Palm-Mac

T-Mobile upgrades...and stalking embarrassment

  I'm pretty disappointed at the moment. Both of my T-Mobile contracts are now due for renewal/upgrade which means that I can pick two new phones...hoorah. Except it's not really hoorah as there is nothing there at the moment that appeals at all, and I mean nothing. I had a look at the Nokia E51 when I was in the shop but I just thought I'd be taking it for taking's sense without actually wanting it. I guess it all boils down to the fact I've lost interest in other platforms since the AppStore appeared and I can't see myself using any other phone for a while. The iPhone now just about does everything I need a mobile device to do and not just does it okay but in fact does it very very well....for my needs anyway.

The T-Mobile shop on Princess Street is 100 yards from the CarPhoneWarehouse store, where I was yesterday and where I left my number with the guy should they get more 3g iPhone stock in. Bizarrely, I was just standing outside the shop when my phone rang, I checked the number and it wasn't somebody in my contacts book. To my utter horror I realised it must be the guy calling back and answered it, sure enough it was him telling me they had just received more stock. Jesus, I thought, I realised I was just standing there, looking through their store window. What if the guy is in there looking at me and sees me standing outside like some crazed loony...what is he going to think? He's going to think I have been standing there all morning just waiting for a call. That ain't going to look good I thought....not good at all.

Quickly I moved out of sight...

"err right, thanks for letting me know. I'm in town at the moment but it will take me 15 minutes to pop down' Yeah right, considering I was standing in the next shop's door.

"errr....see you soon and thanks"

So I had to loiter around for 15 minutes before going in. Eventually, half an hour later I had my new 3g iPhone which I couldn't get activated until I got home. Everything went well though, no problems at all transferring everything over and now my new iPhone is fully up and running. As I'm at home I've turned off 3g and am just using wifi. I'll test out the 3g coverage tomorrow and see how things stack up although I have a feeling I will only turn on 3g when needed. My fervent hope is that reception will be better at work, often in the black hole that is my office, I get "no service" showing up which is frustrating and annoying as it doesn't appear with any other phone I've used over the past 2 years or so.

Data Diet

Totally depressed by the continuing awfulness that masquerades as a "summer' here in Edinburgh, we have raided the family savings and booked a holiday to Spain, same place as last year as we liked it and had little time to search anywhere else anyway. I love my holidays but being away from my gadgets and gadget stuff, like full internet access, does my head in and I miss it so much. Of course this would not be a problem if roaming data rates were reasonable and you could browse away to the same extent that you do at home but of course this unfortunately is not the case.

I have a broadband modem usb thingy for the MBPro which allows me, at home, to surf away when away from home and two phone contracts, one with T-Mobile and the other with o2, both with unlimited data access. Here in the UK then I can have my cake and eat it but it will be a different story when abroad. I'll need to go on another data diet which I hate doing. Luckily, things have improved slightly from last year. T-Mobile now charge "only" £1.50 per mb of data whereas this time last year it was a daft £7.50 per mb whilst o2 do a 50mb monthly one-off deal for £50 which is not exactly cheap but at least it is better than before and both will allow some data access without  the need to strip back useage like I had to last year. 

Still, it would be great to be able to have the same level of data access as I do here in the UK. It would make going away on holiday less painful for data-philes like me. Does anyone know of any other special deals for roaming abroad?

Orange.....cheap phones expensive data

The guys at MoDaCo and Coolsmartphone have a real love in with the HTC Touch Diamond, it can do no wrong for them They take great glee in pointing out how cheap it is on Orange and how you can basically get it for free on certain contracts. Now, there's nothing wrong with that but oddly these two sites also and conversely have a running battle slagging off Orange for their dreadful data plans although I believe plans are afoot to finally bring them into the 21st Century...their "unlimited" plan still limits users though to 500mb which is one sixth of the monthly T-Mobile "unlimited" data plan. How do they get away with calling it "unlimited" when it is clearly very limited?

Anyway, the Diamond is a smartphone and a lot of folk will be using it for email and browsing and other data intensive applications and if so then these sites should point out that Orange are not exactly the best deal around for that kind of stuff alongside the same points cheerfully advising how great their phone prices are on certain contracts.

Incidentally, I had a play with a HTC Diamond in a phone last at the end of last week and wasn't impressed by the build quality, it felt a bit flimsy to me.

A2DP...worth worrying about?

Some folk put a lot of store in having a device with A2DP built in so they can use bluetooth devices, such as headphones, without cables/wires. Not I though. I generally like the idea of having wireless headphones and not having to bother with all that tangling but couldn't be bothered with the extra hassle of having to keep extra gadget accessories charged up to use the feature. Keeping the main smartphone charged can be hassle enough without adding in anything extra.

Besides, since I got my Shure headphones a while back cable clutter and tangling has become a thing of the past as they come with a two piece cable. The shorter version is long enough (and short enough not to get tangled) to enable me to slip the iPhone into my shirt pocket when listening to music. I can recommend both Shure headphones and if you are looking for new headphones, get a pair that have a cable that splits in two. The Sennhausers I had before were awful, the cable was far too thin and long as well as being flimsy and trying to keep it tangle free was an impossibility.                                         

Smartphone dilemna...for poor wee Shaun

Not sure why Shaun is so concerned about trying to define the essence of a smartphone, it seems to be a problem for him at the moment. Perhaps he is trying to tell us something. I think Shaun, unluckily for him, is a bit like me in that I am attracted to the svelte form factor of normal phones, Nokia's for example, but fear that I will tire of them after a bit and start longing for the supposed extra versatility of "proper" smartphones. Or perhaps that is not his concern at all and it is something else that is bothering him. I certainly couldn't use any Sony full time, every past one I've owned has driven me insane within two weeks and that one he is reviewing looks no different with all those tiny buttons crammed into the central bit. I counted 11 buttons in a space probably smaller than the Centro control strip...must be a nightmare trying to press those controls if you have large digits.

A few weeks ago I had a whole plethora of mobile devices that would all fit into the smartphone genre and at that time the thought of being without them was an intolerable proposition. Now, having sold off most of them and being left with just the Centro and iPhone I feel nothing but relief. Relief that I don't have to worry about not using them, relief that I don't have to go through the silly process of tokenly charging them in case the battery goes flat and death ensues and relief that I finally have some manageable space in my gadget drawer for stuff that I actually use. The pleasure of being free from the likes of ActiveSync is immeasurable too.

I was listening to the latest and as usual excellent MoDaCo podcast and as most of you will know they are entirely windows mobile focussed. Specs are very much King in the winmob world and reviews of devices always start of with in depth specs regurgitating as if that is all that makes a good device. Of course it isn't and to be fair to the guys they are quick to point out where certain devices fall down despite looking hot on paper. It's a bit sad that a primary issue still with many windows devices is lack of RAM for running apps, obviously it is now getting to be less of an issue but it is still there.

Of late, I have been more into my macs and smartphones have taken a distinct back seat. There is a lot to be said for sticking with the one platform as transferring info between devices is easy, I got fed up switching betwen windows and palm and Blackberry and having loads of important info trapped inside an application that I could not transfer to another device on a different platform. That is not a problem with info on my macs and nor would it be if I used windows PC's.

It's now been nearly 4 months since my last rash phone purpose and I can't see anything that gets my juices flowing, certainly not anything in the win mob camp anyway, not even the treo 800. The Nokia E71 looks nice but it is Symbian and has no touchscreen which are two factors that should make anyone with even a modicum of sense turn the other cheek. How long before we have to wait for a similar specced and similar form factor Palm treo to appear?

Orange increasing data bundles for the better?

Saw this post over at Coolsmartphone the other day and the chap is getting excited about the possible improvement, and not before time, in data plans from Orange.

Racoon 35 will offer 700 minutes of talk time with 100 texts, unlimited calls to landlines and unlimited data (500Mb). If you choose a plan below "35" you can't have the added unlimited data plan.

No offence but 500mb per month is not "unlimited data", it is still very much limited data when you compare it to the 3gb per month T-Mobile web'n'walk allowance, in fact it is one sixth of the amount. Orange have had some very uncompetitive data deals for years now, when I was with them it was a paltry 30mb per month for about £16pm. Knowing Orange, it will only be available to new customers.

T-Mobile slashes European roaming charges - Digital Lifestyle - Macworld UK

T-Mobile slashes European roaming charges - Digital Lifestyle - Macworld UK.

Hoorah and good for T-Mobile, hopefully the rest will follow suit soon. The cost is coming down from the current truly preposterous £7.50 per mb to just £1.50 per mb from 1st July. That is better but still too much but at least it is a step in the right direction.

this is a bit like how I feel too...

Luca at pdathoughts has some good stuff posted in the last few weeks and seems to have been on some sort of gadget spending spree having purchased an iPod Touch which he seems to be enjoying and a Centro for his wife. he has some good reviews of these devices and some interesting articles too, one of which sums up his apparant apathy at the moment about the plethora of touch based windows mobile devices. That's a bit like how I feel too, a bit flat and underwhelmed by them all of late. I'm more into the computer side of things at the moment...

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit tired of hearing about all these Windows Mobile touch-like phones that never seem to stop coming out. I may have been a first generation HTC Touch lover, but I got rid of it in favor of a keyboard device. Now that doesn’t mean that these touch phones aren’t good or something, but a large amount of device have come out with not much innovation (besides the specs in some cases). The lack of a physical keyboard on the HTC Touch Diamond might put me off personally, but it has some nice addictions like the new TouchFLO, GPS and accelerometer. Obviously, the keyboard from HTC Touch Pro would suit me better- and so would the expandable memory from the Pro......

Twitter and the Palm-Mac alternative...

All these social and networking sites seem to be continuing the younger generations obsession with maintaining contact with people via every means possible except actually having to, god forbid, talk to them. What a frightening prospect.

I don't much enjoy Facebook and abandoned it a few months ago after a less than successful trial period. I care even less for Twitter. I can see the point of Facebook whereas the need and justification for Twitter totally escapes me. It's an ego thing if you ask me, those who seem most disposed towards it have some over inflated sense of their own importance if they think others are remotely concerned/interested that they are "having a chill out with some pals in the local Italian" or whatever...yeah yeah yeah.

Presumably, if they are doing all these exciting "yoof" type things then they are not contactable, which to me, defeats the purpose of an IM type app like Twitter. Hence, I think there should be a programme that is similar to Twitter but serves a more useful purpose...it should let others know when in fact you are free to chat and it should only be used or tweets sent out when you have time to respond to tweets back. Thing is, when and where should such an app be used to utilise its full benefit? Hmmmm...it would need to be a place where solitude reigns, a place where a chap can escape the pressures of work and family life and reflect on what has made him the man he has become...where else of course but one's toilet?

Hence then the  forthcoming launch of "CRAPPER"...yes, a Twitter 'for the rest of us".

Limited download speeds on 02?

Well take a peeky at this post and see whether you feel it could be right. It would certainly explain the remarkably slow supposedly broadband speed like HSDPA that I have been experiencing of late via my o2 contract on both the treo 750 and HTC S630....thank god for home wifi.

Has anybody else on o2 UK been disappointed by download speeds?