Archive for the ‘Three’ Category

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Vodafone and 3 cited in T-Mobile UK takeover dance

Monday, June 29th, 2009

It’s been another weekend of rumours over the future of T-Mobile UK - with reports that Vodafone and 3’s parent company might team up to launch a bid for the troubled UK mobile division of Deutsche Telekom.

The Financial Times claims that the Newbury-based operator has been sniffing around its rival, said to be worth between €3bn and €4bn - and may be considering teaming up with Hutchinson Whampoa - the parent company of 3 - to launch a bid.

Even if Vodafone went it alone, the combination the two operators in the UK market would give a market share of 40%, according to the BBC. Such a large chunk of subscribers would certainly ring alarm bells with the UK Competition Commission and the higher powers of the EU in Brussels - although the BBC says it’s not uncommon for operators to have such dominance in other European countries such as France and Spain.

Vodafone are not the first operator to be linked with a bid for T-Mobile. Previous rumours of interest by Orange were vehemently denied a few weeks ago after a reported rebuffal by Deutsche Telekom, plus there’s still the distinct possibility of a ‘mega-operator’ plan involving 3, Skype and T-Mobile - which I exclusively wrote about back in May.

Whatever the outcome, one fact remains - being a mobile operator is no longer the equivalent to having a licence to print money. Vodafone are currently going through a £1bn cost cutting plan after it recently announced a 53.5% fall in annual pre-tax profits from £9bn to £4.2bn, and Deutsche Telekom recently wrote off €1.8 billion on T-Mobile UK.

Posted in Operators, Orange, T-Mobile, Three, Vodafone | Comments

3 surprise the planet and announce the Nokia N97

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The other night I was sat next to the cream of Nokia’s development and marketing team at the Meffys awards (more on that in another post). Most of the Nokia chaps were sporting Nokia E71s — although one of them bucked that trend and showed off his very nice Nokia N85. Gorgeous screen.

I commented that I was due an upgrade on 3. (I’ve actually been due an upgrade for, I dunno, maybe 9 months — but I haven’t found any handset worth bothering with. Yes I like the idea of the INQ1. But I’ll just *buy* that. What is it, 60? 70 pounds?)

One of the Nokia America chaps, waving the E71 at me, asked, ‘Can’t you get one of these on 3?’

He was right, ‘Yes you can, but… you know, it’s old now. 3 launched it when the E71 cycle was nearing the end. It’ll be YEARS before the bring out the E72.’

The chap sighed.

I sighed.

Then this very afternoon, not seconds before 11am, I got a Skype message from Anthony over at 3’s Business PR team to tell me that the Nokia N97 — Nokia’s current pride and joy — is coming to 3. Today.

Goodness me. That’s a departure from the network that usually gets the cool Nokia handsets about a year after everyone else citing all sorts of reasons.

Brilliant.

It’s launching with a bit of pizazz though. It comes with Skype. That’s the biggie with 3. You get free Skype-to-Skype calls, period. (Available on almost all of their handsets). It’s really causing a lot of attention on the High Streets here in the UK because it’s genuine. Get a PAYG handset for, say, £80 from Skype — get another for your friend, you talk for free. If you’ve got another friend in the States, as long as he or she is on Skype somehow (computer/Skypephone, whatever) you talk for free.

Amazing.

If you’d like to take 3 up on their Nokia N97 offer — complete with free Skype calls — you’ll need to part with a paltry £35 per month (18-month contract) and you’ll need to add on an extra £5 per month if you’d like unlimited data. That price plan gets you 300 minutes/texts.

Genius. A pretty good deal considering it’s a premium handset.

Or stump up £47 per month for 1,100 minutes or texts (combination) and unlimited landline calls.

Or you can stump up a wholly reasonable £319.99 and buy the handset on on PAYG. Which will get you 90 days of free voicemail, a free bundle of text and 150mb of internet data.

The black Nokia N97 is available on 3’s site for pre-order here. Or get it in store on the 26th June.

3 is back!

And I’m pleased I held my contract upgrade back until now as I think I’ll get one of these.

Posted in Devices, Three | Comments

Volunteers wanted, must be willing to lock up their old mobile

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

3 lock up your mobile cage

Are you fed up with your old mobile? Willing to swap it for a shiny new handsets for a few weeks? We’ve three brand new 3 handsets, three cages, and are looking for three volunteers willing to lock up their old mobile and try 3 and Skype for a fortnight.

Here’s the deal. We’ve teamed up with the guys at 3mobilebuzz to promote free Skype calling on 3. The challenge? 3 want to lock up your mobile, and replace it with a model that’s a little more ‘3′ (yes I know, terrible pun).

We’ve got an INQ1, Sony Ericsson C510, and a Nokia E63 – all with a 3 SIM card and free calls for you to try for a couple of weeks. There’s also a cute little ‘phone cell’ (again, another terrible pun) for you to lock up your old handset.

The catch? There isn’t one really – all we ask in return is you take care of the handset, don’t flush it down the toilet, and bring it back in a couple of weeks. Oh, and we want to know how you got on, so we’ll be asking to write a little piece about how you found your two weeks with your new handset, free Skype calling and 3 in general.

Interested? Drop a comment on this post telling us what your current mobile is, and which phone you’d like to try, and we’ll pick three lucky people and sort the rest.

Update: Just a small note to apologise to Lloyd at the Tuttle Club, where I (Alex) was planning to give out the handsets. Lloyd has quite rightly pointed out that commercial organisations wishing to do promotional work at Tuttle need to agree it with him before hand, and pay a sponsorship fee. As I just happened to be there for something else on Friday morning, it sort of made sense. Neither Ewan, myself or anyone associated with this blog have received any renumeration for this promotion from 3, 3mobilebuzz, or their associated companies - and we aren’t being paid for it. However I understand there are firm procedures in place, and apologise if anyone thought I was trying to circumvent them.

If you’re interested in a handset, add your comment and we’ll get in touch to get an address of where we can post it to.

Posted in Mobile, Three | Comments

Vodafone abolishes European roaming charges for the summer

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

You read that right.

Fluck me sideways.

From June 1, pay as you go and pay monthly consumer customers can talk, text and send picture messages from over 35 countries across Europe this summer for the same price as at home.

From May 15, calls from the UK to friends and family overseas from as little as 5 pence per minute.

Businesses also benefit from cost savings on roaming.

What a challenge to the industry. I’m really pleased to see this rather sweeping, surprising and exciting move from Vodafone:

So much so, I’m going to post the whole release:

Vodafone UK is abolishing roaming charges this summer and bringing in great value prices for international calls, making it easier for customers to phone home while abroad and make calls abroad from the UK. There are cost savings for business customers too.

From 1 June to the end of August, Vodafone Pay as you Go and Pay Monthly customers will be able to call, text and send picture messages to friends and family back home from over 35 countries knowing that it will cost exactly the same as if they were in the UK. For example, a customer on a plan with 600 minutes and unlimited texts who opts in to Vodafone Passport would use these minutes and texts when they are on holiday with no extra charges.

Existing Vodafone Passport customers automatically benefit from the three month promotion. From May 15, customers who don’t currently use Vodafone Passport can sign up for free by texting the word ‘Passport’ to 97888 if they pay monthly or to 2345 if they use Pay as you go , or they can visit vodafone.co.uk/roaming.

In addition, from May 15, Vodafone Pay as you go customers on the Simply tariff, will find that calls they make from the UK to friends and family overseas will be even better value. International calls will cost from as little as 5p per minute to both landlines and mobiles. Customers can opt in to the new Vodafone International call plan by calling 36888 or texting the word ‘international’ to 2345 from their handset, visiting vodafone.co.uk/international or speaking to an adviser in one of Vodafone’s 400 stores.

“These are two great value offers for our customers this summer. With our Vodafone Passport promotion you can sit on the beach with your phone switched on knowing you can take and make a call just as you would if you were in your back garden,” says Ian Shepherd consumer director for Vodafone UK. “Vodafone International is good news for the millions of UK pay as you go customers as they can now make calls to family and friends around the world from just 5p.”

Reducing the cost of roaming for businesses

Vodafone UK business customers on Anytime or Your Plan price plans will also benefit from the same three month Vodafone Passport promotion from June 1. Customers on these plans and already on Vodafone Passport will automatically qualify for the promotion. Non Vodafone Passport customers can opt in by calling their account manager or visiting www.vodafone.co.uk/businessroaming for further information.

And the countries included?

Countries included in the Vodafone Passport summer promotion: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canary Islands, Channel Islands, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madeira, Malta, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Vatican City, New Zealand, Australia.

More thoughts and analysis later!

Originally published on Ewan.net and automatically republished here on Mobile Industry Review. View the original post.

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Posted in Hot, LG, Mobile, News, Three, Vodafone, ewan | Comments

Help: Is this a mobile developer FAIL?

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Whilst we get busy with the new design and arranging of developer interviews, I need your assistance on this conundrum. I’m not sure whether it’s a complete ‘FAIL’ (as the phrase goes) on the part of the developer, or whether it’s just-one-of-those-things.

I’ve been using my Android G1 a lot since I arrived in America because, conveniently, my US T-Mobile sim works perfectly with it (even though it’s a UK device). I didn’t have to do any configuration since HTC thoughtfully included the T-Mobile US web settings on the device already.

So I’ve been taking pictures.

As you do in a city as nice and as varied as San Francisco.

I’d like to send them directly to Flickr. Since there’s no ShoZu service on Android at the moment (and I haven’t re-installed Pixelpipe yet) I thought I’d have a look around the Marketplace on Android.

Unlike others, I take it upon myself to buy as many applications as possible. I did a certain amount of evaluation on ‘Flickr Upload’ when I came across it. From memory it was $0.99. Or perhaps less.

I scrolled down to the comments.

On the 28th of April, ‘Matthew’ commented:

Works wonderfully. Well integrated.

.. and he gave it five stars.

I suspect Matthew is referring to the share option. When you take a photo on Android, there’s a button that pops up called ‘Share’. Click on that and you get the choice of sharing by Email, by Google Mail or — to Flickr (enabled by this application). Smart. I was warming to the concept.

I noted that it’s had between 100-500 downloads. Ok. Not a brilliant well-trodden path. I continued with the comment review.

On the 21st of April, ‘z0mbix’ commented:

Will not authorise with flickr on t-mobile/G1. Can’t get any reply from the developers em[ail]…

Er.

I’d gone off it right away.

The final comment on the app’s frontpage was a day before z0mbix’s one from Benjamin:

Exactly what I was looking for works perfectly

Hmmm.

Z0mbix’s comment put me right off. But I reasoned there must be a reason, maybe he/she didn’t know what they were doing? Afterall if Benjamin and Matthew each had a good experience, I should be ok?

Right?

As I walked out of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco I spotted an advert I wanted to write about. I decided to download Flickr Upload there and then, configure it and get moving.

I paid the money, the app downloaded and within seconds I’d got to the main prompt, asking me to authorise my Flickr account to work with it. Fair enough.

I typed in my Yahoo account username and password and hit ‘login’.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

The screen went blank.

Er.

‘I’ve just paid a dollar for this,’ I thought, rather disappointed. I was experiencing the pain of fellow user, z0mbix.

I tried again. Maybe I typed my details wrong?

Again it failed. The app just sat on a blank screen like this:

Rubbish!

I ended up sending the photo to my email account and walked home, rather annoyed with myself.

I was annoyed because I thought I’d obviously got my Yahoo password wrong.

What self respecting developer would allow an application to go live — a chargeable application at that — which doesn’t actually work?

Then I reasoned that it must be a Yahoo screw-up and spent a good few blocks cursing them in my mind.

I got back to my desktop and immediately changed my Yahoo password to check I had it correct.

Again I tried authorising the app.

Nothing. Nada.

I’ve bought a dud.

I don’t know who is responsible. It COULD be Yahoo, entirely. But one assumes that the two other recent commenters on Android Marketplace aren’t lying and they got it to work.

I’ve tried a few times over the past few days to activate it to no avail.

So I looked up the developer online.

They’re called Macrospecs and they’re a privately-owned startup in the bay area.

Ah hah! They’ll have a GetSatisfaction page, right? Or a forum or something?

No.

Nothing!

It’s a one-page website and — ultra annoyingly — the ‘contact’ page goes straight through to their email address.

Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the Flickr Upload application on their site.

I then had a look back on the Android Marketplace and saw that the ‘developer site’ is listed as FaceofMobile.com/Flickr. Ah hah!

No, hold your excitement.

This is the entire site:

Yup… it’s one page. It consists of three screenshots and a macrospecs logo, with no link. No contact details. No support option. Nothing.

In fairness to the developer, one wouldn’t expect that many support enquiries from an application that simply sends a photo to a Flickr account. It’s not rocket science and there’s hardly any failure points.

Except the authorisation process.

And, of course, macrospecs don’t control that, Yahoo do.

Tough luck for me and z0mbix, right? If it ain’t working, you can try contacting macrospecs but it’s rather clear they don’t want to know — and are not expecting to support any enquiries.

I hunted around and I found a support forum for macrospecs’ Face of Mobile application, a $1.99 Windows Mobile Facebook app.

I suppose I could try posting there.

But I’m not feeling very welcome — or smart for buying the app. Indeed I’ve paid a dollar for the privilege.

It’s perfectly fine for it to happen to me, I have a good understanding of the trials and tribulations of mobile development — but if this is the experience of your average consumer who’s just picked up a G1 or G2 and is expecting 100% friction-free total quality-assured service from the Android Marketplace, they’re not going to be at all impressed.

Like the ringtone marketplace a few years ago — you’ll pay once and if the experience sucks, you definitely won’t ever pay again.

What’s the right response?

Is this a FAIL on the part of the team at macrospecs? Is it a Yahoo FAIL?

Or is it an Android FAIL?

Would this have happened on an iPhone?

Share/Save/Bookmark

Originally published on Mobile Developer TV and automatically republished here on Mobile Industry Review. View the original post.

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Posted in Annoying, Applications, Google, Hot, Mobile, Mobile Development, MobileDeveloperTV, Satisfaction, T-Mobile, Three, iPhone, marketplace, shozu | Comments

The INQ 1- Student Perspective Part 2

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Last week I covered the basics of the INQ1 now I am going to be looking in depth at the applications in particular the social networking ones.

Facebook
Let’s be honest, this is probably the reason why you bought this phone. When you first start the phone you are asked to pop in your Facebook log in details, it then asks you if you want to sync your contacts with Facebook. It then pretty quickly pulled my 500+ friends from Facebook, including their last status update and Facebook profile picture. What it does not do sadly, (which I think is restricted to the Facebook API) is pull down mobile numbers from their profile. I will be talking about the Social Phonebook in more detail later. Like Jonathan I found it was behind my browser version, and I found the application was constantly updating. This I found to be a constant pain, I really hope they implement options so the user can choose options ie update every 30 minutes. I really did not understand the need for the constant updating and I am sure this had an effect on battery life as well. Will this bring Facebook do your normobs? Yes it will in a big way, no pointing to the mobile Facebook URL etc just there one simply quick from your dock or the menu. The integration for new messages again I found this good something another manufacturer has never done before, any new messages, pokes or requests appear as a new alert in the messaging tab. I again found this to be slow, and behind the web version, which meant on occasions it said I had a new Facebook message when I had already read it. I think the issue is that none of the pokes, messages are stored on the device so if you cannot get online you cannot read your inbox. I think this is again possibly due to Facebook API restrictions.

Windows Live Messenger
Quite possibly the best application on the phone, it allows you to minimise and you can receive IM alerts in the back ground. Three have always had a good relationship in WLM and in the INQ 1 this really shows. Top Marks to the INQ 1 this application brings WLM to your mobile, anyone who has used messenger on their computer will be able to use this application.

Email on 3
Three have done it again with this application, 4 clicks and you have email set up. This has got all the standard email services set up Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and a whole range of ISP emails. If you have one of the pre defined email services as your provider you are laughing.

Skype
Please read my opinion on Skype here. I do not use Skype; I don’t see the point in it. I never used the application so I could not tell you my thoughts on it.

Last FM
This is a very small add on however it integrates with the music player, on a Nokia you would need to download an add on such as Mobbler to allow your track to be scrobbled, however the INQ chaps have got this in built all you need to do is put your username and password in.

Camera
The phone has a 3.2 mega pixel camera which is acceptable there is no flash, which is a real shame however you can shoot video as well. There are also options to send your pictures by MMS, Bluetooth, email and Facebook. It was a little bit sad to see that Flickr was not an option; however it was nice to see some ShoZu-like elements had been integrated into the handset.

Internet Modem Capability
This was a feature that we saw on the Skype Phone 2, where all you need to is plug in your INQ and it has all the drivers on bored to install a modem. This allows you to browse the web on your laptop in a matter of two minutes; the process is very quick and simple.

The Social Phonebook
If there is one feature in my opinion that the INQ1 will be remembered by it is this feature. All of the social networks allow you to download your contacts to your handset. The handset then allows you to merge all the contacts together, and then when scrolling the phonebook you can see in real time if that person is available on Skype, WLM or Facebook. An example is if Ewan is one of my contacts I have him on my WLM and Facebook. If I went down to his entry, I can choose to send him an Instant Message, Call, SMS, MMS, Email, Facebook Message or Facebook Poke. The other really clever feature is that for example if I did not have his number I can click straight through to his Facebook Profile and call him straight from there (providing he has his number made visible). When Ewan calls me, his current Facebook Profile Picture does pops up; some of you may say well you can do that on any handset which is true. However it is not as simple as putting your Facebook details in when you get the phone.

Summary
So what are my final thoughts on this handset? I feel that INQ have rushed this device, and there are some issues that I have highlighted over the past two weeks that have annoyed me. The main one being the constant refreshing of the Facebook Application, this is extremely frustrating and a battery killer. I am really looking forward to INQ bringing out some new handsets this year, there are rumours of a keyboard (a possible G1 or N97 rival) variant and hopefully a touch screen version as well. If INQ make social networking this easy, I believe we will see a massive increase in the amount of social networking done from a mobile in the future especially as some of the networks (here in the UK at least) have some good value data packages!

INQ is definitely a manufacturer we will be watching here at Mobile Industry Review I have a feeling they have some impressive handsets ahead.

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Posted in Mobile, Operators, Three | Comments

The INQ 1- Student Perspective Part 1

Friday, February 6th, 2009

The INQ 1 is available on 3 for free on one of their lower contracts at £15 per month, or for £80 on pay as you go. It has been dubbed the ‘Facebook phone’ due to its tight integration with online social networks, including Skype, last fm, MSN to name just a few. EBay integration is expected to come soon in the form of software update.

The Facebook element of this phone got me very excited, as a student I live on the website it is a one of my primary methods of communication, and my online calendar of events I am attending.

The phone arrived on the 23rd December and it was like Christmas had come early I was that excited!

I opened up all the packaging and my sim, the contents including the phone some cards explaining the basics and headphones. The phone is well-built for the £80 price bracket; in fact I feel it is much better built then my N95. So I was ready to pop my sim in and this is where I strike my first problem.

How the flip do you get the battery cover off?

I have used and reviewed a lot of phones over the last 7 years and I have never had an issue getting the back cover off.I must have spent ten minutes trying to no success, so I swallowed my male pride and read the cards sent in the box to help. Do they help, nope not a mention anywhere. I even resorted totwitterto see if anyone can help, eventually I manage to get it off.

Now at the time the INQ site was appalling, a very basic flash site with no manuals etc. Since checking back for this review it seems like it is fully updated, kudos to INQ to sorting that out. In the end I figured out the button on top of the phone opens to the battery cover, yes that button on every Nokia that is the on/ off button. For those of you who are thinking what sort of people has Ewan got writing on the site, it was not just me that struggled with this.

Normob Chris White purchased the device for his son, and I will quote him from his email to me;

I had loads fun ‘cracking’ the case puzzle for the first time (20 minutes actually, any jobs going?). It doesn’t help that the catch is exactly where Nokia put the on/off switch. It’s little things like this that turn people against products. This is a cleverly conceived little package, very attractively priced, but the guys who were trusted with handing it over to us were having a laugh, or more likely, a self-indulgent snigger.

I agree with him, why put something where your major competitors put something else? Remember this device is supposed to be a Normob friendly device.

Chris also raises some very interesting issues, again I will quote him:

Particularly, take your expert reviewer hat off for a moment and put yourself in the position of a first time user who hasn’t used a Skype phone or similar device before and see how long it takes you to:
- work out how to correctly insert the MicroSD card - is it supposed to stay sticking out and jammed under the battery like that? Why doesn’t it slide in flat? Am I breaking this?

Unfortunately I did not have Micro SD card, I could not see what this is like. It’s worrying that Chris thought he may be breaking the device though.

Let’s move on.

I fired up the phone. The operating system is BREW and the device is capable of running BREW and java applications. The first thing I would recommend anyone to do is to download Opera Mini, it is so much better than the the supplied browser.

The home screen has the ability to have three widgets, ie Google Search, RSS Feed or World Clock. There is a wide range to choose from and the bottom there is essentially a dock. For those of you who are Mac users, you will be familiar with it. From here you can quick launch many of the phones applications. There is a also a switcher button at the side of the phone which lets you cycle through and launch another application or go to the home screen, the phone allows multiple applications to be minimised and run in the background.

Let’s look to the media and music player; it had no issues with playing my mp3’s and some small video clips I chucked at it. My biggest gripe is the headphone socket. INQ has tried to be clever and use the micro USB to connect to your computer, to charge the phone and as a headphone socket. The problem is this means that you have to use the supplied headphones which are cheap and the sound quality is poor.

Sony Ericsson do this as well — their supplied headphones are brilliant. It needs to be clear to Mobile Phone manufactures that they need to put a normal headphone socket on their phones: Stop forcing people to use your cheap and nasty headphones.

Check back on Wednesday when, the next and final part of my review will be published. I will be covering all the social networking applications and the camera. In the mean time check out Jonathan Jensen’s mini review and normob feedback on the INQ 1.

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Posted in Devices, Mobile, Operators, Three | Comments

3UK ‘e-bill’ text message notification FAIL

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Stephen Davies isn’t that impressed with 3UK this morning. Have a read of his Twitter message:

Three Mobile ‘e-bills’ FAIL. Text message with link to mobile site diverts to Three regular site. Can’t login from phone. Pointless.

Wholly pointless particularly if you’re using a dumb handset that can’t even display regular webpages properly.

Who at 3UK dreamt this one up?

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Posted in Three | Comments

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