Shout About Mobiles

Facebook; everybody is on it, including a lot of companies and businesses, and you will find that, if you don’t check Facebook regularly, you will miss out on parties, events and news. It seems that despite MySpace running out of steam, Facebook has the staying power, a never ending social website that has quickly but surely taken over our lives.

And Facebook has just helped themselves become that little bit more involved in your ever day life. With over 100 million people using it from their mobile phones alone, it easy to see how big it has become.

For all you mobile Facebook users out there, you will be glad to know that Facebook has got an agreement put together with over 50 networks across the globe to offer a new version of their website; it’s called Zero Facebook.

Zero Facebook is found at “0.Facebook.com” (or you can use “zero.Facebook.com” if you dislike using the numerical). The zero is a key feature as it explains the data cost of using the website, because all browsing across the website is free on your mobile phone. Woo! Clicking on links or pictures will be chargeable, however, a nice little pop up reminds you of this fact every time – so if you do not want to pay, do not click!

The site does shrink down a lot of the data too, which makes the site fast to browse through and gives you all the important things that you need, such as: options to “like” comments and posts, update your status, and many more.

But there is some bad news though folks; it isn’t available on every network, so please have a look through the following info for the good, or not so good, news and for more information: http://blog.Facebook.com/blog.php?post=391295167130.

The EU parliament has voted and agreed on reducing roaming charges, to take effect from July (shame on holiday in June!). The cuts will become active on July 1st and there are plans for more to come into effect over the next few years. So every network that resides in a EU member state, is having to cut down all charges related to roaming to the limit set by the EU parliament.
The new limit is meant to be a maximum incoming call charge of 0.19 euro per min, and a maximum outgoing charge of 0.43 euro per min.

At the moment the charges are about 10% higher, so it will not be a huge difference at first (unless you are a business customer or frequently go abroad), but still nice to have that price cut.
The big differences will be in the cost of SMS and packet data (internet, email, etc.), with SMS dropping from 0.28 Euros to only 0.11 per 160 characters, and a MB of packet data can be no more than 1 euro per MB.
From what I can see from the 2011 ‘predictions’, the cost will be even less, with outgoing calls down to 0.35 Euros and incoming calls of 0.11 Euros. So it’s getting to the point where it will not make a difference whether you are in UK or abroad, as mobile phone costs will be fairly similar.
And there are plans for a whole new money saving feature of international calls – the networks will have to cut off ALL calls that reach a cost of 50 Euros, so anyone making a long call will have to expect dropped lines, but it will prevent massive costs to those that forget to hang up when they finish speaking! These plans have not as yet been given a timescale for when it will be set up, but it seems that it will happen.
(all of the prices mentioned above are not inclusive of VAT)

The G2 is on its way – and I think I want one!

This little phone is exclusive to  Vodafone, and they are are reporting that they will be releasing the HTC Magic (the name given to the G2) in April – so it’ll be in our pockets really soon!

This phone has it all – it is sleek and stylish and oh so sexy (for a phone!), and is powered by cutting edge technology.
It has web essentials like Google Maps™ and Google Search™, and they work brilliantly. Just like your computer’s browser, you can create shortcuts to your favorite sites, then download ace games, news feeds and widgets. Then you can “file it” anyway you want – so you can get to it all easily.
The HTC Magic comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera (not the best camera out there, but it is a sound little camera), and with the extra large high-resolution screen you can view your pics beautifully. Or upload your photos to your choice of social media and have a giggle with your friends – because with its superfast internet, they’ll upload like Magic!

I want one, I want one, I want one!

I know its a laptop, but it does come with a built in modem, so technically it has phone-like parts. So I’m going to blog about it! )

So, you may have heard the hype going round about Dell’s new Adamo range of laptops. These laptops are meant to be the up most example of style and good looks – that explains the price as the specs sure don’t add up!

The Dell Adamo, billed as the ‘world’s thinest laptop’, comes in with a 1.2ghz core 2 duo processor, 2GB
RAM running Windows Vista.

Erm…. so what power does it have left to do anything?

Yes it could be great for the Windows users out there to have a thin laptop, but at what cost? It will barely be able to do anything! All this laptop has going for it is the battery life (which isn’t even that great compared to the Mac alternative).

(I’m sorry about that random rant, I’ll now talk about its mobile phone qualitites)

Now that UK networks are making data cheaper and cheaper (even PAYT have offers now – 1GB usage for £15), laptop makers has started to capitasle on it and shoved inbuilt modems and SIM slots in to most new laptops. And of course the recent out breaks of netbooks (little baby laptops) show how popular ‘data on the move’ is beoming.

I still remember the initial days of mobile internet. When it first came out, phone users were using the good old PMCAII data cards plugged in to their machines. I enjoyed the mobility of it, but the style left little to be desired.  Now we have the sleek dongles that give 3G speeds (in certain areas), and the especially sleek in-built modems. Looking good people!
With the rumours that Japan are testing 4G technology (which will give us 100mb/s downloads whilst on the move and up to 1gb/s whilst stationary), the future of mobile broadband is looking pretty successful.

It appears O2 have seen exactly how good exclusive phones are for business thanks to the Apple iPhone – and they have just sealed a deal to allow them, and only them, to sell the new powerhouse from Toshiba the TG01.

For those not yet in the know, this handset comes running Windows Mobile.
Yes, Windows can be a bit slow normally, but this phone can pack a 1ghz processer (which is just a bit smaller than what companies are putting into netbooks that are becoming all the rage at the momen) into it’s little case (it is bigger than the iPhone though, so not that small).

The phone also has one of the largest screen’s to be placed on a mobile device, with it coming in at 4.1 inches using a WVGA display, and it is rumoured to be able to withstand 11 days of usage! As doubtful that is, I’m sure we can all be doing with some extra battery life in our mobiles. Toshiba have managed to do all this and yet still keep the phone down to under 1cm in thickness.

I’m impressed!

We are unsure at the moment if the phone will be restricted to a single network in other countries but we hope not as this could be what Windows Mobile needs to make it run perfectly and actually become an easy to use OS.

Over here in the West Motorola are seen as being behind the times, and this is easily shown by comparing Motorola’s latest “super phones” (V9 and V8) to Nokia or Sony Ericson phones.
However, over in the East, Motorola appear to be the ones bringing the advancements to markets.

Motorola are bringing out the ZN300, this phones appears to have taken a leaf out of the new Nokia N-series styling’s to form a good looking slider. The phone was meant to be supporting both quad band GSM as well as TD-SCDMA which would make the handset stand out and give it a faster data rate, however it appears Motorola have now dropped the TD_SCDMA support. So although the phone does have some nice features for a mid range phone it does lose it edge.

At the moment China doesn’t have standard 3G network (WCDMA/UMTS or CDMA 2000) but is currently using its own developed TD-SCDMA which is being tested by China’s biggest telecom giant, however the other two networks in the country, China Telecom and China Unicom, are hoping to bring out the two standards 3G types, so this will be good for the two smaller telecom networks as they will be able to hack in to the larger phone market with a lot of phones already offering WCDMA, where as China Mobile will be having to get phones made for them.

Well just a bit of good news for Google fans. It seems that T-Mobile stores across the UK are ready to release the G1 which is really the “Google Phone”. There were extremely large queues of people outside the Oxford Street shop as early as 5am this morning.

The phone will be free when you opt for a £40 per month contract. The only downside is that the contract length is a year and a half long. Just in case you’ve been in a coma for the past 6 months, we’ll update you on the details. The G1 is the first handset that features the new Google OS known as Android. The phone itself was manufactured by HTC, who are famed for the Windows Mobile Phones it produces, such as the new HTC Touch HD.

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Orange have announced that the HTC Touch HD will be available in November exclusively on the Orange network until 2009.

It was well known that the HTC Touch HD was coming to orange next month but the exclusive deal wasn’t known about at all. It is likely that customers will be left with a dilemma in choosing between the T-Mobile G1 and the Orange Touch HD.

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A new Vodafone branded Windows Mobile OS Smartphone was spotted over at the FCC website and it had a full QWERTY keyboard and GPS. There appears to be no Wi-Fi or 3G support so it looks like it won’t be a high end device.

The 1231 will be a tri-band GPRS/EDGE smartphone with a 2.5inch display, 64MB memory, microSD card slot and a 1.3 Megapixel camera according to the sites data. The smartphone weighs in at 130 grams and is powered with a 1100 mAh battery.

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In a response to the state of our economy, mobile phone retailer, Phones 4U have cut their store managers targets by 30%.

Even in the credit crunch Phones 4U has a great range of products that are exclusive and selling well. This is on top of other products like SIM only and laptop deals.

To help with a slowdown in retail performance special care has been put into customer service and this has helped greatly.

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