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!

Steve Balmer (chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000) has been talking about the cost of making handsets and is making a point that Apple screens are too expensive for vendors (the manufacturers) to make.

However, there are few minor problems with this arguement.

The main being the fact that Apple are the vender. So I would presume that, during the design of the software and hardware, Apple would have had a discussion about cost. True, it is a fact that Apple may be more expensive than the average Windows Mobile device, but then again, the average Windows Mobile device costs more than the average LG or Samsung touchscreen device. In fact I am sure at the moment the cheapest touchscreen on the market is the LG cookie.

The arguement that Steve Balmer (and therefore Microsoft) are making, is that the screens that the Apple software use, costs a lot of money to make, and Apple have the option of using cheaper screens, making the phone cheaper overall. (The screen that Apple use is also preferred by Google’s Android and Palm’s new Web OS.)
However, I feel that customers are the ones that make the choice, and they chose to buy quality items. As a consumer,  I should have the option to splash out or go for the cheaper option. Microsoft stomping their foot about not beingable to comete is just silly.

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.

Remember the other day, when I was talking about the new software (‘Media Go’) that Sony Ericson were releasing for their mobile phones? And I said that the software was being labelled as Sony only, and it didn’t have Ericson mentioned?
Well, one of my sources have heard rumours that the two companies, Sony (being a media giant) and Ericsson (being a sweedish network), are not having the best of times together anymore.

We have seen LG overtake them in the list of leading manufactorsin the world, and Sony Ericson sales have slumped (being a P1 fan, I am personally blaming this drop on their silly decision of cancelling the UIQ operating systems). The combination of all these factors are piling on the pressure and Sony Ericson now seem to bebuckling under it all.

I have gone through many Sony Ericsson phones in my time, and I think that they do have a large amount of dedicated fans. However, it is becoming more and more apparent that their phones are merging into one standard design these days (anyone remembering the disaster that was Sharpe yet?!)

When you buy a low cost device from Sony Ericson, you get a few less features but the exact same operating system as their end, all dancing all singing, devices. How does that work out?!

On the one hand, it is great as it makes the phones easier to switch between. However, when you have forked out a tidy sum, or signed your life away to some greedy network, for your nice shiny new phone, it does make it all seem a bit of a let down.

When you get a budget handset from Nokia, you get a simple basic menu system, designed for those who justwant to call and text, nothing flashy about it. But when you get a Nokia mid range phone, they all run on Symbian S40, bringing a nice style and look to the device. And of course for the Nokia feature handsets,  they use the Symbian S60, giving the device more options and more things to play with on the OS. Nokia up the OS as you up the cost – this seems pretty fair to me!

But what Sony Ericson do not seem to understand is that people know all this! Gone are the days when people use phones they do not understand – phones are more common than DVD players and computers, with most familys having four or five phones in use in the house, and a couple of spares lying around as well.
Sony keep the same OS from one device to the next, and people see this as cheating, they don’t feel like they’re getting a better phone when they pay more for one.

People are asking themselves, “Is having reliable software, the exact same software on one device to the next, software that you know you can always use when you get the next phone at upgrade time, – is it really that worth it?”

A while ago, Sony had promised us that they were going to improve the PC Suite system that they send out with their phones. (To be honest, I am one of the few people that is actually happy with what I have already!) However, quite a few people who first use the Sony software find it hard to work, often getting lost trying to find their way around it. (I think that this is true of all PC Suites no matter who the manufactor is – but I could be wrong!)

Now that all mobile phones are fast becoming more than just a mobile phone (they are a link to the office, a storage facility for memories, ways to keep track of the kids, a directional tool to get yourself somewhere and even find yourself when you are lost!),  it is about time the manufactors went out of their way to make it easy and understandable for us to transfers music, pictures and videos from our phones to our computers (and visa-versa).

And now Sony Ericsson have shown us their latest attempt at an easier to use PC Suite -it is known simply as ‘Media Go’.

This new software is designed to change the format of your music, so that the music is a more phone usable format. This will mean no more running around the internet like a head-less chicken trying to find a file converter just so you can have your favorate song as your ringtone. ‘Media Go’ will not only save you time and money because you won’t have to download different pieces of software, it will also give you Sony as a point of contact for helping you make it work (third party pieces of software from the ‘net can and do go wrong, with  noone to help you!).

The new application is branded Sony rather than Sony Ericsson, and needs to be installed alongside the PC Suite rather than as a stand alone piece of software. However, the new software is still only in beta, so lets hope that they change this for when it gets released.

Good things about it so far are:

• the transfer speeds that it offers – I heard that it can get tranference of about 1mb in 30 seconds, which is great.
• Sony have recognised that nearly everyone uses iPods these days and that means they also use iTunes – so Sony has designed this new software to go grab your libary form iTunes for you.

In a nut shell, from what I have seen so far, it really does seem that Sony has gotten their idea working right from start, with only a few things to iron out before it is perfect.