I’ve been using the Nokia Lumia 800 for almost 4 days now, full time. Two of those days have been weekends so I’m not quite ready to give a week’s full summary yet. However what I can tell you is to set your expectations on the Lumia 800′s battery.

This should be nothing new to you, or anyone else who’s been using smartphones for the last few years, especially Androids. However, if you’re accustomed to your Nokia N86 lasting for a good few days, or your old Nokia N95 getting you through 1.5 days on super-heavy-use, do stick those expectations into the gutter.

On a full charge, with a nigh-on-full-time usage model, I’ve had the phone quit on me completely at 11pm. This is a heck of a lot better than some other devices, but still. It’s a sign of the times.

It’s not a dig at Nokia. Indeed anyone reading this thinking carefully about buying the Lumia 800 will, I’m sure, nod quietly at this post. It’s what we all thought.

Unfortunately in today’s world, “smartphone” means “shit battery” (along with a qualifier, “If you actually use the phone”). The Lumia, like the iPhone and my Nexus S will happily sit for a full day doing nothing and retain a nigh-on full charge.

I think I’m not helping things by having a Google Mail account and an Outlook account activated. Plus I should probably stick the various location tools to the ‘off’ mode.

However this is not the answer.

No.

The answer is for smartphone vendors to stop the thin obsession and start the battery obsession.

You, dear vendor, might think that battery is no longer a key consideration for consumers. You’re wrong. Just because the Galaxy SII is being flogged in its millions and that users therefore need to start re-charging by lunchtime, this does not mean it’s not a problem.

At some point, a vendor will deliver a thicker handset to market that lasts for 1.5 days guaranteed, with heavy usage. Or 2 days. Or more. And at that point, it will make every other smartphone look lovely-but-impotent.

Worse, it will make the owners of all other smartphones look like tossers.

Tossers, because, at the end of the night, when you want to phone a taxi, your 800 Euro super-smartphone is useless if the battery has already gone through the ‘RED’ flashing panicky almost-out-of-power phase and into the dead phase.

The one argument that kills every other ‘my phone is better than yours’ argument is battery. When you’ve a reasonably level playing field like the Lumia, an iPhone, a recent Android (i.e. all fairly decent, all fairly good, all with nice UIs etc), then it’s all about battery. And no one wins, at the moment. Even the BlackBerry Bold 9900 doesn’t quite come up to scratch in the battery stakes.

So please, one of the vendors, please try this out. Can you imagine if Samsung released the following devices:

- Samsung Galaxy SIIIS (where the ‘S’ stands for standard battery) — less than 1cm thick
- Samsung Galaxy SIV EBL (where ‘EBL’ stands for extended battery life of 3 days minimum) — less than 1.5cm thick

Which would you pick? Well, you’d want someone to actually verify that ‘EBL’ actually means something. But very quickly I think a lot of people would be plumping for the second version.

You’d need your head examined to go for the thinner-but-shitter version.

We’ve got over the ‘my god it’s THIN’ experience, haven’t we?

Thin, for any sensible chap, now means ‘really shit battery’. Agree?

(Note: Or, could somebody please invent some proper mobile battery technology?)

Months ago when I first got hands-on with the BlackBerry Bold at BlackBerry World, I thought it was gorgeous.

But, it was pre-release.

And I try not to think too much about devices that are specifically marked as pre-release. There are often substantial changes before the device hits the shelves.

Now I stopped doing actual handset reviews years ago. I tired quickly of having to look objectively at a phone. Well, not even objectively. Laboriously listing out megapixel specs was, I recognised, virtually irrelevant to the Mobile Industry Review reader.

Instead, here is a set of viewpoints relating to the device.

I’ve had hands-on for two weeks. It’s been my primary device for this period. I swapped my BES service to this one from my old Bold 9780. I installed all my standard apps. It’s been used in anger.

It’s fast
I don’t give a toss about RAM or CPUs. They mean nothing unless the phone ‘works fast’. This is my viewpoint. I’ve used plenty of phones with brilliant specs only to find the actual usage rubbish. So I am happy to pronounce this Bold fast. Make sure you’re in a good signal area and try installing an app. It’s a dream — the download and installation is much improved.

Virtually no waiting
Related to the point above, I hardly ever see the hour glass now. This is important — whatever RIM did, it’s made it a lot nicer to use as a result.

The Web Browser
Finally you can load proper full-size websites with your Bold. That’s about it. It works nicely. It’s not a second-class experience any more.

Touch works
The whole touch thing works. I really like it. Now and again I want to touch the screen, whether it’s tapping a link on a webpage or hitting the send button on an email, it’s really nice to be able to use the screen in this way. Everything works as you expect. I haven’t encountered any exceptions. Previous RIM touch screen experiences required a little bit of patience and, sometimes, a few taps, before things worked as expected. Not any more. By the way, when you’re on a call and put the phone to your head, the screen switches off — just as the iPhone does. (And then it comes on again when you take it away). An important requirement. I’m pleased to see this one was added.

The keyboard
Without a doubt the keyboard is the best thing about the BlackBerry. This is not to minimise the device’s other achievements and capabilities. I want a BlackBerry primarily for the QWERTY keyboard. So do you, right? Precious few of us are actually good at typing on an iPhone for any length of time. If you need to message-in-anger, you need a physical keyboard and you need a BlackBerry. There’s almost an extra key’s worth of width added to this new Bold (compared to the old). It took me a day or so to adjust to having more space (it looks to be the same form factor as the original Bold 9000) but once I did, ahhh. Bisto. Genius. Love it. The clicks, the angle of the keys, the spacing, the forming of the whole experience: They really do know what they’re doing. RIM’s keyboards, particularly this one, make everything else look like a Fisher Price toy in comparison.

The width
It’s really slim. It feels slim. And when you’re typing on the keyboard, it feels really nice. I feel modern using it. Typing away on the slim keyboard feels very good.

Handsome
It is handsome. The metal edge — similar to the iPhone 4 — looks impressive. The device looks futuristic. It looks good on the table, on the desk, in the hand. It’s been drawing admiring glances from lots of people as I’ve been using it. This is good. It’s not a critical feature but it’s nice to have.

Materials
The 9900 is slim but chunky. It feels sturdy. Throw it gently on to the desk or restaurant table and it’ll make a pleasing sound. The back casing is really nice to touch. The metals, the screen, the whole package feels ‘worth’ it.

Main Buttons
The main buttons — call, blackberry menu, back, end — they have a lovely feel. They indent really nicely. I like pressing call/hanging up. It just feels good.

Speakerphone
Press ‘s’ during a call and the speaker phone switches on and just works. This is something I’ve been using a lot with the Bold and I’m delighted to say performance is maintained in this version of the device.

BlackBerry OS 7
I’m liking what RIM has done with OS version 7. They’ve retained the familiar RIM look and feel but brought a wealth of mini innovations that really improve the overall experience. For example, everything is nicely connected. Twitter integration is second-to-none. If you’re into Facebook, you’ll seriously enjoy what they’ve done with integration there too. Everything is accessible, connected and integrated into the device. For example, you can send stuff easily to Twitter/Facebook/Text/MMS/Email. They’ve really thought about the whole connected messaging experience.

Twitter integration
A supplemental on this. I am seriously impressed at the revisions the team has been doing with the Twitter client. Direct messages appear in the inbox. Hit ‘r’ and reply (with convenient character count). There’s no swapping into different clients or having to wait whilst an app opens. You can compose a Twitter message directly from the inbox. You’re also notified about replies — for example, “You have 4 replies” — within the inbox. Click on that and the Twitter client loads instantly (it’s running in the background, refreshing at the duration you set). I don’t think there’s a better, faster, integrated, more effective Twitter facility on any other mobile platform.

App World is fast
The App World is improving all the time and the current version is really zippy. I’m now enjoying flicking through the carousel of apps.

Calling, texting
Calling is perfectly fine. I’ve nothing particular to report. I just wanted to point this out. Texting, by the way, is a joy. I’m just incredibly fast on the Bold keyboard!

Niggles?
There are some niggles.

I absolutely LOVE the Bold 9780′s top-left screen-lock button. I use that more than everything. I really like the functionality. I like how it’s positioned. On the 9900, they’ve done away with this. There’s still a button — it’s on the top in the centre now. On pressing it, I sometimes involuntarily press the other side buttons, especially the camera button. Annoying. Over the past week or so it’s become less of a problem as I’ve adjusted.

The battery… It feels slightly less powerful than the last version of the Bold. I’m frequently hitting the amber empty sign by 9pm and 10pm — from a full charge that morning. So I am charging it a little more often. However I am pleased to say that I’ve not had it completely switch off. I’m just bothered by the sight of the amber/red battery warning. I have an aversion to it. Now I should point out that I’ve a few third party apps running including SmrtGuard, Google Mail and Google Sync – they will be having an affect. I think it’s fair to point out that battery is becoming an irrelevance nowadays, much to my annoyance. Any smartphone you’d care to mention is lucky if it gets through a full business day of usage. It’s not a RIM thing. It’s an industry thing.

I’m not particularly impressed with the camera. Like almost any smartphone out there, it’s nothing to write home about. I won’t bore you with the megapixels. It’s irrelevant. The pictures are ‘ok’. They’re par for the course. Expect decent photos but no more. The close-up option, for example, was laughably rubbish. It’s like the RIM engineers got to this point and didn’t go any further. I was trying to take a picture of a receipt and the camera simply wasn’t having it. I eventually had to use the touch-to-focus option on my iPhone 4 instead. So — don’t expect miracles.

There’s also an argument to say that the lack of ‘apps’ is a bit of a shortcoming. I’m half sold on this. Half. I do carry around an iPhone 4 precisely because of the app and media experience. However there’s a reason my Bold is my primary phone — messaging. Fundamentally, the number one app for me is messaging (email/Twitter/IM). Everything else is there — I use Google Maps a lot. Google Sync for my address book. BeReader to keep up with Google Reader. The Gmail app to access my back archive of mail across multiple accounts. Oh, and Evernote. I don’t miss the 400,000 other apps on the Bold because I use the primary function — messaging — so much.

The Package
As a package though, the Bold 9900 is simply magnificent.

If you’re a serious user of messaging functionality, definitely consider this device. I haven’t written about the email experience on the Bold because it’s not relevant — we all know RIM has this stuff down pat, nothing else comes close.

This is the smart workhorse. This is the machine you need to get shit done. If your primary need is to piss about with Angry Birds on the train home, then yeah, maybe you should be buying a £99 Android or a free iPhone 4. But if you’re like me — coming out of the office and wanting to race through your personal and work mail fast and get stuff sorted, seriously think about the new Bold.

If you’re a business person of some stature (and perhaps forced to carry a BlackBerry) make sure it’s the Bold. Do not accept anything else. Well, maybe the Torch if you like the slidey-keyboard. (I’ll be having a look at the new Torch shortly).

The recently launched Curves are nice, but if you’re a reader of Mobile Industry Review, yours should be the Bold 9900.

Accept nothing less!

Right then: What do you think? Are you with me?

Lookout Premium -- highly useful for Android users

Thanks to reader Mark for sending me over this story from Ars Technica. It describes how author Jon Barrow managed to eventually recover his lost phone using Plan B from Lookout Mobile Security.

Jon was lucky because he lost an Android phone — and since it had the latest version of the OS, he was able to remotely install Plan B. The software then responded to his location requests by sending him an email with a Google Map showing the phone’s precise location.

I swear by Smrtguard (which runs on multiple platforms) although I use it primarily on my BlackBerry. It reunited me with my pre-release BlackBerry 9780 review unit last year. (Read: I lost my phone in London!)

The problem, of course, is if you haven’t installed some tracking software on your phone (and you don’t have the capacity to remotely install some), then you’re well and truly screwed.

Therefore, here is a helpful guide. Do something about it today, right? It’ll be typical that you read this post, make a to-do item about it, then go out to lunch and lose your phone.

iPhone & iPad
You’re in luck because the geniuses at Apple have given you the Find my iPhone function. All you need to do is setup a MobileMe account on the iPhone, enable it with these instructions and boom, you’re done. If you lose your phone, you can either use the Find My iPhone app on another device to locate it, or you can visit www.me.com, login with your MobileMe credentials and locate the phone from there.

I’ve used this loads of times, most often when I can’t remember where I put my iPhones. It’s so useful to be able to get a general location (i.e. the phone IS at home) or the phone IS in the car.The Find My iPhone functionality is free of charge.

Android
Well, it seems like Jon from Ars Technica had a really good experience with Plan B — you can download that for free or, you can pick up the full version by downloading Lookout Premium ($2.99/month or $29.99/year). You can also pick up SmrtGuard for Android at a slightly more expensive $3.99/month.

These might seem costly, especially if you aren’t into buying apps, but you will rue the day, RUE the day, if you didn’t spent the two-quid or three-quid when you’ve stupidly lost your £600 top-of-the-range Android phone.

BlackBerry
I thoroughly recommend SmrtGuard for BlackBerry — that’s how I was able to recover my phone. I was actually in my ‘free 30 day trial’ when I lost and subsequently recovered the phone, so when I got home, I bought the full version. I felt it was only right. This was before RIM announced BlackBerry Protect, the equivalent of Find my iPhone for the BlackBerry. I tested it in Beta and I’ve been using it live and found it highly useful. I very much recommend it.

Windows Phone
Right then, I’m not so sure about Windows. I’m going to have to do some research on this one. Update: Duh. Of course, it’s built-in. I totally forgot. See below.

Samsung
Thanks to reader Nigel Jones who points out on Google+ that the Samsung Galaxy SII comes with a find-my-phone feature out of the box. I think we’re going to see more and more of the manufacturers include these services as standard.

It’s not just about location

One point — most of the providers of location/find-your-phone services haven’t stopped there. SmrtGuard, for instance, will backup your device content, so will Lookout and BlackBerry Protect. Most will also give you the option to remotely lock your phone, or have it play a sound to help you find it behind the sofa. SmrtGuard will even function as a panic-button, sending off a silent note for help across a ton of different channels. Lookout for Android will help prevent phishing and malware and it’ll scan your apps for telltale signs of mischief — something you really do need on Android.

This is one of those things that I strongly, strongly recommend you fix today. Go and find one of these services, install it, test it and relax.

Related Solutions
Update: There’s quite a wealth of possibilities out there — here are a few others I’ve come across (or been sent):

- itrack Protect, www.itrackprotect.com
This is a hugely comprehensive product offering aimed at anyone who’s serious about tracking location. It can most certainly be used personally — for example, I could imagine installing this on my child’s phone. However I think itrack will be absolutely perfect for business purposes, especially since it’s based on installable software that runs on your PC (to then access the itrack information). So if you run a team of social workers who’re forever finding themselves in dodgy situations or a team of lone workers, this looks to be immensely ideal. The fundamental difference with this product is you don’t need to mess around with application installs. It uses the mobile network to get the phone’s position (so the device is largely irrelevant).

- Track and Protect by Klomptek, trackandprotect.com
Produced by mobile phone geniuses Klomptek, this one was suggested by Rafe Blandford. He’s done a thorough review. The service offers a range of facilities including lock, lock+alarm, unlock, wipe, callback and so on. I particularly like the ability to see remote camera shots sent from the phone. That is really, really smart. (Works on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian)

- Windows Phone
Thank you to @facefacts who points out that Windows Phone has the find & location functions built-in — OF COURSE it does — duh, silly me. I completely forgot. I even have this activated on my Windows Phone. Just make sure you’ve ticked the right options. Here are the full details.

- AndroidLost, androidlost.com
A work in-progress (but nevertheless live) that includes some phenomenally cool features. For example, using the text-to-speech functionality, you can have your phone remotely say, “Hello! Help! I am lost!” in that semi-creepy computer voice. Very cool indeed. It looks to be free — and for Android only.

- Theft Aware, theftaware.com
Suggested by reader @aktiwary, Theft Aware looks to be seriously smart. It’s apparently completely invisible so if your phone is stolen, the thief is going to find it incredibly difficult to disable. You can configure everything remotely via SMS. The list of features is absolutely huge. I particularly like the idea of making my phone remotely place a hidden call to me so I can hear what the thief is up to! Theft Aware works on Android and Symbian.

- WaveSecure, wavesecure.com
This is now owned by McAfee and supports probably the widest array of platforms: Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows, Java and Android. It’s $19.90 a year and it delivers the standard range of features you’d expect (backup, locate, wipe). It also includes an anti-installation feature to prevent pesky thieves from removing the app.

- PreyProject, preyproject.com
Looks to be one of the most comprehensive cross-device offerings. It’ll work on your Android phone, but it’ll also secure your Mac, Windows, Linux or Ubuntu laptops. It’s when you consider the theft of a laptop that Prey really comes into it’s own. The app will do things like hide your Outlook or Thunderbird data. Precisely the sort of thing you want to happen if it’s been stolen. At the same time, you’ll get precise geolocation updates and you’ll even get photos of the thieves and screenshots of their actions. Starts at $5/month for 3 devices (which is pretty reasonable if you’ve got one Android phone and, say, two laptops, that you want to protect).

- Gadgettrak, gadgettrak.com
Another provider focusing on iOS devices alongside RIM, Android, Windows and Mac — highly useful if you’d like to protect multiple devices. There’s a 7-day free trial and then the desktop service costs $19.95/year and the mobile service $19.95. There’s also a family pack option. I very much like their Camera Serial Number Search — which lets you search the internet for people who’ve taken photos using your (stolen) camera. Smart.

Related to Gadgettrak, this Tumblr blog details a live scenario of some stolen phones. It’s very cool to see the technology in action.

- BitDefender, m.bitdefender.com
The team at BitDefender has just added two new features to it’s MobileSecurity for Android BETA offering: Anti-theft allows users to easily track the location of their device and remotely wipe as necessary, plus users can now scan their SD Card to protect against malware.

If you’ve got suggestions for other services for readers to consider, please do drop me a note or leave a comment below and I’ll update the post.

Now then, here’s what you need to do. Definitely watch the video. Keep the sound down low, there’s nothing interesting there. I’d like you to spend a bit of time admiring the device. Whether it’s official or not, this is a super exercise. I want you to have a close look and see if anything happens to your mindset.

For me, my mindset shifted slightly on Nokia. If they can provide an N9 (or, for that matter, an N8) running Windows Phone 7, with a brilliant, BRILLIANT camera experience, along with the usual Nokia gubbins (decent call quality, battery, machinery) then I’m interested. Very interested.

So whether it’s real or imagined, it’s rather exciting to explore the possibility of Nokia releasing a simply brilliant top-of-the-line device into the market.

Windows Phone 7 is good. It’s rather elegant. Evolve the experience to include Nokia’s historic device strengths and the offering becomes compelling.

My worry is that Nokia will actually ship a mid-level ‘meh’ device that plays well with the bottom end of the market but cannot be spoken of in the same breath as iPhone 5 or one of the HTC Android handsets. The media will bury Nokia. (Incidentally, this is an issue that Rafe Blandford and I almost came to blows over — in a constructive manner — on a recent 361 Degrees podcast. Do check it out!)

Here’s the embed video:

Recycling is nothing new — and especially in terms of donating to charity. It’s nice to see Vodafone aligning themselves with a single decent cause (WWF-UK).

You can hand in your old devices at any one of the 380 Vodafone UK shops, or — if you like, just stick the phone in an envelope and address it to, “Freepost Vodafone Recycling”.

That’s pretty cool. No arsing around with postcodes or any of that jazz.

WWF UK will get around £9 per handset. That’s highly approximate. I wonder if someone donates an iPhone 4, does WWF still only get £9? The cynics might say that this is a rather low amount given a recycled iPhone 4 will command hundreds of pounds in resale value. Given that Vodafone will handle all the logistics and the charity just has to take a lump sum, I think it’s a worthwhile arrangement.

The deal could be worth upwards of almost a million quid, especially since Vodafone recycles about 100,000 handsets a year.

So if you’ve got any old handsets lying around, think about the Tigers.

Nice one Vodafone.

I’ll let you know what it’s like. More information over at Johnsphones.com.

I usually carry a minimum of two handsets: A BlackBerry Bold and an iPhone 4. Between them, I have everything I generally need to run my businesses wherever I am.

When I’m on the train, I’ll often sit and use the iPhone and have the Bold in reserve — often sitting on my leg, or sometimes sitting on the empty seat next to me. Just for easy access. I know this is silly. I still do it.

“One of these days,” I tell myself, “I’m going to get up and walk out of the train carriage forgetting my BlackBerry.” Yeah.

The Here and Now

Let’s fast forward to this morning. I got on the train. I did some work on both phones. I got off the train at Waterloo Station, hopped on to the Waterloo & City Line and I was walking along the side of the Bank of England about 10 minutes later.

All was good. Until, that is, I thought, “Where is my BlackBerry?”

I bet you do this to, right? Now and again, you have to just check. Just in case. I patted my suit pocket. And then I broke out into the full where-is-my-phone pocket patting dance.

I *had* my iPhone. I couldn’t find my BlackBerry.

Arse.

“I’ve been pickpocketed,” I thought, “The arses!” I exclaimed to myself.

And then I remembered that the BlackBerry I’m using right now is the 9780 — the all new (and still reasonably exclusive) BlackBerry Bold running OS 6.0 (it is brilliant, by the way). I’m testing the phone. It’s a tester unit from RIM.

Double arse.

That’s going to be at least £400 to replace. Add into the embarrassment of having to phone RIM and explain. Oh dear.

The Realisation

That’s when I realised: I must have left the phone on the train. I broke out into a sweat. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so stupid.

The adrenalin began to surge. I kid ye not. I began to develop a mild panic.

And then I remembered Smrtguard.

That’s not a typo.

Last night at about 1am in the morning, I was installing applications on the new Bold and thought I should see if BlackBerry Protect was available yet. Just in case I lost the phone. It’s not available yet. So I remembered Smrtguard from a RIM briefing a while ago – looked it up, installed it, activated and went to bed.

The Solution

Smrtguard — as the name suggests — is a ‘smart’ guard for your BlackBerry or Android device offering data backup and device recovery facilities. Standing next to the Bank of England, I whipped out the iPhone and typed in Smrtguard.com. This took a few attempts because the phone’s auto-correct function really, really doesn’t like ‘Smrtguard’. And I had to manually disable the piece-of-rubbish ‘The Cloud’ WiFi service which kept on popping up and interrupting me. I’ve no trouble with The Cloud, but I want the whole thing to be seamless. Having to login every time I walk 100 paces is an area supposed to have ‘blanket WiFi coverage’ is highly frustrating.

I logged into Smrtguard wondering just how reliable the service would be.

I immediately clicked on the ‘Locate my phone’ option. A message appeared saying this instruction had been sent to my handset.

I began to calm a little.

Then I clicked on ‘Location’ to see where my phone was.

I got some GPS coordinates and a street name. I began to panic — had some arse picked up the phone and legged it? Assuming I’d left it on the train? If so, do I locate him? Do I go to where he is? Is he, right now trying to flog the 9780 in a pub somewhere near Waterloo?

I clicked into the location detail and browsed the Google Map.

It explained that my handset’s coverage was low (so it was probably inside or undercover). It also determined my handset was at Waterloo Station.

What A Difference 20 Seconds Makes

Phew! So the phone is *at* Waterloo. I’d determined this much. Excellent.

And then I realised the phone might still be on the train, where I left it. In which case, that train might leave any time.

I hopped into a taxi and raced to Waterloo, glued to my Smrtguard.com homepage watching for any movement. There was none. I also instructed the handset to lock itself via the Smrtguard service. I got email confirmation right-away.

At Waterloo Station, I ran to the group of platforms where I’d arrived just a few minutes ago, worrying that the train was moments away from leaving. In fact, I didn’t know if the train on Platform 16 was the same one. I didn’t know what carriage I’d been sitting in.

I spoke to the attendant by the security gates and he pointed me toward the red cleaning hut, half-way up Platform 16, “Check with them Sir!”

As I walked along the platform, I brought up Smrtguard.com again and tapped on the ‘audio ping’ button. This makes your phone start making a rather annoying alarm sound continuously to help find it. (I could also have instructed the phone to do a remote backup too.)

I arrived at the cleaning hut and knocked on the door.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

“Yes?” said a chap, popping his head out.

“Er, I left my phone on that train about 20 minutes ago,” I said, pointing to the train. I could hear a somewhat annoying ‘errrrp, errrp, errrp’ sound coming from within the hut. The chap glanced to his right involuntarily. I experienced a momentary blip of hope. The phone could very well still be on the train — which was due to leave in under 4 minutes. On the other hand, that COULD be my phone beeping away.

“What kind of phone?” the chap asked.

“BlackBerry Bold — black,” I replied, before chancing my arm, “It’s the one that’s beeping rather loudly.”

The chap shut the door for a moment.

“This it?” He said, holding it out.

Phew

I thanked the chap profusely. His colleagues came out to say hello. I thanked them too. I tried to give the cleaner who picked up the phone the £20 I had in my pocket as thanks. He wouldn’t accept it.

“Just doing my job Sir, very kind but no thank you!”

I tried to thrust the cash into this hand. But he was firm.

I thanked him again, the stress I’d been feeling evaporating quickly.

Smrtguard: It Really Works

Well then, I can’t tell you how delighted I am that I installed Smrtguard. I’m a MobileMe subscriber so I’ve got the ‘Find My iPhone’ functionality activated on the iPhone 4 (that’s come in handy a few times too) but I hadn’t bothered putting anything on the BlackBerry until last night. I’m so glad I did.

Now then, if your BlackBerry or Android device doesn’t already have something like this — I strongly recommend you take a bit of time and install Smrtguard or something similar. The basic Smrtguard service is free — you need to subscribe for the antivirus/data backup features.

Thank you Smrtguard!

[Note: To those who experienced this 'real time' with me via Twitter, I wrote this post on Monday 10th -- but only just published today. Just in case you were wondering]

Note: This is my second ever sponsored post here on Mobile Industry Review. I had some good feedback after the last one a few months ago so here we go. This one is on behalf of the team at the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site. (It does what it says on the tin).

I’ve been recycling my handsets for quite a while. Sometimes I’ll hand them to friends and family, other times I’ll send them off to one of the cash-for-your-phone places. It’s become so mainstream nowadays that I know many colleagues who’ve actually use the services to help them upgrade their devices.

For instance, one friend walked into a mobile store recently to upgrade his iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4. Now, I can’t recall if it was an operator store or if it was a handset retailer like Phones4U or Carphone Warehouse, however, he managed to avoid the up-front fee for the new iPhone 4 (About £120 for him) by handling them his 3GS during the transaction. He was absolutely ecstatic. I’m not sure if his girlfriend was that impressed at the concept as I reckon she was hoping to get it.

There’s substantial re-sale value in your old 3G, 3GS — indeed almost any device that’s 1-2 years old. Not many people know the true value though — something many companies have been able to turn into a substantial profit. For example, when I got my new handset from one UK operator, it came with a prepaid bag for the old one. The intent being I should stuff it into the bag and then send it to them. And they’d then be able to resell the device for a good bit of cash.

Of course there’s a ton of charities that most certainly benefit from this revenue stream too, especially if you can’t be bothered with the ‘hassle’ of posting your handset.

I’ve used a few different services and got the cash into my back account about a week after I sent them. Pretty smart.

Which brings me to the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site. Now, I say it does-what-it-says-on-the-tin (if you’re not familiar with the phrase, see Ronseal), because that’s all the site does: You choose your handset and the site then displays a list of companies who’ll buy your handset from you along with the prices they’re prepared to pay.

It does actually pay to shop around. For example, I clicked on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro handset. MirrorGoGreen will offer you £45 (and they’ve got a one-star rating) whilst Envirofone (I’ve used them before) will offer you £60.04. Fonehub will stump up a whopping £78.

What’s the value of your iPhone 4 32GB? Surprisingly high. Almost £370 from Money3MyMobile (four star rating). And if you’re one of the millions with an iPhone 3GS 16GB, you might think they’re worth next-to-nothing… but SellOldPhone.co.uk (four stars too) will send you £220 for it.

£220! I think I’ve got two of these sitting gathering dust!

That’s enough to seriously cover the cost of the new iPhone 4 and a few months of line rental depending on what price plan you select.

So when you’re in the mood to clear out your gadget closet, do check out the Mobile Phone Recycling Comparison site and see what you could earn.

Well then I’ve now had the Samsung Omnia 7 from Three for just under a fortnight and I’m very much enjoying the Windows Phone experience. This has been aided in no small part by the riotous Three data network upon which the Omnia has been screaming with joy. Seeing the 3G+ icon and watching the operating system’s little blue dots zip along swiftly has made me feel very good.

My primary handset is a BlackBerry (Torch — at the moment) on Vodafone’s slightly ailing data network that, no matter what awards they purport to have won, doesn’t always feel at all fast. Especially when I’m in Richmond, where Vodafone hasn’t quite discovered the secret of telecommunications beyond a creaking ‘no signal’ Edge network. In order to try and give the Omnia a bit of a work out, I forwarded all my calls.

And whilst I am most sincerely wedded to RIM’s QWERTY messaging devices, I really did appreciate the Omnia running Windows Phone 7. The screen is huge and wonderfully lit. The curving on the casing makes it feel a lot thinner than anything else in it’s class. The camera is good. The operating system does not get in the way of things happening. Now and again I had to relax into the Microsoft Bosom and accept that it-will-work, rather than demanding some kind of clear demonstration of success. For example, when you tap the little dots to the right of the screen whilst viewing a photo, you are presented with the option to share a photo with one-tap. I would routinely tap to share the photo to my Windows SkyDrive, see the animated blue dots at the top of the screen dance a little and then boom… I’d be … well. I just worried that the photo hadn’t actually uploaded. My worries were unfounded though. It all just works. Obviously some kind of background process was in operation as I didn’t stay on the screen too long. Plus Three’s data network makes short work of even the largest files, especially at 3.5G+ rates.

During setup I configured my ‘Live’ account (e.g. my Hotmail address) and was rather impressed to see my Hotmail contacts already waiting for me when I hit ‘People’. Those Hotmail (or MSN) contacts who’d recently changed their status were also displayed. Responding to their updates requires just a tap. Adding in Google or Facebook (or, in my case, multiple Google Apps accounts) was ridiculously simple. Just the username and password, everything else is sorted by the OS — no exceptions. Contacts were synched, calendars were updated — again, everything just worked. I didn’t have to organise anything — and since most of my address book records are reasonably well organised, the People app worked beautifully, collecting information from Facebook, two Googles Apps accounts and Windows Live into one contact record.

Sharing is a delight. Indeed I felt like I wanted to do more sharing and more interaction thanks to the operating system.

I didn’t tire of the interface either. I was a little concerned about how I would feel about the ‘swipe right/left’ UI that involves incomplete words. (Marketplace is titled ‘Marke’ — and you have to scroll right to see the rest of the word). It actually works really nicely. I’m particularly impressed at how the email works.

The little sounds and transitions are nice too. The way the screen builds when you turn the device, or if you send or delete an email is pleasing.

The Marketplace works swiftly and easily. No arsing around. No ‘would you like to install this application?’ and ‘are you sure’ silly prompts. Tap ‘install’ and woosh, the phone starts downloading and installing the app.

Keyboard input is painless and you really can type fast once you’ve got used to the keyboard — much like the iPhone. Although I really do like the auto-suggest options where the OS shows you an array of possible words. Very useful. Very quick.

The Maps app, powered by Bing, is very pleasing to look at. I like how the map fades in as you zoom and eventually turns to a satellite photo when you zoom closer. I was less impressed by Bing — when I was filming on camera I searched for ‘Tottenham Court Road, London’ and the only result Bing presented on the Maps was ‘Gala Casino, Tottenham Court Road’. Rubbish. Usable — because I could see Tottenham Court Road and the surrounding area, but a little bit silly. Come on Bing! Everything else — from finding my location to plotting directions worked fine.

I’m going to play a little more with ‘Office’ — Word, Excel and PowerPoint, along with Outlook and OneNote. I didn’t get much of a chance to use them during the two weeks as I was mostly stuck in my email, taking photos, answering calls or messing around with Marketplace.

Another element I need to examine more closely is the entertainment capabilities. I don’t have a credit card setup on Zune and I wasn’t able to add that from the device. And I’m an Apple user by default so I had to mess around with VMWare Fusion running Windows Vista to download Zune (the iTunes equivalent). I managed that, but not without a few Microsoftian hiccups (‘install service pack 3′, ‘install failed’, ‘seriously, install service pack 3′, ‘error’, ‘restart’, ‘install failed’). That is one area that the Windows Phone 7 team need to show to love. Carrier billing will no doubt fix that too. So I’ll add a credit card soon and give some of the games, paid-for apps and other content a test. From what I’ve seen of the Marketplace, it’s regularly updated and there’s lots to see.

I’m hearing lots of whispers about better-than-expected results for Windows Phone across the industry and — well, we’ll need to wait until sales figures are announced — but I wouldn’t be surprised if they show positive reception by consumers.

I used to have to hide my pained look whenever I came across someone who’d purchased a handset running Windows Mobile 6.5. Invariably the devices were phenomenally well specified but the slugging 6.5 was abhorrant. Now, when I come across consumers who’ve plumped for WP7, I am genuinely pleased for them — and they too appear to be happy.

My first impressions of Windows Phone? Excellent.

The Samsung Omnia 7? Top marks.

And Three? Yes, yes and thrice yes.

[I should point out that the areas I generally frequent have got really, really good 3.5G+ Three signal.]

I’ve done a video walkthrough of the phone and the OS — I’ll have that online shortly.

You can pick up a Samsung Omnia 7 free for £40/month on a 24-month contract with Three. That includes 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts, 1GB of data and 5,000 Three-to-Three minutes.

What a difference a few years makes, eh? 2 years ago I was going nuts at the LG Renoir launch, dismayed by the built-in limitations of the phone’s proprietary operating system yet delighted at the phone’s brilliant specifications.

Sort out the operating system and all of a sudden, the devices get a lot more interesting.

I’m not surprised, of course, to see LG participating in the Windows Phone launch today — after all, the company has been very vocal about it’s support for the beast that is Microsoft.

LG is releasing two key devices under the Optimus range — the Optimus 7 and the Optmius 7Q (the major difference is the built-in QWERTY-keyboard and a slightly smaller screen).

I haven’t had ‘hands on’ with the Optimus but it’s looking good. I’m particularly keen to try out the integrated DNLA technology and ‘Play To’:

With Play To, the DLNA-based multimedia sharing technology available only on LG Optimus 7 devices, users will have the most user-friendly file-sharing experience. LG is leading the innovation of DLNA technology by offering easy and intuitive settings for accessing this feature.

Play To lets users share multimedia files with other digital devices from the picture, video or music Hubs without having to access other menus. Users will be able to display videos and photos captured on their LG Optimus 7 or LG Optimus 7Q on a TV or enjoy music on their phones through their favourite speakers without wires.

Here’s the 7Q:

So it’s no surprise to see that Orange has partnered closely with Microsoft to deliver two new devices to market featuring Windows Phone 7.

Orange will be carrying the HTC Mozart and the Samsung Omnia 7 and they’ll be hitting stores by the 21st of October. They’ve also worked hard to deliver some additional Orange-related services that you’ll find pre-installed:

- Orange Wednesdays: 2-4-1 cinema ticket app – allowing you to read reviews, watch trailers as well as redeem 2-4-1 voucher all from your handset
- Orange Maps: Your personal navigation system, offering turn-by-turn GPS guidance
- Your Orange: to help you keep up-to-date and manage your Orange account – access help articles and get the latest info on your Magic Numbers
- Orange Daily: Bringing you a selection of at-a-glance news, sport and weather content as well as extras such as Wikipedia

Here’s the Samsung:

Meanwhile, the Samsung Omnia 7, featuring a 4.0″ Super AMOLED touch screen, 1 GHz processor will be available for free to customers who take out a £40 per month, 24 month price plan. The package includes 1200 any network call minutes, unlimited text, unlimited email, sat nav with Orange Maps as well as inclusive anytime internet browsing.

Here’s the HTC Mozart:

With a 3.7” WVGA resolution, Super LCD Display, 8 mega-pixel camera, Dolby sound and a 1GHz Processor, the HTC 7 Mozart, exclusive to Orange, is available for free to customers who take out a £35 per month 24 month price plan. The package includes 600 any network call minutes, unlimited text, unlimited email, sat nav with Orange Maps as well as inclusive anytime internet browsing.

More information? Keep watching http://shop.orange.co.uk/.

My first ever Windows Mobile device was a Compaq iPaq.

I really enjoyed being able to read my email on the iPaq. I used to sit on the tube or in the coffee shop writing emails, stabbing at the screen using the little stylus. When I got back to the office, I then did the ‘ActiveSync’ and boom, Outlook sent my emails.

And synching… goodness me synching was simply amazing. After years of messing around with archaic address book synching products for Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola (none of which *fully* worked), it was a delight to see my Outlook contacts replicated exactly on the iPaq.

I still remember where I was when I send and received my first mobile email via the iPaq: Just next to Starbucks on New Oxford Street. People sitting around me in the meeting were astonished as I carefully lined up my new Sony Ericsson’s infrared port with the iPaq’s infrared port. As if by magic — and over a 5 minute period — my email began to trickle in.

Just amazing!

Microsoft slowly lost its way as the market developed. For a long time, there was nothing better than an ‘SPV’ or any similar HTC device. I remember the first iPaq-with-a-modem that o2 sold, the ‘o2 XDA’ (HTC manufactured). I got that in the o2 Store on Chiswick High Road. I remember waiting breathlessly to see if the shop had any XDAs in stock and was elated when the chap walked out with one. Then there was the XDA II.

And then I hit BlackBerry. The RIM device just worked — super fast — and without having to do the rather annoying send-and-receive. Email just arrived. I went back to synching my own contacts manually with the BlackBerry, because the messaging experience was so good.

That’s when I began to leave Windows Mobile behind.

I still have a lot of love for the company, after all the benefits they afforded me. I really did appreciate being able to work remotely and answer email or telnet into a server via the XDA — annoying, but *possible*.

So with the introduction of Windows Phone 7, I am positive. Michael, our San Francisco-based contributor isn’t so happy. He’s of the mind that Apple will ‘crush’ Microsoft too.

I’m not so sure.

Michael comments that he has ‘heard many rumblings’ or ‘Microsoft essentially bribing codes to write for the new platform’. I wonder if that isn’t the reaction of a protectionist Apple fan, Michael?

Developing for other platforms is a total arse for many companies, especially when they don’t have adequate resource. So any financial assistance to help cover the costs of development on a new platform — Windows Phone 7, for example — will be appreciated by developers. It’s not just the developers though, the end consumers who buy the phones looking for apps and services to play with will definitely appreciate it too. I don’t think it’s a problem. In fact I positively encourage it.

There are many things to like in Windows Phone 7. I like the user interface. I like how they’ve made photos work. I like the device experience.

I don’t know if I’d use a Windows Phone 7 device myself. I think I need a little bit more geekery. But if my mother bought one, I reckon she would be reasonably delighted.

But how will consumers react?

Positively, I think.

Let’s get a look at the full announcements from Microsoft today and across this week.

Come on Microsoft!

Back at the beginning of this year, Google’s launch of the Nexus One sent shockwaves around the industry. Mobile operators were quaking in their boots. Quaking, I tell you. Not because of the Nexus One’s market leading features, no. But because of the manner in which Google decided to sell the device: Direct to the public via www.google.com/phone. It had the potential to completely change the game as I noted in my post, The new way to purchase your mobile phone.

How times change. I posted that on the 5th of January. Four months later, Google’s direct-to-customer plans were in tatters on the floor with their admission that they’d screwed it all up royally.

Representatives of mobile operators from across the planet were calling me with their concerns, wondering what I thought. They were panicking about the very clear danger of whole segments of their customer base migrating to a beautiful google.com/phone experience and simply treating their operator as a pipe. Dumb or not, the concept behind google.com/phone deliberately made the operator an also-ran semi-irrelevance in the transaction. How many consumers, drawn by the promise of the Nexus One and the ‘Google Experience’ would churn to deliver their loyalty first to Google and then second to the operator? It was a very real issue that had many in the industry frothing at the mouth with concern.

But then reality hit Google in the form of consumers wanting stuff. All of a sudden, Google — the multi-billion dollar giant that had never handled anything physical beyond hiring a really good Chef — was having to deal with screw-up after screw-up. Reader Patrick contributed to the short post I did on Friday explaining that, “A friend of mine in South Africa got his handset shipped to Serbia.”

Not good. It didn’t end there for Patrick. He’s got another friend in Singapore who had his Nexus One delivered by mistake to somewhere in Europe.

Not good at all.

What were Google thinking? When you sell someone a $600 handset, you do need to make sure it arrives. Ideally in the same country. At the same address as the billing statement too. I wonder if Google thought they’d sell 100 units in total and that they’d simply address the deliveries by hand and ship them using the Google UPS account?

The moment these kind of crazy stories began hitting the web, mobile operators around the planet began sleeping easier. One thing mobile operators can do is manage tens of millions of customers without breaking a sweat.

Google’s announcement last week closed the box on the google.com/phone endeavour so if you’d like to get hold of a Nexus One, the chances are, you’ll shortly be able to get the device from your favourite operator. You can pick one up right now free on a £35/month 2-year deal from Vodafone UK.

I’m disappointed that Google didn’t sort out the problems and stick to their original plan. The company has — you imagine — substantial resource at it’s fingertips to make sure this kind of thing could be done effectively. It would have been really interesting to see what kind of integration Google could have done with the mobile operators. Could I, for example, have been able to login to my google.com/phone account to check my minutes and change my price plan? Could I buy a ‘world account’ upgrade from Google for my Nexus One to give me unlimited global data usage for $150/month on top of my standard contract fees? It’d have really liked to have seen some dramatically cool innovation. Google, together with Apple, could really have changed the dynamic of the marketplace.

For now, though, it’s one less thing to worry about for the mobile operators.

What a shame, Google. What a real shame.

Mobile Industry Review is, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know, a holster free zone.

Have a watch and do forward to anyone you know who continues to commit the mobile fashion crime of the century…

“Through optimal cellular positioning, you answer calls in under a second. Anything more than that and you might as well be using smoke signals.”

Heh.

That’s it: Thank you for coming, mobile operators, thank you for coming. You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’. Well.. not yet. But do look out for the big G.

With the Nexus One, Google has ushered in an entirely new way of buying a consumer handset: From their website in 6 clicks.

Shit!

Is it that simple? Yes.

You visit Google.com/phone and select your financing option. You either buy your phone outright, or you get it financed by a bankmobile operator that also supplies your voice and data connection.

If you’d like a Nexus One — Google’s newest device — they’re shipping right now. You buy it from Google. Not from your operator.

Your operator is an also-ran. The operator has been relegated to bit-part status in the new Google process. It’s like choosing whether you want to pay with MasterCard or Visa. It doesn’t make much difference. Indeed you can never remember if your Capital One is Visa or MasterCard… pull it out your wallet — oh, it’s Visa — right then, Visa it is.

It won’t be long until I’ll just pay Google. I mean, what is the sodding point messing around choosing operators when Google just sorts it out.

Yes, we’ve had decades and billions of marketing dollars spent making sure we ‘care’ what operator we select. But, again — like any commodity, the reality is there isn’t much difference between operators. Who do you buy your electricity from? In the UK, the market has been opened to competition so instead of one supplier for an area, you can actually choose to pay a whole array of different suppliers. Most people stick with what’s easiest.

When it comes to google.com/phone, that’s what a lot of consumers will do.

I think it’ll be a little while before consumers — the normobs, the Great Unwashed — descend on and begin relying upon Google.com/phone for their telecommunications needs.

You can see it happening though.

You can see the strategy.

If you, as an operator, are not on the Google.com/phone page, then you’ve got a problem. 100% of people buying through this mechanism will never, ever choose you.

And Vodafone’s done the European deal, it seems.

Soon you’ll be able to buy all manner of handsets through Google.com/phone. All through a nice slick 6-step interface and powered by your Google Checkout account.

There are pitfalls of course. Your average mobile operator is — by now — pretty good at dealing with fulfilment. If I phone 3 at 11am on Monday and arrange for a new handset, provided it’s in stock, it’ll be at my door by 9am on Tuesday. Operators also have the rest of the fulfilment stream managed reasonably well. How will Google handle returns? Can I phone Google and complain about lack of T-Mobile signal? Where does my relationship lie with the transaction?

The overriding issue with Google is that they don’t give a stuff about the mobile operator. The mobile operators are standing in Google’s way. Google’s focus is — as commented via the Gizmodo coverage of the live event today — mobile advertising revenue. They are making a small margin on unit sales, but, “making sure people get access to Google services and get online is their #1 priority.”

To put this in perspective, here’s another quote from today’s event:

People search the web 30x more on an Android phone than they do on a feature phone.

The concept is not surprising. A shitfeature phone is rubbish for searching online. Oh the browser can handle displaying Google, but when it comes to anything else — and in particular, browsing search results featuring Google Ads — the devices are useless.

The fact Google report 30x more searches is quite surprising. Yet I can believe that figure. And goodness me when you start counting the billions of dollars of mobile ad revenue to be had over the next 5-10 years, yeah… Google definitely needed to wade into the existing marketplace more or less hampered by the operators.

Putting Google as the search engine of choice on the operator portal has been useful, no doubt. But I can certainly understand this strategy. If anything it points to the commercial imperative Google feels as they analyse the growth and potential of the mobile world.

Fascinating times.

If you’d like to read Google’s viewpoint, the team over at the Official Google Blog have prepared an overview of today’s announcement. It really does make interesting reading, especially when you read between the lines. Here it is: Our new approach to buying a mobile phone.

Like most mobile geeks, I’m really enjoying all the Google Nexus One news; it’s starting to sound like a very nice device, and it’s obviously a very interesting move by Google. Seeing their vision of what a modern mobile device should be — and how far Google feel they can push their services into our pockets will be fascinating to see.

I’ve already pretty much decided that I’m going to give the Nexus One / HTC Passion — or whatever it ends up being called — a miss though. Not because I’m a total Apple fanboy, or because I’m one of those crazies worried about giving Google too much access to my data – I’m a very heavy user of all of Google’s services, and have been ever since I opened my first Gmail account back in 2005.

Why the reluctance then?  Android has many positives – mobile Gmail is great, Google Maps on Android is better than on iPhone, multitasking rocks and Android’s notification system is just plain brilliant.  But at the end of the day – from my experience (G1, HTC Magic and HTC Hero) – Android is actually a pretty sucky phone.

I think Ewan hit the nail on the head yesterday:

My biggest concern with Google is their apparent inability to bring anything to market that is actually ready for consumers to use. I’m talking, of course, about the perennial ‘beta’ labels that populate their technology. This beta policy makes a ton of sense — and I think the majority of geeks like me are thoroughly delighted to see the company make frequent updates to their services. I wonder, then, how they’re reacting to delivering a physical product that can’t be changed.

To say that the Android phone experience is a bit unpolished (even when tarted up by HTC) would be a massive complement; take the iPhone away from your ear to “press option 3 to speak to an advisor” and the screen lights up ready for use – easy!  Try the same trick with an HTC Hero and the screen will have locked.  Go to press the phones usual screen unlock key and you’ll often have killed the call.   It’s this kind of thoughtfulness that I think Android phones will always lack, mainly because Android devs don’t have a maniacal Steve Jobs standing over them yelling – “not good enough, do it again.”

The iPhone might have limitations — and the App approval process does appear to make some rather perverse decisions — but Apple’s rigid control of the platform undoubtedly makes it slicker.  We had to wait far too long for ‘copy and paste’ to appear, but when it did it was perfect.  Does any other device honestly have this feature implemented as well as the iPhone?

I’m also rather dubious about one of the Nexus One’s really big selling points — availability as a carrier unlocked device.  If this is true I really applaud the move, it could be a watershed moment for the telco industry, but I’m just not sure Google will be able to pull this off.  They don’t have consumer goods distribution experience; I suppose they could rely on HTC’s sales channels, but this would be a really big ask.   Google has previously given away unlocked Android devices to developers only, could they be dong the same with the Nexus One, planning to release the device to the public via one of the carriers (my money would be on T-Mobile)?

Then there is my final nagging doubt; good as the Nexus One may be, in my mind it’s really a second generation future mobile device (1st gen = iPhone, 2nd gen = iPhone 3G/3GS).   I’m sure it will stack up well against the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre etc, but really we’re still watching Android play catch-up.

I still predict that the really big mobile news of 2010 will be the major update Apple announces to the iPhone platform in June, so for the meantime I’m sticking with Apple.

Will this be $100 for the actual device?  Or $100 plus a 2-year contract?  That much is unclear.  But I’ll be sitting hoping that I can soon walk into Walgreens in San Francisco and buy a $89 Samsung Android handset PAYG.  That’ll be very interesting for the market dynamics.

The Reclaim’s configuration is not going to last, however. Casey Ryan, the product manager for the Reclaim at Samsung, said that by next year, touch-screen phones, with full Web browsers running the Android operating system will be available for well under $100.

via What’s Green, Made of Corn and Has Buttons? – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

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!

I am off to visit a Vodafone store to find out what’s going on with my five lines. I’m going to change around some of the price plans and decommission the lines I don’t need.

I’ve also finally recognised that I don’t actually use 3,000 mobile minutes per month, nor do I need unlimited landline minutes. That, plus 500 texts per month. This harks back to a time when Vodafone insisted on charging 12.5 pence (inc VAT) per text and a whopping 35p (plus VAT) per minute to talk to someone on another mobile network here in the UK.

Crazy.

Things are better. We’ve moved on. Whilst a lot of the old price plan penalties still exist, the pay monthly plans are a lot, lot more modern — for instance, £25 gets you 600 minutes to anyone and unlimited texts.

I’ve been mentally sticking my head in the sand every time the Vodafone bill hits my back account. Last month it was 600+ pounds. That’s just silly.

Now I’ve got a few days spare before the meetings begin in earnest, I’m going to sort this out.

It’s possible to do this on the phone, but I can’t easily visualise the lines, the price plans and so on — and I don’t want to waste the time of their expert customer services people.

I would use their online account management facilities but, as everyone on the planet knows, Vodafone UK’s online service is more or less bollocks. It looks to me as though it’s held together with a string of Oracle databases and some sellotape.

I’m able to browse the phone numbers of the lines on my account. I’m also able to see it’s related price plan. But if I try to change anything, I get an error message.

This error message has been particularly effective at preventing me from doing anything to my account for a good few months.

So it’s off to a store. I’ll let you know how I get on.

I might even pick up a new G2.

Here’s a pic:

I was Palo Alto for a few meetings, one with a mobile titan (ID not public alas). The chap was running 30 minutes late (”Don’t worry, I’ll hit up* the Apple store”, I told him). I’d arrived in by the rather efficient ‘CalTrain’ early anyway so I strolled up University Avenue toward the Apple store.

I was having a look in the shop windows during the stroll and realised I was passing the Verizon Wireless store.

“Screw it,” I thought, “I’ve got some time, let’s go and have a look at Mr CDMA’s offerings.”

I arrived into the store and was immediately greeted by a lady with a clipboard. This is the way things work in America. At least, it’s been my experience with Sprint as well as Verizon.

(Conversations paraphrased from memory)

“How may I help you today?” the nice spritely shiny lady asked, clipboard and pen poised.

“Er I’m British,” I said. Best to get that off my chest.

She did a slow knowing nod.

British = Useless to Verizon. They either want to spend a good 20 minutes selling you a two-year credit agreement (and a handset) or get you out of the shop as quickly as possible with a prepay deal.

But if you’re foreign it’s a no-go. They don’t want your business. You need a US social security number to get started with them. This is fair enough — there are 303 million folk in the country, enough to be getting on with.

Even if you offer to prepay a 2-year contract in advance (e.g. $200 for a Storm on $80 a month is $2120. Offer them $3,000 up front and they’ll decline. Their system, I’m told, doesn’t ‘work that way’).

Anyway. I explained I was British and the lady put down her pen and let me pass.

Normally she’d have been ticking various boxes relating to what I was looking for. Then she’ll hand the resulting form to a sales chappy who, suitably briefed, will help me out.

I took a stroll about the place. I admired a few handsets. I glanced once or twice at the Storm, their handset du jour. Well, actually, their handset du year.

I had a look at the LG Versa.

“Can I help you, sir?”

I turned and found a helpful looking sales chap on my elbow.

“Er,” I said with continued embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I’m British, so… er…”

“Oh,” the chap said, eyes widening.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “It’s prepay or nothing, I know.”

I hung my head slightly as the chap nodded with me in sympathy.

With a tough of benevolence, he said I should ask him if I needed any help.

I thanked him.

“Alas, I’m a pariah,” I mumbled to myself, gazing over at the Samsung Omnia on the shelf. Windows Mobile, I know, but it thought it’d be worth a look. I went back to the Storm.

$199 on a 2-year contract.

I started selling it to myself.

“You have a duty to, you know, play about with these things,” I reasoned, calculating whether I really wanted to spunk something like $2,000 on ‘playing about’.

I only found out later that you could get a Blackberry Storm for $449 up-front on a month-to-month agreement. That, provided Verizon would have done a deal with an alien like me, would have bee interesting. I’d still have had quite a problem swallowing $449 unless I was aiming to use it as a primary device.

My key issue is that I’ve never actually used a Verizon handset for more than a day or so — and they’ve been rubbish prepay handsets. I’ve never really tried out the Verizon data network, for example. So I was warm.

But luckily for my bank balance, nobody tried to sell me a month-to-month Storm.

In fact, they’re not selling the Storm in Palo Alto. Although it’s on display, it’s not for sale. The sales team will do their best to avoid selling you one.

Is that a sweeping statement? Yes. Of course Verizon are selling Storms — by the bucketload by all accounts. Just not to me. And definitely not to the customer who came in after me.

I was pondering the possibility of a Windows Mobile handset when I heard a chap come into the shop. I glanced round as he approached me and the salesman who’d (sensibly?) given up on me.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m after a G-3 phone, the Blackberry Storm?”

“Right,” said the salesperson, “Well…”

“This is it here, is it?” the buyer said. He’d walked straight to it and was ready for the sale. He’d clearly seen it on television or been recommended it. The fact he got the ‘G-3′ (”3G”) bit wrong indicated an element of normob (”normal mobile user”) in his makeup. He knew what he wanted. He knew 3G, however you said it, was the way ahead. He was fondling the device and wanted to buy one.

“Er, you don’t want the Blackberry Storm,” said the salesman to the surprise of the buyer, “It’s buggy,” he continued.

“Buggy? Ah yeah..” said the buyer. He’d heard of that too and asked, “When will they bring out a software upgrade?”.

“Errrrr,” said the salesman, “Is it a touchscreen phone you’re looking for?” he said, beckoning the buyer to the other side of the store.

I missed a bit of their conversation — but I could make out the fact the salesman was trying to sell him some type of LG touchscreen.

The buyer did some quick evaluation before walking back to the Storm.

“Nah, tell me about the Storm?”

“It’s buggy, you don’t want that,” the salesman said.

“Right, but it works?” said the buyer. He clearly *just* wanted one. He was giving all the I-don’t-mind hints.

At that point I left the store.

I couldn’t handle it.

I was having a lot of trouble keeping my mouth shut and not slapping the salesman with a handy wet fish a few times.

As I left, the buyer was fondling the Storm clearly in I WILL BUY THIS PHONE mode. I think the salesman had relented at this point as I just caught, “Well, the touchscreen clicks when you press on it, the iPhone doesn’t have that,” as I walked out the door.

Well I never.

Palo Alto, spiritual home to Silicon Valley (and actual home to, amongst others, HP’s worldwide headquarters). By all means discourage the good normob people of Shitsville, Middle America, to avoid getting the Storm (they’ll only return it when they can’t figure out the keyboard). But in Palo Alto? When the chap strides in demanding a Storm? Give him one. Be pleased he’s aiming to swap from T-Mobile (he was) to Verizon instead of T-Mobile or, worse… the iPhone collective that is AT&T.

An interesting experience.

In the interests of fairness I am going to see if I can swim the myriad Verizon Wireless PR channels and get a hold of a Blackberry Storm to use for a month or so. I’ll keep you updated.

Meanwhile I encourage you to pop into your nearest Verizon store and ask for a Storm and report back your experiences. My experience today must surely have been an exception.

* “Hit up” — a fancy wanna-be-cool American way of saying “visit/talk to/connect with”.

2. The megapixel on the camera is so low the very first pin hole camera takes a better shot

3. One of the music formats accepted by the phone is vinyl

4. The phone is so old you have to call the operator to be put through

5. Its dated screen isn’t in monochrome, it’s actually in black and white

6. The mobile’s memory is so tiny, its size is measure in bytes and not megabytes

7. Battery life is so bad on the phone after a full charge it only lasts for one task, receiving a single text message

8. The Y2K bug is still a major threat to the mobile

9. It’s so old there’s a dial on the handset

10. The phone’s address book has only room for one number, and it’s your own

All around, bemused skiers hoping off the ski lift nearby watched, wondering what the hell I was doing.

I was testing the XP1.

After stamping away for a good few minutes, I then picked it up and promptly called my mother back in the UK.

No problem. Clear, excellent call quality. I hadn’t damaged the device one jot.

So when the new XP3 arrived — the first waterproof (to 1 metre) handset I’ve ever come across — I was delighted to take delivery and check it out with MIR contributor Ed Hodges.

In this video today, we open up the box and have a play.

Tomorrow, see what happens when we actually put the XP3 in a load of water and try and call it.

Popular news-blog site Gizmodo has it from MS there will be no Zune phone at CES in January next year after all.

Despite the rumour mill reaching Defcon 5 of late over the appearance of the multimedia mobile phone by Microsoft, it now appears that Brian Seitz , Group Manager of Zune has now officially denied it. With the likelihood of a Zune phone making an appearance of that of the Dodo walking this Earth once again.

There were some supposed news anal-ysts of late that started all the gossip, with even CNBC joining the ranks. All with the reports of some hardware noted that could have, might have, should have been Zune related.

This apparently started with details of ‘Project Pink’ being marked for CES, which now seems to be just a range of services that could allow a Zune-esque services a to run on a Windows Mobile platform. Hurrah!

The site has even stated from a source over at ZDNET that this could still make the light of day at CES after all, despite the phone not being around. There’s even the possibility of Zune like services running on other mobile platforms too.

See more on the story here.

To add another tentative link to a flightless bird, perhaps we could even see Zune running on Android’s Penguin based OS as well.

There is ONLY so much time and energy I can give a sodding ‘Smartphone’ before it winds me up.

Nothing on Earth in the Smartphone category seems to satisfy me.

I want all these whizzy mobile ‘toys’ — applications, extensions, fast data, decent camera — and whilst your average iPhone, T-Mobile G1 or Blackbery Bold do certainly meet the grade on paper, they don’t make the MacLeod cut.

No way.

Ultimately, business is all about talking. It’s about the spoken word. It doesn’t matter how many texts or tweets or do, at some point you need to close the deal or discuss the offer. People like it. Still. It’s rare to do business entirely electronically, even today.

So I need my phone to actually work. As a phone.

Here is what I need:

- When I want to phone somebody, I should be able to locate them in my phone book and hit dial within 5 seconds.

- I should be ‘connected’ within a further 2 seconds (whether it’s voicemail, busy signal, or a ringing line).

- My phone call should never, ever be terminated because of network-busy or the handset flucking up.

- The other party should be able to hear me. Continuously.

- I should be able to reach my calling menu — recent calls, missed calls, immediately and be able to place a call to a recent contact immediately. Sub 1 second.

- I should be able to talk for an hour without my handset battery going from 100% to 15%.

- I shouldn’t develop shoulder strain carrying it.

- My suit jacket shouldn’t look out of shape if I put it in my pocket.

No Smartphone can do all of the above, on a continuous basis.

Not a single sodding Smartphone on the market today.

If it’s not the sodding battery flucking up, it’ll be continuous disconnections. Or stupid shitty menus. Or an operating system that simply cannot handle it.

I think my issue is patience.

I have NO patience whatsoever when it comes to phones. The ONE thing a phone in my possession must do is make calls. Quickly. Reliably. If it fails to do this, then I start questioning the whole point (along the lines of ‘what the hell has changed in 10 years?’).

My major annoyance is that manufacturers seem to have, alas, dumped the original concept of a phone — i.e. placing calls — and paid more attention to other features when it comes to many smartphones.

Let’s talk Blackberry. Useless as a phone. It *works*. In fact it’s one of the class-leading Smartphone-That-Works-Ok-As-A-Phone devices. But the recent Blackberries? Rubbish. It looks to me like they’re too busy trying to figure out how to process 3G data to worry about placing your phone calls properly. Without hanging up mid-way through. Or forcing the other party to have to go seconds and half-minutes without hearing you.

The T-Mobile G1 is a big disappointment as a primary device. Obviously the battery can’t take much data use, but the killer is when I’m trying to navigate around it to make calls. And trying to STAY connected to someone for more than a few minutes. And trying to wait for it to place a call. And answer a call.

I won’t bore you with my Smartphone analysis.

Won’t even start on the iPhone.

Suffice to say I’ve dug out my Nokia N95 8GB. That is my handset of choice for talking.

And, er, thank you to The Guru for explaining that if you repeatedly press the ‘*’ key on your Nokia, you’ll get P and W. Characters you need to unlock your device when you’ve been given the unlock code.

Designer, exclusive mobile phones seem to be the toys of the rich and famous, whilst doubling up as a status symbol all at the same time. Or so we’re all led to believe. Is there room for a phone of this nature in your arsenal? We went along to the launch of the Motorola AURA just to find out.

We waited for well over a week for answers to our quandaries from Motorola, all but to no avail. Here are our thoughts on the AURA and we apologise for the wait.

The event itself wasn’t a normal press briefing per se, some might have called it an art unveiling.

There are now some of you who think we’re being pretentious by saying such things. With the phone supposedly being a piece of art in itself, with its sapphire crystal display and etchings that take two weeks to carve into the designer case.

We’re not, it actually was an art unveiling. Motorola had commissioned a piece of work to back this launch of this most expensive of expensive handsets.

The world renowned architectural practice UNStudio unveiled a bespoke design installation to launch this phone, at the exclusive of exclusive St Martins Lane Hotel, in London.

UNStudio co-founder Ben van Berkel aired the ‘Time out of scale’ which creates an immersive environment inspired by AURA, although we’re not entirely sure what all of that means if any of it.

As for the handset, we weren’t overly impressed with a phone that’ll be on sale for $2000 – just in case the following you are about to read isn’t subtle enough.

We can appreciate the engineering that has gone into the phone, aspects of which we covered here. We can also appreciate the materials used and how exemplary they are, with the 62 carrot sapphire crystal screen and a case with over 700 parts. We also get how all of this factors into why it does cost so much and whom they are aiming it at. Still, we can’t really appreciate the handset for what it is. We tried, we really really did, sorry.

We looked over it again and again, but still came away not entirely getting it. Even if the phone wasn’t at the cost it is, we still don’t think we could go for it. Or even use it as a replacement for any other handset we currently have at our disposal.

The round screen is fairly ok to behold. Being the second most scratch resistant material on this Earth you expect it to be something out of this world. It wasn’t. It was very ordinary, dull and not really the most outstanding feature we’ve ever seen on a phone.

As this is supposed to be one of the redeeming features of the mobile it fell short, was very deficient, came under par, didn’t meet expectations, made no effort to excel – you get where we’re going with this.

There really was nothing in its appearance that really shone to us, in any way shape or form. Yes, it’s the world’s first circular display. Yes, it can display 16 million colours. Yes, it’s durable. As a designer screen to a phone it matches up to the casing and the overall feel. But it could have had something else just to add that little extra.

We even felt short changed in viewing any images or using it to browse the net. Even the novelty factor of seeing and using a well rounded display lost its appeal almost instantaneously.

The second most redeeming feature of the phone is apparently the way the handset opens, with everything hinging on its performance – no pun intended.

Its opening mechanism has been designed by a Swiss manufacturer; we weren’t informed which one despite our feverous questioning. Although they may have let slip to us it could be linked to a well know watch maker. They weren’t allowed to disclose which one, but we’re sure it will come out within time.

One of the product spokespeople from the Motorola design team drew a comparison over its look to a well made watch; Omega was the name he mentioned in passing.

The same person told us though the phone’s opening has the same feel as opening a luxury Mercedes Benz car door. So perhaps he was just waxing lyrical rather than hinting after all.

The phone’s menu features are very very basic, with nothing there stands out at all. We desperately tried here for find something worthwhile to talk about here. Once again, there really isn’t anything outstanding at all.

It’s almost as if the phone’s operation has a very retro feel, which goes against the futuristic look. As the menu options come across like an old old set of functions from say a Nokia 6010 from almost half a decade ago.

We didn’t get to use the camera, but seeing as its only 2megapixels we expect we’re not missing out on anything.

Really all you have here is a GSM phone, with no 3G, no HSDPA, no WIFI or really anything of use to anyone what so ever.

The Motorola AURA is being sold exclusively at Selfridges SIM free for 1400 of your Earth pounds. We were told at the briefing it will also be on sale in the Americas at an equally exclusive store.

Expect to see it soon for free on a 180 month contract.