Category: mobile-technology

So I heard about this and people have been asking if this makes any difference to my views on the iphone? Simple answer yes it kind of does but I still won't buy one. At 299 dollars its looks like it will be much closer to 200 pounds when it finally hits the UK in the next few months. Although it looks like it will get the compitition it deserves from Samsung, Google, HTC and Nokia.

I know a lot of iPhone users are pissed off with the price drop but I'm sorry they knew the risks with buying new tech on the first day. However something isn't working at Apple HQ. Its obvious, very few companies cancel a product (4gig iphone) and drop the price of by almost 40% within a few months.

Its coming up to the time for a new phone soon, but right now the iPhone isn't one of them on the list.

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So the Apple iPhone has been well and truely software hacked by multiple people (credit to Engadget for the coverage).

Now if Apple are getting a percentage of the activations and monthly iPhone bills, they will start lossing money. Currently the soft mod is in the geek community but how long will it take for this to spread?

So if your Apple and AT&T's PR department what would you do? Would you ignore it and assume it won't reach the mainstream market or come out now with something? Also what would that something be? Would you attract more attention to the whole issue. Back to Apple, Would you consider some sneaky locking system via iTunes or the GSM network to over ride the current iPhone firmware, like Sony and Microsoft have done in the past?

Me, I would work hard on improving the service at AT&T and address some of the issues people have with their network. Then again, that 5 year contract means Apple are stuck to AT&T for the next few years. What does this mean for me? Well if it comes to the UK and its much cheaper, does 3g and could be used on Orange. I would be more likely to get it.

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From Ben Metcalfe on the unified mobile platform or why the iPhone is really important,

The reason why the iPhone is an important phone is not because of its shiny gadgetness or its touch interface. It’s not even important because it’s the first serious media player to be combined with a phone.

It’s important because of its web-based approach to application development. I believe this approach will spawn other manufactures to follow suit and in turn we will find ourselves with a truly unified development platform not owned by any single vendor or manufacturer.

Right now developing applications for mobile phones is a pain with no single way of rolling out an application to every phone (or even the majority of phones) on the market. Sun’s J2ME was supposed to solve all this but instead we still have a chaotic environment of different MIDP profiles, screensizes, capabilities and even carriers who prevent unsigned (read: approved) java applets from running on some of their phones.

This is kind of what the world of computing was like before the Internet – when Macs wouldn’t read files created on PC’s and vice-versa. The internet came along and a common set of standards were created that allowed documents to be interchanged between any computer. Later on we managed to coerce those standards into lightweight applications that more often than not provide all the functionality we needed.

I believe we are finally going to see this happen on the mobile phone. Apple is leading the way by promoting the iPhone’s Safari browser as the development environment for the iPhone – but there is no reason why this can’t be emulated on other phones too.

He's right but I'm sorry this doesn't go far enough for me. I would like to see much more in the browser API. Access to the GPS and Camera, Offline storage like Google Gadgets, Widgets? Opera are best placed to do this but they cover so many phones. The Mozilla builds of the Mobile Firefox (Minimo) could be the perfect platform to do this, as its open source and could be adapted by every single manufactor to boost the sales and power of there own mobile device. Safari sucks and we all know it. Yes its built on webkit but geez what the hell did they do to it?

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So I'm in Toronto and theres no iphones. But theres a stupid amount of coverage online including unboxings and taking apart the iphone. Here's some interesting things I've found while browsing around my aggregator.

LG Prada vs Apple iPhone
Bear in mind the LG Prada came first and was announced long before the iPhone.

iPhone touch typing.
Just as I thought, it was going to be bad but seriously its worst that I'd actually imagined. I thought if worst comes to worst you could use a stylus type thing but nope its made for thumbs and a little pressure. I have heard reports that it can be used in landscape mode while browsing the web but still. I know I can easily type faster on my stylus. Theres also some kind of bug with caps lock?

Engadget first hands on in HD
This one covers the keyboard a lot better.

iPhone Live Disassembly
How to take the iphone to pieces. Theres some interesting facts in this too like memory sizes and sim cards.

3G iPhone for Europe to be announced Monday?

Apple is set to announce a four-way deal: Vodafone and T-Mobile on the carrier front with Carphone Warehouse out in front as the MVNO. Hmmm, well, this kind of deal would certainly provide Apple's upstart mobile phone with far broader coverage than a Vodafone exclusive could muster while providing a solid brick-and-mortar base on a continent (mostly) void of Apple stores. Best of all for Europeans, the announcement expected on Monday will be 3G. That's right, while you're queuing up for EDGE data, Europeans might be unwrapping an HSDPA iPhone in a 4-way press release. Here's the rub, bub: do you really think Apple will provide Europe a 3G iPhone before the end of the year and not release it in the US at the same time? Now the tough choice: stand in line for your 2.5G iPhone or wait and see what happens on Monday with this rumor (and we repeat, it's just rumor at this point).

If this is true, I'll be quite shocked for those who bought the EDGE phones. EDGE is ok but yes no match for 3G speeds.

Generally, the iphone seems to working as expected but I've not seen much information about 3rd party applications in Safari. The landscape mode doesn't always work but hardware H.264 playback is good. Also heard little about battery life.

Its simply a expensive beast. If it comes to Europe with a price tag of 350+ pounds and 2 year contract of 35 pounds or more a month. Its not going to go down well. Get the price down to 200 with a 25 pounds a month contract and Vodafone and Tmobile will sell them like hot cakes. I won't be switching to a iphone when it comes here.

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Only found this thanks to Dave, now I know where I'll be drinking from now on.

Thanks to a partnership with ItBox, all customers with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop will be able to connect to hi-speed Internet – free –for 30 minutes.

It really couldn’t be simpler, power up the laptop, order your drink or food from the bar and ask for a Wi-Fi voucher; this contains an access code for your computer. You will then connect to a network free for 30 minutes – order another drink and go on line for another 30 minutes.

Wetherspoon’s head of purchasing, Paul Hine, explains why the scheme has been introduced: “We really are in a mobile environment at the moment, with more and more people using the Internet for business and pleasure – 24/7.” “We felt that our pubs offer comfortable and private surroundings, to come to enjoy a drink or a meal and also connect to the Web.”

The service is available throughout the day at all Wetherspoon pubs and Lloyds No.1 bars. Leaflets detailing the new service are available at the bar.

meta-technorati-tags=wifi, weatherspoons, wireless, free

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Sam points out that Nokia have just released a beta application which connects to iTunes. Great for Nokia owners and about 1 year ago I might have said wheres the Windows mobile version. But with the obvious support from Windows mobile and the recent support in Winamp 5 I can finally say nice stuff but I don't really care (in a nice way). But I'm most of my friends care…

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Orange are insane. After charging me a stupid amount of money for using mobile data while roaming in New York. They fail to mention the fact that they now have a reasonable flat-rate mobile data plan.

5 pounds a month for all you can eat (1gig limit a month) off-peak mobile data. How did I find out? Well I went into a Orange shop and complained that Tmobiles data plans were much better and after a while he mentioned it.

It seems this has been in place since the June 1st. 

Orange UK has followed the other major operators in simplifying its data charging tariffs, and opened up unmetered data access to non-panthers as well as those on pre-paid contracts.

The new bundles include free evening and weekend browsing for £5 a month, or £8 to be able to browse during the day too. Pre-paid customers can pay £5 for seven days unlimited browsing. The new tariffs come in on 1 June.

Since I have a work phone for daytime use, the off-peak one will work for me. There is a clause about not using it for VoIP and other stuff.

Orange is very careful to say that the service is “browsing” and not “internet access”, leaving it plenty of room to block services it doesn't like the look of.

Its previous unmetered data terms and conditions were pretty clear on what services were frowned upon. “To ensure the fair allocation of network resources for all customers the offer may not be used for: modem access for computers, internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant mssaging, peer to peer file sharing and non Orange internet based video.”

But, unlike Vodafone, Orange seems to accept the impossibility of enforcing such restrictions: “We would discourage any customer from using VoIP through the mobile internet due to the quality of service they may experience. We are looking to launch our own high quality IM service in the next few months which will deliver a far superior customer experience to currently available services

I'll be using mine for im (twitter and jabber), Googlemaps, Email and RSS reading.

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When your a UK ISP like Demon advertising to the public. The advert above for 8meg business enabled broadband at 24.99 pounds a month is exactly what I have had for the last 3 plus years. When Broadband first came out, Demon offered only one option of 512k broadband at 24.99, then has upgrades came along they split the line up into a cheaper 19.99 a month one which had no access to things like Newsgroups or static IPs. Fine I thought, Home Office is good for me, I don't mind pay extra for some of the above. However, when 8meg Broadband came along Demon changed the AUP. There was no mention of a limit on Broadband download use or anything till they changed it. Now it reads.

The THUS FUP* applies to Demon Home 8000 and Demon Home Office 8000 Broadband and variants of these products Customers only.

It is in place to ensure that THUS can continue to provide an acceptable standard of service in terms of download speeds, to the vast majority of our customers.

THUS will continually measure the performance of our broadband network and take steps to restrict the download speeds of very heavy users during peak periods, should their activities significantly contribute towards the risk of reduced speeds being experienced by the majority of our broadband customers. The peak period is 9am to 10pm .

All users will be monitored on a continuous basis. Only customers that consistently download exceptionally large amounts of data over a rolling 30 day period will be affected by the THUS FUP. THUS expects that less than 1% of its Demon Home 8000 and Demon Home Office 8000 customers will be affected by the THUS FUP. Any Customers who are affected will be notified if their speed is being restricted.

Speed restrictions will only apply during peak periods. Should a Customer's usage return to acceptable levels, adjudged on a rolling 30 day period, speed restrictions will be removed.

Now bearing in mind I've been with Demon for 13 years in some kind of form, you can understand why I'm pretty pissed off. Also you don't get a warning letter, they just do it and send out a letter. The letter which I don't have right now but keep meaning to type out (although we did read it out on geek and geekhag podcast number 6). In the letter they say the limits which are not specified in the above AUP are 50gig for home users and 60gig for home office users. I went over by 4.85gig at 64.85gig last month. So the upshot of all of this is that me and Sarah have been restricted to 128k broadband between 9am – 10pm every night. This wasn't so bad at the start because it only applied to weekdays. But then it changed to weekends too. I asked Demon many times to prove what they were saying by giving me a breakdown of the traffic but they never did (I'm going to leave out the many nasty stories of talking to Demon Customer Services – I hope to record them one day soon, when i get back from the states) So in the end I got the number for Demon Customer Care Support (yes there different and UK based) from the ADSL guide forums (you need to be logged on) which is 08000279190 for anyone who actually wants to cancel there account with Demon and get the MAC code so they can move somewhere.

But this is the problem, almost every ISP now has a AUP but their not being upfront about the actual limits and they still advertising as unlimited. Two ISPs which I was considering are pretty upfront about everything is Zen Internet and UK Freesoftware network.

So anyway, I'm obviously not the only person to have this trouble. Glyn pointed me to a register post about the same issue and a nice link to an e-petition about ISPs using the word unlimited in all advertising.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Insist that OFCOM and the ASA stop Broadband Providers  advertising 'unlimited' services that are in fact limited in the small print or by un-defined fair use policies

So far 2,427 people have signed up including myself. The petition is open till June 10th, so I would get signing soon. As for now, when I get back from the states, I'll be switching to UK Free software network which don't packetshape or restrict beyond whats been described up front on the site. Now if only others would do the same.

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Been considering my next phone again. My current SPV M600 is great but there are a couple of things which I would like to change.

• The lack of 3G is a killer now I have applications like Google Maps on my phone
• The TI 200mhz processor is good for most things but running something like Skype is a real killer and tends to lock up the phone while making a call
• The camera is reasonable but nothing special, also the lack of flash is a pain at night
• Java isn't great

So I started hearing some rumours about the natrual upgrade path, the Orange SPV M700. The major difference is 3G (UMTS) support and GPS. It also has a new Samsung Chip which runs at 400mhz which means Skype will run smoothly. They have moved over to MiniSD instead of SD which is acceptable but a small pain. It also comes with Windows Mobile 5 instead of 6 which is interesting.

The thing which puts me off is the colour. There is a black version but I hear the paint job is not great and can chip off overtime. The White one doesn't have the chip problem but its shiny white! Geez, maybe I should get it and spray it myself?

meta-technorati-tags=orangespv, mobile, phone, orange, m700, 3g

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