Heads Up about Voom & Samsung Galaxy Tablet

[lkneller]

For this cruise, I purchased 1 Device-VOOM Surf Voyage Package (30% off onboard pricing) in advance. Once onboard, I connected my Samsumg Galaxy tablet. I was able to connect to the internet, but NOT able to do any e-mail. Neither my Outlook or my GMAIL would work. I kept getting a network error.

 

I went to the VOOM desk and the staff were very nice and spent alot of time trying to get it to work. Once it got connected to the internet, they always thought everything was OK, until I showed them that the e-mails wouldn't work. I am sure that I spent at least 5 hours time the first day working with 3 different Royal staff trying to get it to work.

 

Finally they didn't know what else to do, and said the problem had to be my tablet.

 

Lucky I had my cell phone with me, and they helped me to transfer the internet to that device instead. But I did not have my work outlook on my phone because I was not planning to use the phone. I only had the GMAIL which is NOT my first choice for work.

 

Many times on my cell phone I got the message no internet connections available. And sometimes when I sent e-mail, it was in the outbox for hours with a status of 'queued' before it finally moved to Sent. And my cell phone is only 2 months old.

 

 

If you plan to use a tablet for e-mail, try to have a back up device in case this happens to you.

 

 

As a comparison point, I used Outlook on this same Samsung Galaxy tablet on Disney Fantasy in November to support to my job. It worked great. It was free for the first 10MB of data used. then it was $19.99 for the next 100MB used and it was fast and I never had any down time.

 

 

Also, when I returned home from the Anthem, I had no problem using e-mail on my tablet again.

 

 

So I think the problem had to be something in the VOOM system. Because there was no problem with my tablet on the Disney Fantasy before, or at home or work after the cruise.

 

 

If you plan to use a tablet for e-mail, just try to have a back up device available in case this happens to you.

 

I expect some will say how great the internet worked for them, and I am sure it worked very well for some devices. I am sure that what happened to me is the exception, and not the normal.

 

 

I just want to save people that might fall into my situation the frustration that I went through on my first day.

[FloatMe]

I am curious, we're you trying to open in a browser or the outlook app and respective gmail app?

[Big_G]

What ship? We had a similar problem on Freedom with my Droid Turbo and the wife's iPhone 6. Email wasn't an issue but the dropped connections were a pain in the a$$. We had my son and his family onboard and were trying to stay in touch with Voxer. While our settings said connected to Royal WIFI, there was no internet connection. Whenever there was a drop, I just reset the connection using the 'Forget' option. The drops were completely random and not necessarily a result of moving from one area to another. I also did a speed test twice and while the pings were 215 and 235, the up and downs averaged 2.5 and 4. Not stellar for an O3B connection.

 

Almost forgot, my WIFI channels kept switching between 2.4 and 5 the entire trip.

Edited May 17, 2016 by Big_G

[FloatMe]

Pre-Voom I had no problem with our samsungs on adventure, email or otherwise. I do use Cloud Magic for all my email, no idea if that helps or hurts. It will be interesting to follow this thread to see if others experienced the same issues

[starfish216]

We just got off the Anthem May 5-14 sailing and all of us had an issue with VOOM and the Royal IQ app.

 

We were in four different cabins and we individually purchased the VOOM plan with streaming. We all had issues staying connected not matter where we were on the ship (except at guest services). We would get the bars saying we are connected but nothing would go through. It was very frustrating. We used iPhone 6 and iPads. I only wanted to use it for email and Facebook.

 

We all also purchased the Text and Chat for $7.95 to use with the Royal IQ....that was just awful. Sometimes it would work other times text wouldn't show up for hours. The app was constantly losing my contacts with in the app. Tech guy at GS had me delete the app and reinstall....that worked great for about a day and then had the same issues all over again. Also the Royal IQ app didn't always have the same info as our reservations and/or what was listed in Cruise Compass.

 

Next time I am going to save my money and get neither. It will be easier to call home every other day to keep in touch.

Edited May 17, 2016 by starfish216

[lkneller]

The Ship was the Anthem May 5-14.

 

I only tried Outlook via the App on my tablet because my network guy at work set it up on my tablet and I didn't know how to get into it via browser.

 

I tried GMAIL via the app on the tablet, and via the browser. Actually Royal guy suggested that and we tried it together. No luck either way.

 

I am sorry that others also had issues, but also, somewhat glad to hear it wasn't only me.

[markeb]

Just out of curiosity, were you able to use your browser? If so, I "suspect" your e-mail client wasn't accepting your IP on the ship, or interpreting it as bogus from too many redirects in the stream. I periodically have that happen when I'm on commercial WiFi even here in the states with Comcast/Xfinity.