Following on from my earlier post about Vodafone 360 woes, I can really see what the consumers populating the Vodafone 360 forums are experiencing. I tried to update/upgrade the firmware on the H1 and this is the screen I got:
I did the usual rubbish Windows restarts, reconnects and so on. No dice.
This could well be because my device is pre-release, but I doubt it — the error appears to be with the Samsung PC Studio.
Ah dear.
I was having a look at the referring traffic from Vodafone’s 360 forum today and saw quite a few clicks coming from this forum post.
The three links that Jay.B posted were all to Vodafone 360 articles on Mobile Industry Review (the links have since been removed by the Vodafone moderators which shows a very, very low tolerance for dissent).
It’s fascinating to watch just how Vodafone as a company deals with 360 and the consumer reaction to it.
Here’s Jay.B’s original post:
And this is how it looks after the moderator’s been through it:
Heh.
The posts Jay.B were linking to are:
- Vodafone 360: An Absolute Failure
- This week’s newsletter: More about Vodafone 360
I particularly like how Jay linked to the final link:
and finally quite a good read that really describes what I would like to experience and what I am experiencing when using H1
- Vdoafone’s Lukewarm 60-degree Offering
Jay finishes by asking:
I find the content of the above articles quite alarming and would like to know what is Vodafone opinion about what is stated in these articles?
Ah you’ll never know Jay. Vodafone’s position is not to get into a (potentially uncomfortable) conversation.
It’s a real shame. It’s highly ironic that whilst Vodafone 360 is a service that’s fundamentally based on communication, there appears to be next to nothing coming from Vodafone about 360’s issues or any indication about what’s on the road map. Perhaps I’ve missed it.
When you’re producing a service that can be upgraded remotely it is acceptable for there to be bugs, problems, issues. I didn’t for one second think that the photo issue (the limitation of only being able to post to Facebook) would hang around for more than 30-days or more before some bright spark at Vodafone fixed it with an update. But it appears this hasn’t happened.
Twitter integration was promised — it’s not quite materialised either.
Back to Jay.B again — here’s what he’s thinking:
The really scary thing is that not much have changed since then. No firmwares released addressing the issues. No known dates when the firmwares are going to be released. It’s 3 months since I have this phone and the only thing I can hear is that someone somewhere works really hard to get things sorted out. In my opinion nothing changed or things are changing for worse in certain aspects.
There have been one or two firmware updates that I’ve noted but not sufficient or frequent enough to placate Jay.B or the rest of us.
Jay goes further:
The bottom line is that the product (goods and services in the shape of H1/M1 phone and 360.com website) do not work as advertised. In fact I feel that I have grounds to ask for my money back. It would definitely be the case with any other product (TV, car, even MS Windows OS). The only reason it is not happening is because the smartphones and cloud computing are quite new concepts and they are not really clearly defined.
It gets worse as Jay.B explains:
But it is enough to use common sense and decency to admit that there is a problem and that most people who bought H1 phone wouldn’t buy it, if they only knew that most of the advertised features/services are not going to work.
It’s painful reading:
And I really wanted to have something else/better than iPhone and H1 was sold to me as a phone that can outdo the iPhone (and hardware wise it is better than iPhone). I had all the reasons to believe it. Then I had all the reasons to believe that things are going to get fixed.
This isn’t difficult to manage. It’s all about communication. Something you’d expect the 360 team — or the executives screwing it up — to understand.
If the next update is going to fix a lot of the problems, brilliant. But don’t sit there in silence. Post an update! Tell people what’s happening! Even if it’s coming in March, so be it, people can stop getting frustrated.
One of the newbies reading the post visited a little bit late and found the links posted to Mobile Industry Review removed:
I Want to read the articles but I can’t see the links a nymore… Is it only happening with me?! Any reason for the disappearing?
It’s laughable, it really is.
Vodafone does allow links to external sites — just not ones that aren’t entirely supportive.
Simply fascinating.
I write this post as yet another addition to my look-at-the-stupidity-of-the-mobile-operator pile. I can’t quite believe they are still screwing it up.
It could all be managed much, much better.
Meantime the more I watch 360, the more I see the customer complaints going unanswered and the negative commentary removed, it’s very clear that to see this is a department in total and utter chaos.
Poor Lee, the Vodafone eForum chap who’s taking all the flack from the Vodafone consumers, is doing his best with what he’s got to work with.
Here’s one forum contributor, Paul, who’s not been having a good day:
Am on my 2nd Samsung H1 in less than 2 months… on my first handset VF pushed the firmware update to my mobile there and then but apparently the 3 VF folks I have spoken to since don’t know how to do this for my new handset
I too got stuck unzipping but as soon as I opened PC studion as administrator (using Vista) it worked!
Paul’s referring to the firmware update process. You can’t quite do it over-the-air it seems. Instead you have to arse about with the Samsung PC Studio and unzipping of stuff. Still at least it’s a solution.
Paul continues:
What i find laughable about this whole saga is the lack of official response/update from senior folks at VF at the number of faults present in both the handset and 360 in general – Lee is doing a grand job fighting the flames but when will it get to a stage where top brass at VF admit they have F#*$ed up and should remove this handset and service until it is fixed once and for all.
PLEASE CAN WE HAVE AN UPDATE FROM SOMEONE SENIOR AT VODAFONE!!!
Lee is doing his best to placate the hordes:
I know how frustrated you are, believe me, I’ve had the same issues as everyone else and I know we are working as hard as possible to get these issues sorted.
Jay.B points out that this isn’t really helping:
You are working so hard for so long and not much is really happening. I am reading this forum on regular basis and nearly everyone here has some kind of problem with this phone
He finishes with a suggestion that appears to front-of-mind for many a Vodafone 360 user:
I suggest that if problems are not sorted out by January you get us all an iPhone as a replacement phone till problems with this phone are sorted out.
Barry concurs:
I have waded thru 7 pages of how to update, I have switched on and off twice while connecting to PC Studio, I have taken the back off, removed the sim and repeated the above, I have stood on one foot in a bucket of water while repeating the above and still it will not get past attempting to unzip the the downloaded update. I can’t get emails, I can’t sync with Outlook. The phone in its present state is not fit for purpose but will Vodafone admit this and give me an Apple I-pod?
I don’t think Barry will get very far, alas.
I doubt I’ll have anything specific to tell you about Vodafone 360, beyond the litany of problems, in the coming weeks.
One highlight is the upcoming Vodafone 360 developer conference at Mobile World Congress. I would take the camera in there to interview developers but I understand Mobile Industry Review — and yours truly in particular — are most certainly not welcome on account of our rather direct Vodafone 360 coverage. So we won’t be doing that alas. There might be an opportunity to capture some hilarious footage of me being turned away at the door, perhaps. That would certainly be interesting.
So if you’re a 360 developer and you’d like some coverage, do contact me directly (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com) and we’ll sort out a profile.
Meanwhile I’m going to try and upgrade my Samsung H1…
I’ve been hearing on the grapevine about more Vodafone 360 woes. Despite the brilliant marketing, the service is understandably failing to capture consumer imagination. You’re still forbidden to send pictures to anywhere except social networks that Vodafone deems appropriate and relevant (Facebook is in, Flickr, Picasa and every other photo sharing service you can name is prohibited).
Pocket Lint reports that Vodafone have announced over 100,000 Vodafone customers have walked straight past the proverbial Vodafone 360 stand and headed straight for the sales desk to order an iPhone.
This is phenomenally good news for Vodafone and just goes to show how much pent-up demand there is for the jPhone (“Jesus Phone”).
Where are all the analysts who, late last year, said that everyone who wanted an iPhone had already bought one?
Probably busy authoring more ridiculously stupid reports.
By the way: If you’re the proud owner of a brand new Orange or Vodafone iPhone, greetings!
(You can also download the Mobile Industry Review app from the iTunes app store — search ‘Mobile Industry Review‘).
I’m heading to the States shortly — then Barcelona — and I’m therefore strongly considering trying out Truphone’s Local Anywhere package. I’ve a strong affinity to simply walking into a T-Mobile USA shop and picking up some sim cards, but I do think I should check out the service and see what it’s like.
I’ve long been a believer that whilst the Truphone wifi concept was cool and smart, the reality is that I travel quite a lot and am not necessarily always near a useful wifi hotspot.
Truphone-on-a-sim-card makes a lot of sense to me.
Their data rates aren’t too bad either: If you’re in the States and you’ve upgraded to ‘US Local Rates’ ($13/month) data is £0.75 per mb. As apposed to something crazy — Vodafone will charge me up to £15 for 25MB in a given day — that sounds good until you add it up over 7 days (£105 pounds!).
If you assume I would use a minimum of 5mb per day just checking email and so on, Truphone would charge me £26.25 for that. Actually, let’s compare like for like… (although I don’t know if I’d actually *use* 25mb per day)…
25mb x £0.75/mb = £18.75 x 7 days = £131.25.
So Truphone would actually end up more expensive in that regard.
Local sim or Truphone? I’m going to have a think!
Pre-orders for Vodafone’s iPhone have reached the magic 50,000 mark, I’m told by Vodafone PR. This is very healthy and good news for the marketplace.
It’s also a marked contrast to the (rumoured) 50 pre-orders of the Samsung H1 360.
The iPhone: 1,000 times more in demand than 360. And rightly so.
Here’s Guy Laurence, Vodafone UK CEO:
Quoting from Vodafone’s announcement moments ago:
[He] confirmed [Vodafone] would be delivering over 50,000 iPhones to customers on its first day of selling the device. He said the main reason for the exceptional demand was customers wanting to use the phone on its outstanding network.
(I also think it’s because a lot of pained Vodafone customers have been waiting a long time to get the iPhone and are quite excited to finally get them!)
All across the country, numerous Vodafone customers have woken to a special delivery. Inside the packaging is their shiny new official Vodafone iPhone.
Congratulations all!
It’s ok. Don’t worry. That Vodafone 360 nightmare that we’ve all been suffering under for the past few months is finally over.
No…wait…
What’s this! A news release from Vodafone, you say? Vodafone THREE sixy?
Batten down the hatches!
Put the old, the infirm and the youngsters in the panic room!
Lock up your daughters!
To coincide with the death of 360launch of the iPhone, Vodafone is launching two corresponding free iPhone applications on the Apple App Store. Similar to how Orange launched a few really smart apps (the Orange Wednesdays cinema app is simply fantastic), Vodafone is launching it’s own branded ones.
They are:
- The Vodafone 360 People Sync App – to help customers easily move mobile contacts from one phone to iPhone
- Vodafone Navigation App – providing turn-by-turn navigation, voice instructions and speed camera alerts
Unfortunately Vodafone seem absolutely resolute on mentioning 360 all over the place when all it does is simply remind us what an utter failure the original launch was. You and I both know that if Vodafone could — if Apple would have allowed them — they’d have switched off the App Store capability on the iPhone and replaced it with their own shitter, half-baked piece of bollocks. They’ve have also disabled the send-a-photo-by-email functionality inherent on the device and forced you to upload the photos to 360.com. And then maybe allow you to send to Facebook. But nothing else. Because nobody uses any other photo sharing services.
As it happens, the applications announced today are fairly innocuous. The 360 People Sync app is a fairly useful addition to help you move your contacts from your old, operator-controlled handset to your new operator-is-the-bit-pipe Apple iPhone.
Vodafone’s Navigation App has a lot of fans on other platforms — and rightly so. Thus it’s a good addition to the iPhone platform for anyone hunting for it. It’ll cost you a fairly reasonable £5/month (for 30-days) or £3/month if you choose to keep the functionality for the length of your contract. But right now you can sample it for free until the end of April. The app itself is free to download.
Do also check out the rather nifty Vodafone Update iPhone app (iTunes link) which allows you to find out what’s happening on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. It’s a Vodafone Germany offering but instructions appear in English.
Pick up the Vodafone Navigation app from this iTunes link.
And get hold of the 360 People Sync app from this iTunes link.
So finally we’re there. Vodafone UK has finally achieved it’s dream (well, the dream of some of their executives) and launched the fabled iPhone.
Next we’re looking at T-Mobile. But then, they couldn’t launch their way out of a paper bag. You only have to try and contend with their online billing system to recognise that it’s been designed by people who — like the executives in charge of 360 — enjoy going home at 4.30pm and not bothering to actually deliver a proper, rounded service. And whilst T-Mobile sits staring at the wall waiting for the Orange merger to go through, it would probably be better to assume no innovation whatsoever from them over the next 12 months.
Which leaves us with Hutchison’s 3UK — I go hot and cold on them. One moment their marketing message is inclusive to the folk who routinely spend £100 a month without thinking. The next moment they’re chasing after the Sharons, Staceys and Bronwens who spend £0.03 per month on their mobile bills. I do like their almost-iPhone offer — the iPod Touch & MiFi Unit offer (£23/month on contract). Will we see the iPhone eventually lurch on to the 3 network? At some point.
Meanwhile if you’ve just upgraded to the Vodafone iPhone — I know a lot of people who are — congratulations!
I’m pleased to see Vodafone UK is still innovating with mobile broadband. Today they’re launching some new monthly price plans, thus:
- £15/month, which now gets you 3GB of data, along with basic anti-virus, spyware and 2GB of data backup
- £20/month, which now gets you 4GB of data and a new ‘Premium PC Security Pack’ — useful if you’re a PC user. The pack includes anti-virus, spyware protection, firewall, parental controls, email spam filtering and unlimited backup and restore. Not bad, not bad!
Pay As You Go gets a bit of news today as well. The new K3565 ‘TopUp and Go’ USB Modem stick (3.6Mbps) gets 3GB of data, valid for 30 days, for just £34.99. That is a really, really good deal, especially if you’re arriving into the UK for a few weeks and need a decent PAYG data solution. If you’re partial to a bit of style, you can also pick up a blue or a pink USB stick, thus:
There’s more information here.
The one thing that’s missing from Vodafone’s line-up is a MiFi device like the Novatel MiFi unit. They’ve got MiFi over at Vodafone DE. If you’re thinking about MiFi, by the way, I strongly recommend this Novatel unit. I’ve been testing it for months.
I know of quite a few 3 customers who are seriously enjoying their 3UK MiFI service (here’s a vid) so I’m quite disappointed Vodafone UK hasn’t quite jumped on the bandwagon yet.
Until then you can get the Novatel MiFi unit unlocked for £214 from the likes of Expansys.
Yeah, sorry. I waited a few days before publishing this. I still can’t believe the reality that is Vodafone 360 and how… well… how badly it’s been delivered to market.
I popped into four different Vodafone stores over the weekend — I won’t say which ones — and I innocently enquired as to the Samsung H1.
I wanted to test the sales reaction to a customer enquiring about the H1 and the iPhone. The stores I visited, all in London, will obviously have had Samsung H1s in stock, so I wanted to see how the sales person would react. Would they aim to push the H1 more — since it was in stock and they could theoretically complete the sale immediately? Or would they have another opinion such as the soon-to-launch iPhone?
Here was my opening gambit to each of the Vodafone sales people I encountered:
“I was thinking about getting a Samsung H1 [the official 360 flagship device], or maybe an iPhone?”
Their responses were universal along these lines:
“Definitely not. Wait for the iPhone. In fact, you can pre-order one today?”
Fascinating.
You can find out more about Vodafone 360 right here: http://login.vodafone360.com/en/web/home/index.
I should point out that 360 isn’t dead to me. It’s not entirely rubbish either, especially given the fact that many of the features I’ve got severe problems with can be upgraded over-the-air. I hope the team get a handle on it soon.
Incidentally, a good colleague of mine wanted to point out that Vodafone are the only UK network that will offer you a VAG — a “Vodafone Access Gateway” — to help boost poor signals in your home (or, theoretically, your office). If you phone up citing signal problems (and you’re a contract customer), chances are Vodafone will offer you one of these free of charge. Otherwise they’re five quid a month. More information here.
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