The announced dismissal of the President of UKE caused concern on the part of the EU commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton:

I am deeply concerned about the planned changes to the terms of appointment and dismissal of the President of UKE, which would de facto lead to the end of the mandate of the current head of the independent national regulatory authority one and a half years before the end of the term for which he was appointed.

The independence of national regulatory authorities in the electronic communications sector is a key principle of EU law. This is to ensure effective and impartial decision making in a liberalized market as well as predictable decisions. To this end, EU law provides for stricter requirements regarding the political independence of the national regulatory authorities. These requirements include the obligation to establish initially, ie prior to appointment, rules on the grounds for dismissal of the heads of NRAs and to protect them against arbitrary dismissal.

For us, ordinary people, it meant that we had to wait over a year for a decent, "real 5G". It will not reach our phones, in good winds, only at the end of the summer holidays in 2021. A similar delay also applies to the state budget revenues from concessions for new frequency bands. Of course, this does not prevent operators from increasing the prices of services now - after all, we have almost-5G after DSS as a clog.

A special distinction should be given to the Play network for the leakage of personal data from the forum and the operator's blog. In September, the Play network recommended Play Forum users to immediately change their passwords on other websites, if they use the same password as on the operator's forum. The hate to Play's security standards is not over yet, and the network had to shine eyes behind its blog after just a week. This time, personal data of 763 users leaked - it's not much in relation to over 50,000. forum accounts.

Play is slowly starting to pay for its sins, in the first place, the network is facing a PLN 1.9 million penalty from UODO, and not even for its sins, but for Virgin Mobile, which was acquired this year. Exactly a year ago, instead of Christmas greetings, Virgin Mobile sent customers information that their personal data had fallen into the hands of criminals.

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Man of the year

Głuchy Telefon in the Man of the Year category goes to Piotr Mieczkowski, managing director of the Digital Poland foundation, who stated that he would censor the Internet. Over-zealousness is worse than fascism, and although the idea of ​​a foundation is close to us - the digital transformation of the Polish economy, it is not necessarily the way Piotr is lobbying for dialogue.

In spring this year, Piotr Mieczkowski decided to hand over to the Ministry of Digitization "na forkelcu" all pages and groups on Facebook and YouTube channels, which, in his opinion, spread disinformation and should be eliminated. And if the Ministry has a problem with that, let it change the law.

Although the famous discussion on Twitter is just history, the Internet does not forget, here is an original statement, taken from the resources of Wykop:

The news that private business is censoring the Internet sparked outrage. The Ministry of Digitization began to receive inquiries, in the mode of access to public information, about the disclosure of the so-called "Mieczkowski's letters".

However, to be ridiculous, this list never reached the ministry.

Omg ... "powerful lobbyists" or the Lord who wrote about the fact that he created such a list and allegedly passed it on tt? Various, the most exuberant content goes to MC boxes, but we didn't dig this miracle (nomen omen🙃).

- Wanda Buk (@WandaBuk) May 29, 2020

It ended with Mieczkowski's swaggering declaration, without the act itself ... Such a slight spread of disinformation by an advocate of the fight against disinformation. Then there was a blocking of all callers, finally deleting the entire thread on Twitter, and issuing a statement that "no forwarding had taken place, except for linking to the list on the public Twitter portal".

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Statement of the year

The Głuchy Telefon in the Statement of the Year category goes to Marek Zagórski, who wanted to shut down pornography . At the beginning of 2020, the then head of the ministry of digitization announced his plan according to which access to adult content would be granted officially - in the form of a special digital key.

It can be done. This can be done e.g. at the browser level. You can reach an agreement with browser providers - and there are only a few of them - to block access to some content by default (by default - ed.). It could be unlocked with a special key that we will generate and share. (...) We are looking for an effective solution

- quotes the statement of Minister Zagórski in RMF FM, the Gazeta.pl NEXT website

Of course, such a security would in practice mean keeping records of "pornographers", and obtaining the key would probably be possible with an ID card or through a trusted profile ... Do we log into the bank to see the naked body? Just go a step further and enable premium content purchases or even create special official adult entertainment packages.

Marek Zagórski retired from office on October 6, 2020, when the Ministry of Digitization was disposed of after the government was reconstructed. This does not mean, however, that you can sleep well, dear to pornography - the next day he was appointed secretary of state in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and government plenipotentiary for cybersecurity. And what if not cybersecurity is looking into panties in Poles' browsers?

We have a special distinction in this category, while for Wojciech Jabczyński, the press spokesman of Orange Polska, who for the Wirtualnemedia portal in February 2020 sharply criticized the crazy ideas of 5G at 2100 and 2600 MHz:

A race just to be the first, at any cost, even in ridicule. In my opinion, announcing a 5G commercial implementation now with a pump is nothing more than selling something that is not there or stubborn substitutes for it. The 2100 and 2600 MHz frequencies will not do what the 3.4-3.8 GHz will allow. The transfer will be smaller, but it will sound proud in the 5G advertisement. There are no smartphones prepared for this, and even if they appear, it will not be a large selection.

The rental ended in June, when Orange introduced such 5G to its offer itself.

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Readers' Choice

Questionnaire

Deaf Phone 2020 of TELEPOLIS.PL readers

27% 5% 7% 16% 2% 12% 14% 17%

Total voting: 1315

Poll Source: Deaf Phones 2020

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