Shout About Mobiles

Mobile phones are not cheap. Buying one (outside of a contract) can cost anywhere from £20 for a basic Nokia up to £400 for a Blackberry Storm (there are more expensive phones out there, but I do not want to talk about them!).

Why do we pay so much for them?

How do we get them cheaper?

The most common option is the internet, shop around, find the best deal, get your phone, go home happy. Then realise you missed checking a shop or site somewhere, and later get told by a smug friend that you could have saved more money.

ARGH!!

Well, my next bright idea is discount vouchers. I’ve often seen coupons and what not in papers and magazines for money off stuff , and I always cut the vouchers out, but never got to use them (with my luck, they were never for anything I bought!). I offered them to people and one or two friends and family members took a couple off my hands, but not them all.

Wondering what to do with them, I had a look online. Not only did I find a site that would take them off my hands, I also discovered I can get vouchers and codes (free of charge!) to use to buy electrical items and all sorts of other useful stuff (not just 10p off a washing powder I would never use!).

Beating the credit crunch has never been easier!

Apple loving geeks around the world have been scanning through the new iPhone (with the iPod operation software version 3.0) release info, and looking through what there is and what surprises will arise from it. Surprise is the main word here!

One geek, I shall call them Uber Geek (if the person in question doesn’t mind!?), was looking through the product ID’s and it seems that rather than the standard four ID’s (remember we are counting both the iPhone’s and iPod touches), Uber Geek found that there were in fact 10 ID’s.

(Yes, I said TEN!)

Ten ID’s.

WOW!

That means that there are going to be another 6 new Apple products. )
Presuming that half are going to be iPod touches, that leaves us with three nice shiny new iPhones.

The last upgraded iPhone gave us 3G but no video calling – maybe one of the new devices will finally  provide us with this??

However, something to look out for in the new device will be the new name. I have to admit, Apple have a tendecy to call it as it is, nothing flashy that will cause confusion at the Apple offices. The last two devices (iPhone 3G and the iPhone 8gig) wre brilliant devices that changed the way we use phones and initiated a change in the way phones look – but Appleare rubbish at naming devices! I know there’s nothing in a name when others use letters and numbers, but… it’d be the finishing touch to a great brand.

I’m speculating that the first iPhone with video calling will be called the iPhone Video.

The iPhone: you either have one, or know someone with one, because these phones are everywhere!

Despite teir popularity, they do have their problems, and as soon as someone tries to dazzle wme with their new iPhone, I immediately start thinking of all of their classic faults: no copy and paste, no mms…

Well now all you iPhone owners can argue back!

The new software update, Apple 3.0, is all going to change the way teh iPhone runs. The new version of software comes with loads of improvements, which will allow it to do what so many other phones have been doing for years now. (The iPhone still misses out on the video recording, but not many people use that on their phones, so not much of a loss.)

BUT, if you have shelled out your hundreds of pennies for the 3G version, you’ll be sad to know that you still wont be able to send MMS or use A2DP Bluetooth on it (so you will still be wiring it to headphones for now).

Some of the extras that have been slipped into the upgraded software are things that you don’t really think about when buying a phone, but can be useful once you’ve got it. Features such as being able to shake the phone to make your media player go into shuffle mode, the ability to create itune store accounts so you can do everything off your phone without needing to touch a computer. Also (for all you worried parents),
there is an increased amount of parental controls available, so if your young ones are playing with your phone you dont have to worry about them doing naughty things with it.

We have always known that Sony Ericsson have managed to double their phone releases by having a walkman version of all their phones (ie, they had their flagship phone, the P1i, and the walkman version was called the W960). True the devices weren’t excatly the same but a minor difference doesnt really count.

Now Nokia have seen the logic in this idea and have jumped on board with their new buisness smartphone the E75 having its xpress music sibling, the 5730. The only difference is the quick music buttons on the side.

So, does this mean that all designs are slowly dying out?

Motorola repeatedy uses the RAZR design; Nokia  are slowly merging all their phones to the new (horrid) N-series stlye; and with Samsung and LG pretty much copying each others designs at every opportunity (but with minimal differences so that they are different enough that they can get away with it), there seems to be very little originality out there.

To be fair I would be happy to have some designs kept. I like the M600 by Sony Ericsson and was delighted that the upgrade of (the P1) came looking the same but supporting better features.

Increasing what the phone can do but keeping a familiar face is great for a user who has a phone they love to use but just want it livened up once it’s reached its sell by date.
But then again, it can take the thrill out of having a new phone; what’s the point in getting something shiney and new, if it looks like your last phone?

After seeing how well apple are doing with the ‘app store’, RIM have decided to do the same for their Blackberry’s and are releasing ‘app world’. There have been a few concerns about this as RIM has set limits on pricing and have formed them into four categories, so the lowest price a piece of software can be, will be around $3′s.

No sooner have RIM released (had their information leaked) this information, Acer have come out of the woodwork and announced that they are trying to develop their application store for Windows Mobile devices.

Now we have to wonder, are application stores the way forward or not?

They do have some amazing “plus points”: they give phone users a vast variety of applications to use, and even allows phone users to see what their mates are using and go get it themselves (if they want it)!

But will this exclusivity to a brand stop the small developers and new developers in from making cool pieces of third party software?

I hope not!

If phone users are wanting to try something different (price wise) to the application stores, then these “little developers” need to keep the new ideas flowing – we all know that the best ideas are not always made by the big names.

For those of you who are in America with the new Blackberry clamshell 8230, you may have heard about Dell’s recall on the device.
As far as we can tell, this appears to be a software related issue, as we have had reports that it was due to dell wanting to upgrade the software, to the latest version 4.6.1.182 .
So, if you are currently sat with the old version (4.6.1.162), you should be getting a text message shortly asking you to update – and if you do, you can ignore all the rumours.
Dell has confirmed that all the new handsets that are being delivered to stores are now are being upgraded, so any new devices brought will not be affect by the issue (as of yet we still aren’t aware of what the issue was in the first place!).

Now this appears to be coming in around the same time as rumours of Blackberry releasing a new application store known as app world.
So if anyone out there happens to have the Blackberry 8230, check to see if you have any new icons or services books appearing regarding an application store.

We have all seen Motorola’s “fall from grace”; once known as the fourth biggest mobile maker, to being known almost as a joke out here across the puddle from America. But apart from the Aura, all they have done is spewed out more and more copies of the V3, and each time they had got worse and we have watched as Motorola slowly left a huge void between its super phone features and that of it’s rivals.

However, we have recently seen a few beats of Motorola’s heart, showing it still has some life left – they have announced two new phones that may help bring it, not back to the front line but at least into the contest.

The first handset is meant to be a phone built in conjunction with Kodak and supports a 5mp camera, being fully touch screen and is rumoured to be running either Android or Windows Mobile, (we here are hoping for Android as its so much better to use) and the second im afraid is another V3 rip-off but this one is called the VE1 which does come with most the goodies that we want in a super phone.

The VE1 is supporting a 5mp camera (I’m so happy Motorola have realised digital cameras can be higher than 2mp), GPS and wi-fi, all housed in a stylish clamshell (that’s one thing Motorola did well – style!). I’m are still unsure on the actual operation system, as it was expected to use the UIQ3 OS that we find in the Z8 and Z10 models, but we’ll let you know when we know more.

As the Mobile World Conference comes to an end, we have a new mobile of the year!

This year instead of being a super-dooper, all-doing all-star handset, we have the INQ1 – which has been

rewarded for its adaption to social networking.

As myspace and facebook become more and more popular plus all the other hordes of social sites, this handset has decided to be designed to work perfectly with these websites.

And it has paid off!

The seven judges choose this phone over other ground breaking and brilliant phones such as the Nokia E71, the Blackberry Storm and the Google G1.

These are all brilliant phones which have brought somehting new to the market, ranging from new style touch screen or new operating systems or in the case of the nokia e71, a split personaility phone (you have a whole menu

style for personal and buisness modes).

Well done to the INQ.

Social networking is going one step better; not only can we tell our mates what we are doing and where we’ll be doing it via IM or SMS,  we can now show them!

GPS is starting to become common place in all top end and smart devices. Sony Ericsson are bringing out phones in their 7 series (with 1-3 being budget phones, 4-7 good all rounders and 8-9 as in all singing all dancing), so the GPS feature is now starting to sliding through the ranges of phones, becoming a prevailing characteristic of day-to-day phones.

Software developers are starting to take advantage of GPS features and of course Google is first up. It allows you to track your mates and see where they are (brilliant when out lost on a night out after a few drinks); the most well known method is through vehicle tracking. Another is through a co-operation of ‘Vodafone’ and ‘Mapmates’ to bring you Pocket Life. Sadly, this is only for the Austrailan market at the moment, but it will soon spread, and the possibilites of this kind of software are endless.
Parents can track their kids (so im afraid no more bunking off school when a new game comes out), and most importantly, what im waiting for the most (which was seen to a poor extent in the nokia 6110), a way of sending a GPS location of where you are – greatfor when you’re arranging a party or after moving house. I’m not sure about you but ive kinda gotten lost once of twice when going to a friends party!

So, stay tuned and watch out, because very soon you can send your mates your GPS location, and with their Remote Asset Management device, they can come find you without getting lost!

It is not something most of us think about as most of us use Windows PC’s; so if we want to hook our phones up to the computer, all we need to do is to install the PC Suite Software CD that is supplied with the phone and plug in the USB cable from phone to PC, or use the Bluetooth software. Easy!

Our mac using comrades, however, are restricted to spending their time surfing through the vastness of the internet looking for a third party piece of software, which may or may not do the above job – it’s third party, so the manufacturers won’t help them out, the networds won’t help them out… Who will?!

Well, a few entrepreneurial developers out there saw the gap in the market and have helped us with such software as iSync and PocketMac (for Blackberry users).

Now it seems that, for what ever reason, the phone manufactures have accepted that people do use Apple Mac’s! Woohoo! And now the manufacturers are starting to release software for their devices, so that the Mac users out there can get their phone talking to their Mac.
Examples of this are:
Blackberry actually offering PocketMac software on their website (http://eu.blackberry.com/eng/services/desktop/mac.jsp);
Nokia have also jumped on the band wagon and are offering apple software (http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4630759).

The Mac users out there with Sony Ericson, Samsung or any other manufacturers devices, just need to be a little bit more patient, and they should be getting the software from their manufaturer to make their phones talk to their Mac’s.