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Apple announces social networking service which will display the music interests of friends via iTunes, iPhones and iPod TouchHaving cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping.Ping will be integrated into Apple’s latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or “Pingers”, to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they’re buying and what concerts they’re attending.Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work.”Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up,” he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter.The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.The feature is believed to have been based on the technology Apple acquired with the purchase of the former online music store Lala.com last year.The iTunes logo will no longer feature a CD – mirroring the change in the program’s focus.Jobs unveiled a range of other upgrades to its products and services, including a new version of Apple TV – which will allow users to stream television programmes and films.The company is also releasing a revamped range of iPods, including an iPod touch with front- and rear-facing camera, Jobs told an assembled crowd of journalists, bloggers and analysts in California.Until now the Apple TV device was “never a huge hit”, admitted Jobs.The box originally allowed users to buy films and television programmes, but the latest version, which is smaller and, at $99, much cheaper than its $229 predecessor, will only allow the renting, rather than purchasing, of content.Users will pay $4.99 for high-definition films on the day they come out on DVD, while the rent of high-definition TV shows will be $0.99, Apple announced.”We’ve sold a lot of them, but it’s never been a huge hit,” Jobs said of Apple TV. The new version will be available within a month.Jobs also introduced a new design across the range of iPods, including the latest Nano, featuring a rotatable screen and a new Shuffle which sees the return of buttons – its predecessor was voice activated.The new iPod Touch will have front- and rear-facing cameras, the latter of which will be able to record HD video content, Jobs added.AppleComputingSteve JobsitunesSoftwareiPodiPhoneMobile phonesTelecomsUnited StatesAdam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, blog, cheaper, HD, iphone, latest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, test, Touch, twitter, uk, update

Help us to help you help us Carriers and handset makers are rallying to make it cheaper and easier to deliver applications on phones using the “official” brand of Java on mobile.…

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(Source The Register)

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Religious fervour surrounds the latest phone technology, despite it only representing a small slice of the world marketI’ve just discovered that the ancient Egyptians worshipped a beetle – a scarab. Quaint, isn’t it? I mean to say, we’ve come on such a lot since those primitive times.But what’s this? A note from my Guardian colleague, Charlie Brooker, about something he calls the Jabscreen. “Several times over the last year,” he writes, “I’ve attended meetings that started with everyone present gently placing their Jabscreen face-down on the table, as though commencing a futuristic game of poker. It wasn’t rehearsed, wasn’t planned, it just happened; a spontaneous modern ceremony.” Charlie was struck by “the sight of a roomful of media types perched reverentially around their shiny twit machines… each time it happened, a vague discomfort would hang in the air until, in a desperate bid to break the tension, someone would mumble a sardonic comment about the sinister ubiquity of the Jabscreen, likening it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This would prompt a 25-minute chat about apps and gizmos and which level of Angry Birds you’re stuck on. Sometimes there wasn’t much time for the meeting after that. But never mind. You could all schedule a follow-up on your Jabscreens.”The Jabscreen, you will have guessed, is the Apple iPhone, an object currently regarded with Egyptian-grade reverence by the chattering classes. But, in fact, the obsession with so-called “smartphones” extends way beyond Apple’s device. Whole swathes of geekdom are devoted to various embodiments of Google’s Android phone. Legions of men in suits – up to and including the US president – swear by their BlackBerrys. There are people who believe that their Sony-Ericsson scarab not only spreads sweetness and light, but can also cure chilblains. There are, incredibly, even people who worship devices running Windows Mobile. And so it goes.Not surprisingly, the mainstream media are anxious to service these obsessions, and so every launch of a sacred object is lavishly reported. Last week, for example, RIM – the company that makes the BlackBerry – unveiled its latest assault on the smartphone market. It’s called the Torch and it has a shiny glass screen just like the iPhone. But – lo! – it has something else: a slide-out keyboard!!! Wow!All of which makes one want to scream that it’s only a bloody gadget. But by then one has moved on to the business pages, which are regularly gobsmacked by the sales figures for electronic scarabs. It seems that Apple is selling 4m of the things every month, and is having trouble keeping up with demand. But Android sales – at 4.8m a month – have now overtaken them. Is this a sign that Android will win out? Or will Apple pull some clever marketing stunt – like releasing a cut-down nano iPhone for the Christmas market, just as it did with the iPod? Will the BlackBerry Torch make a late run? And where the hell is Nokia?Are we perhaps losing our sense of proportion? The smartphone market is interesting, but just a small segment of the overall market. In 2009, for example, something like 175m smartphones were sold. The top end of industry predictions of sales over the next few years is about 500m devices. But the world currently buys about 1.3bn phones a year, the vast majority of which are “dumbphones” – ie simple handsets that can’t access the internet and which are much cheaper to own and run.Now, over time, Moore’s Law – which says that computing power doubles every 18 months – will ensure that these dumbphones become smarter. What this means is that the way the market will evolve is not by Apple & co selling more sophisticated, pricey, expensive-to-run smartphones to increasingly downmarket sectors, but by cheap phones gradually becoming more capable as they start to run more sophisticated operating systems.All of which means that the factor that will determine the evolution of the phone market is not the features of specific devices, but the operating system that they run. At the moment there are about 10 different mobile operating systems, which is patently unsustainable. My guess is that we will eventually get down to two or three. Apple’s iOS and Android look like certainties. The question is what comes third – BlackBerry, Nokia’s MeeGo or Microsoft’s Windows Mobile?No matter what happens, let’s remember that these things are just gadgets. After all, even the Egyptians’ holy scarab was only a dung beetle.Mobile phonesiPhoneAndroidBlackBerryAppleJohn Naughtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, apple iphone, Blackberry, cheaper, gadget, gadgets, google, iphone, latest, marketing, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, room, service, sim, sol, sony, test, three, uk, world

• Quarterly figures show steep like-for-like decline
• Underlying profits also down 27%
• Sales rise 1% but handset prices are cut

Profits at Nokia have plunged over the last three months as the company continues to struggle against rivals such as Apple and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, in the smartphone market.

The Finnish handset maker reported today that profits fell 40% in the second quarter of 2010 compared with a year ago. Underlying profits were down 27%.

Although net sales were 1% higher at just over €10bn (£8.4bn), the profitability of its handset and service division slipped as the company cut the prices of its higher-end phones to make them more attractive to consumers.

Nokia’s failure to compete better against Apple’s iPhone and the growing number of handsets running Google’s Android platform has put chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in the firing line. The company is reportedly looking for a replacement, with analysts warning that Nokia needs to get its hands on a “European Steve Jobs” if it is to regain its dominant position in the mobile market.

Kallasvuo called for an end to speculation over his future, telling the US television station CNBC that it is damaging the company. “There has been a lot of speculation on my position, on myself, during the last couple of weeks and that is not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another,” Kallasvuo said. “At the same time, I’m not in a position here and now to really shed any more light on the topic so I guess this is a no comment. I really concentrate now on the task at hand.”

Kallasvuo also insisted today that Nokia, which makes roughly four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide, had reasons to be optimistic, although the company is only aiming to maintain its share of the mobile device market this year. “The global handset market has continued to grow at a healthy pace, led by some of the less mature markets where Nokia is strong,” he said.

Kallasvuo added that solid sales of cheaper phones to developing markets had boosted the overall performance of Nokia’s handset business.

The average selling price of a Nokia handset dropped to €61 (£52), from €62 in the previous quarter. For smartphones, average prices fell 8% quarter-on-quarter to €143, and are down 21% over the last year.

Today’s figures suggest that Nokia is having to cut smartphone prices to maintain market share at the expense of profitability. Its smartphone shipments were up by 12% quarter-on-quarter at 24m units, in line with Nokia’s estimate for the overall growth of the market.

The company is now pinning its fortunes on the new Nokia N8 smartphone, although its release has already been delayed until later in the year.

Nokia also maintained its prediction that the global handset market volume would grow by 10% this year.

Earlier this week, Apple reported its best ever quarter, partly due to strong demand for the iPhone.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, cheaper, compare, compared, consumer, global, google, growth, iphone, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, prices, sam, service, sol, station, three, uk, world

Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, certainly thought so. So we thought it might be worth a point-by-point comparison

Comparisons are odious. That’s why it’s usually journalists and marketing people who indulge in them. So indulge me while I pick some apart.

Quoth Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer – the man who makes sure that the money is coming in right, who makes sure that the wheels of the company’s bank accounts are turning fast enough to satisfy shareholders – earlier this week: “One of the things that I want to make sure that you know today is that you’re going to be able to use the Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a phone call.” He said it at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, adding: “It looks like iPhone 4 might be their Vista.”

Though Turner wasn’t to know it, Apple was even then preparing its press conference to explain what (if anything) it was going to do about the whole iPhone 4 reception issue. 22 days after the release of the iPhone, Jobs led a press conference explaining that anyone who’d bought an iPhone 4 could have a free “bumper”. (The office joke: 1 day to diagnose the problem, 21 days to prepare and rehearse the presentation.) Those reception problems? Common to all phones, insisted Jobs, who deflected lots of questions in his customary expert way.

That leaves the “PR experts” who earlier this week told Cult of Mac that Apple would have to recall the iPhone 4 looking pretty stupid. Because they were stupid. Pause for a moment and remind yourself: on what grounds are items recalled? Oh yes, when they cause injury or death, or pose a hazard to the public. Losing your data reception because you (avoidably) covered the exposed antenna definitely likes in the category that Twitter calls #firstworldproblems. The idea that Apple would recall a device on that basis is simply laughable. In every newsroom, there’s a point early in the day when your news edior asks you what’s going to happen over some scheduled story: on Friday morning (UK time, before Cupertino was yawning and turning the alarm off) I was asked what would come out of the Apple press conference, and I said that Apple would portray problems with antennas as common to the entire industry, that it would offer free bumpers or cash refunds, or a full refund for anyone who wanted them, and that there was no chance of a recall. Do you think I qualify as a PR expert on that basis?

But let’s go back to the eminently sane and reasonable Kevin Turner. In his speech, he acknowledged that in the areas both of Vista and mobile phones, Microsoft had a bad patch. He’s happy now to praise Windows 7, and is full of expectation for Windows Phone 7. (Others differ, of course, but we have to wait and see.)

However, the idea that the iPhone 4 might be Apple’s “Vista”? Let’s try the comparisons.

Vista: fell seriously behind schedule, requiring Jim Allchin to take the project through a “reset“.
iPhone 4: released on the schedule everyone expected, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Vista: dropped much-promised features including WinFS as part of the “reset”.
iPhone 4: we don’t know what features were planned for it; we only know what we got, which is a ceramic case to (try to) improve signal reception, and a screen with a remarkable pixel density.

Vista: met enormous resistance from consumers, who couldn’t understand why it looked and ran so differently from its well-received and hugely popular (if insecure) predecessor, Windows XP.
iPhone 4: sold 1.7m in first three days, of whom 75% were owners of the previous version, according to data on both sides of the Atlantic from Bloomberg and AQA.

Vista: met even greater resistance from Microsoft’s main customers in enterprises, who didn’t like the fact that it didn’t run a lot of the software that ran on Windows XP.
iPhone 4: ran any and all apps that ran on previous iPhones and/or iPod Touches.

Vista: offered substantially greater security and reliability than predecessor.
iPhone 4: offered the same security and reliability as predecessor, plus cooperative multitasking.

Vista: was the subject of a court battle which exposed internal emails from Microsoft, revealing disquiet inside the company over OEM PCs which described themselves as “Vista-ready” even though they would not be able to run any but the lowest-specified versions of Vista.
iPhone 4: is the subject of a claim by the Wall Street Journal that people within Apple knew about problems with the antenna, but that Jobs nixed their criticisms because he liked the design. At the press event on Friday, Jobs called this “total bullshit”. Decide for yourself who’s telling the truth.

Vista: Microsoft never “apologised” for Vista, since it didn’t feel the need to.
iPhone 4: Jobs admitted that “we’re not perfect” but then added that nobody is. You’d be hard-pressed to really call it an apology.

Vista: Wouldn’t run on some Microsoft execs’ machines when they tried to upgrade them.
iPhone 4: Worked OK – though some people updating older phones have had problems with the latest (iOS 4.0.1) update “bricking” them.

So on balance, is the iPhone 4 really like Vista? It’s hard to overstate how monumental a screwup the development of Vista was. The entire development had to jettison key elements, such as WinFS (for search), and try to focus on getting the operating system out of the door. And as soon as it was released, people started complaining about its weird user interface experience; which led a Chinese Australian to set up a site where people could unload about it. (He was snowed under within days.) It’s still worth looking at that site, and seeing whether the points that people have made there have been fixed in Windows 7.

In short, the iPhone 4 antenna issue isn’t Apple’s “Vista moment” – despite what Turner might wish. It’s an annoyance to people who’ve spent that money, but Jobs’s numbers about the low level of returns (1.7%) compared to the 3GS (6%) – which will be pored over by analysts, and will have the force of a financial statement, meaning that if Jobs has fibbed then he’s theoretically liable to be hauled in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission – indicates that unlike Vista, users are actually very happy with it. (That’s also the anecdotal response I’ve had on Twitter.)

Sure, you might be annoyed, if you queued overnight or for hours in the baking sun, that the phone isn’t perfect. But there are lots of phones; personally I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, because presently I think they’re too expensive for what they offer. You could easily choose another. The snark on view on Twitter indicates, to me, a strange sort of envy on the part of many people; a desire to see a company brought down because of its hubris, rather than its failings.

Certainly, Apple has never wanted for hubris, but it does try to live up to its own aims.

But what about the company that made Vista? There are still challenges ahead for Microsoft: the fact that Google is winning Office customers over to its much cheaper Google Apps products (something that Turner alluded to in his speech – search for the first mention of ‘Google’); the fact that it is only managing to grow its Bing search engine share by spending $1 for every $1 of business it brings in; the fact that Windows Phone 7 remains an unknown quantity which the company has all but staked its reputation in the mobile market on. (Sales of Windows Mobile licences, the previous generation, are dwindling; it would be interesting to see what the licensing revenue is for them. Apparently HTC, once – possibly still – the biggest licensee of Windows Mobile is going to go with Windows Phone 7 – though it seems to be doing rather nicely out of Android at present.)

Lastly, the point that so many people overlook about Apple relates to its ambitions for the iPhone. These are rarely stated. When Steve Jobs launched it in 2007, he said the ambition was a 1% share of the entire phone market: “10 million units and we’ll go from there.”

That’s not the sort of barnstorming that you expect from most companies; they talk about capturing huge chunks. Apple wasn’t looking to get huge share. But you can bet that, being Apple, the plan was to make a lot more than 1% of the profit out there. Apple doesn’t necessarily want to dominate the market for smartphones (though it would certainly be happy to do that, just like the market for digital music players, where it effectively has a monopoly). It just wants to dominate all the profit. The cost of issuing these free bumpers to iPhone owners is going to be about $50m at the most (assuming 5m buyers and a $10 cost to Apple for the whole transaction.) The issue might have cost it more – but you can bet it’s not going to stop it rolling on. That’s perhaps the only way in which the iPhone 4 is really like Vista: it’s not going to stop the next stage of its ambitions.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, cheaper, compare, compared, comparison, consumer, email, free, google, HTC, iphone, latest, lg, marketing, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, released, returns, room, sam, sim, sol, storm, test, three, Touch, twitter, uk, update, world

Aren’t we a lazy lot…

My wife never uses up her mobile minutes. I know we can save £5 a month if she swaps to a cheaper contract – but have we done it? Of course not.…

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(Source The Register)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Sooner or later someone was going to challenge the way tariff pricing has been formulated and revolutionise the industry with a new and simplified pricing method that makes sense. So, it should be no surprise to most that it is the 3 network that has taken the initiative and created The One Plan.

The One Plan offers peace of mind and freedom of use by removing the so-called ‘unlimited packages’ that are capped with a fair usage policy that can often cripple users with large and unexpected bills. Instead, The One Plan brings a huge amount of clearly defined free usage that comprises of 1GB of data, 5000 text messages, 2000 minutes to any network any time and 5000 minutes for calling other mobiles on 3.

If you’re thinking about an iPhone 4 then you’ll be delighted to see a SIM only option with The One Plan at a low price of £25pm on a 12 month contract. Pick up a SIM free iPhone 4 direct from Apple for £499 and it works out cheaper than any of the deals available on Orange, O2 or Vodafone.

If you prefer a new phone on The One Plan then 24 month contracts are available. The cost of line rental depends on which phone you choose, it starts at £28 per month for phones such as the Nokia E63 or the LG Viewty GT. The HTC Desire is available for £35 per month.

The The One Plan has placed 3 at the forefront of the UK networks with probably the most attractive and easy to understand price plan that simply makes sense.

Most popular deals on The One Plan

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The chief executive of the search giant believes smartphones will empower the poor and is the equivalent to the arrival of TV

Phenomenally successful, but also imitated, envied and feared – Google is the technological icon of our time. But is its ubiquity and influence a force for good?

Chief executive Eric Schmidt has no doubts. He tells the Guardian that Google has been instrumental in a generational shift in democratising information. “Over my lifetime, we are going to go from a small number of people having access to most of the world’s information, to virtually everybody in the world having access to virtually all of the world’s information,” he said. “That’s because of web search, cheap phones and automatic translation. That’s a pretty amazing achievement and Google is part of that.”

Yet with Google active in so many areas, from shopping to video and translation to music, its competitors are becoming more numerous and opponents more vociferous. Schmidt admits: “We try to do everything … We don’t shake off the big goals.”

In an interview ahead of his keynote presentation at the Guardian’s Activate Summit on Thursday, he makes it clear Google is positioning itself for the future through mobile, with the development of its Android mobile system and with subsequent Google-branded handsets. He is keener to talk about this area than the battle with newspaper groupss such as News International, whose paywall model is partly based on what it considers Google’s parasitical attitude to original content.

The mobile battle pitches the three biggest tech firms against each other: Google, Apple and Microsoft. Analyst Gartner puts Android as the world’s fourth most-popular smartphone operating system in the first quarter of 2010 – ahead of Microsoft in a market it joined less than two years ago but behind Symbian (Nokia), Research in Motion (Blackberry) and Apple.

“I believe that the very best engineering is now going on the mobile devices — the hardest problems and the most clever solutions,” says Schmidt. “You know who the person is and where they are, and you don’t get that from a desktop app.” The 50,000 apps built for Android, mostly by third-party developers, cover almost every topic, but the one killer app is still Google itself, says Schmidt.

Schmidt describes how our online lives are now more personal, social and mobile. “When people are awake, they are now online, and that has a lot of implications for society and for Google,” he says. Google’s secret, he adds (though it’s not much of a secret), is that it can handle more data than its rivals because it has larger networks and data centres. Google in effect pulled its business from China earlier this year after moving the operation to Hong Kong, bypassingChina’s censorship regime. Google, whose company motto is “Do no evil” had been heavily criticised for its decision to do business in China and its rethink was welcomed by the industry. It also increased pressure on rivals who still operate there.

“Google doesn’t necessarily do things that other companies do. We have our own set of principles that we work hard on. In the China case, the decision was made not for revenue – it was about what we were willing to deal with. We want to be a good global citizen and we believe very strongly in the openness of information.”

Another key push from Google is encouraging governments to open information to the public, via formats that developers can build useful public services around. One recent victory for open data campaigners in the UK was Transport for London opening its travel data for commercial use, but the coalition government has indicated it may establish a broader public “right to data” that will have to be provided by local and national authorities.Schmidt says Google’s policy is to encourage governments to open their data to the public. The California-based company has teams helping to prepare “non web-resident” archives and databases for the web. “It is no longer acceptable online for government researchers to publish documents read by 500 people in printed form,” he says. “It needs to be web first.

Once that happens, there are lots of interesting things you can do to correlate real-time information, if that is what is needed, or put it on a map … government services are fundamentally about where people are, about what is going on in my town or my school.”

These projects are just as relevant in developing countries, where the introduction of smarter, cheaper phones has created a powerful network. How does Google help developing countries break through the digital divide, and ensure the opportunities of the web are open to all? “Hardware manufacturers are being incentivised to make higher volumes of lower-priced mobiles, and prices have fallen dramatically. But a young person now in pretty much any country, if they have a mobile device, can get access to pretty much all the world’s information and get it translated into their own language.”

Arriving at Google in 2001 after a career spent in Silicon Valley, Schmidt is still excited by its possibilities. “That’s a big news thing – that’s equivalent to the arrival of television.”

For more information on the Activate Summit, visit guardian.co.uk/activate

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, cheaper, deal, global, google, government, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, prices, service, sol, three, uk, world

New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

iPhone 4 will be available to order in 24 hours, on the 24th of June. Customers will have the option of 16GB/32GB memory options and a traditional glossy black or modern smooth white colour scheme. In addition to this the iPhone 3GS 8GB becomes available with superb pricing entry points and range of tariffs to suit all needs.

T-Mobile and 3 have yet to reveal their pricing and we’ve heard from a reliable source that there could be some cheaper options for business users and self-employed within the next couple of weeks. But for now, let’s take a look at the initial offers from Vodafone and Orange, which will be available to buy online tomorrow, and O2’s deals which will only be available to buy in-store.

iPhone 4 16GB – To buy the handset for just £29 all three networks are offering 1200 minutes for £45pm on a 24-month contract. Here the similarities end though with Vodafone offering 1GB of Internet/Web mail per month, 1GB of Wi-Fi usage with BT Openzone and 5MB of European roaming data usage per day. Orange has offered ‘unlimited’ mobile Internet and Wi-Fi with BT Openzone with a fair usage policy of 750MB per month. Unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone Wi-Fi (fair usage policy in force) is provided by O2 along with 750MB of data usage.

For those wishing to keep the monthly line rental to a minimum, O2 and Vodafone offer £25pm rentals with the iPhone available at £279/£219 respectively and Orange offer a rental at £30pm with a fantastic price of only £169 for the handset. The same data offers apply as above but with O2 lowering their data usage 500MB per month and Vodafone removing their free European roaming data.

iPhone 4 32GB – Things get a little shaken up here so those who desire the high-end memory iPhone 4 can really take advantage of the networks different takes on what the user may want.

Vodafone and Orange tempt those who want a low handset cost with Orange pricing the iPhone at £29 with unlimited minutes, data and Wi-Fi for £75pm whilst Vodafone costs the handset at £59 with 3000 minutes, 1GB of data, 1GB of Wi-Fi and include their 5MB daily European roaming promotion.

Lower monthly line rentals see the handset costs ballooning up to £300+ but O2 provide some nice middle ground. Its £45pm/1200 free minutes and 750MB of data plan have the iPhone priced at £129 with unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone.

iPhone 3GS 8GB – The release of the iPhone 4 opens up an attractive set of offers here for the new 8GB release of the iPhone 3GS. Provided free of charge across all three networks with 600 free minutes at £35pm the iPhone 3GS becomes a tempting, low cost offer. Various amounts of data and Wi-Fi usage are on offer to ensure the best of the iPhones features can be enjoyed without the threat of large bills arriving through the letter box.

A full set of 18 month contracts are also available with Vodafone providing the handsets at the same cost but with an additional £5pm added to the rental. Orange has taken the opposite route with the line rental remaining the same but with a significant increase in the iPhones cost.

We think the networks should be praised for being brave enough to take a range of different approaches to the device and line rental costs as this has ensured that you, the user, can get the very best deal tailored to your own needs.

Compare iPhone 4 16GB deals

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Having lost its exclusive rights to sell Apple’s new phone, the mobile network now seems to have an inverse pricing at its low end to discourage 24-month contracts

O2 has announced the pricing for its iPhone 4 handsets – and seems to be trying to push people away from buying longer-term contracts.

Under the 24-month contracts, the phones are more expensive than the 18-month contracts, by between £70 (for the white 16GB version priced at £209 for 18 months, or £279 for 24 months) and £24 (for the black 32GB version, costing £299 for 18 months and £323 for 24 months). Even though the price plans at that tariff differ by £5 per month, over 18 months the 16GB handset works out cheaper on the lowest tariff by £10.

Pricing plans for Vodafone’s iPhone 4 leaked out earlier this week, although the company has not formally announced them and is only letting people indicate interest in ordering it.

Orange’s charges start at £169 for a 16GB phone on a £30-per month 24-month contract (£229 on £30 for 18 months)

O2′s pricing decision has puzzled people on Twitter: “O2 seems to have forgotten the idea is to lure people onto longer contract by *lowering* upfront costs. Duh.,” commented journalist Scott Colvey.

The decision – tied to O2′s decision to introduce strict caps on data downloads per month, varying between 500MB and 1GB, replacing its previous “unlimited” data contracts that many are still using – may mean a migration of former iPhone customers away from the company, which until last Christmas had the monopoly on iPhone sales in the UK. Now the phone is sold by Orange, Vodafone and 3 – though only Orange and Vodafone have announced prices.

Many iPhone owners who bought the second-generation iPhone in 2008 on 18- or 24-month contracts will be eligible to upgrade with O2 – or possibly to shift to another carrier.

Apple has apologised to would-be customers after overwhelming demand meant that its own and AT&T’s servers crashed when the phone went on sale in five countries on Tuesday. It says that 600,000 phones were ordered on the day – which suggests that it has tapped into huge pent-up demand from owners of older versions, as well as new buyers seeking to join the smartphone bandwagon.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, blog, charges, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, gadget, gadgets, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sol, tariff, tariffs, twitter, uk, vodafone

We’re not made of money

New payment technologies should be cheaper to use than existing card systems, not more expensive, retailers have said. Shop operators have claimed that card fees are already too high, running into hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK.…

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(Source The Register)

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It’s the fourth iPhone launch in three years, and this one comes with the added bonus of all that juicy stolen-phone leakage back in April. So unusually, we know what this phone looks like before Steve’s Big Reveal at 6pm tonight.

If you’re too busy for the full colour prelude to Apple’s announcements, here’s the condensed guide to what you can probably expect.

• It looks like this:

• Though the working title, at least for the press, has been iPhone 4G (as in fourth generation) this will probably be called iPhone HD.

• A smaller, lighter, slimmer handset.

• A five-megapixel camera with flash.

• A glass back that improves reception.

• Micro-Sim cards, like iPad.

• The same A4 processor as the iPad (that means a much faster phone).

• A larger, sharper screen at 960 x 640 pixels – increasing screen resolution by four times.

• Improved battery life.

• iChat software will enable video chat with other iPhones and desktop Macs.

• Two models: 32GB and 64GB.

• Available through the existing retailers: Orange, Vodafone and O2.

• iPhone HD will become as the premium phone in what will become a range of iPhones with iPhone 3GS repackaged as a cheaper, less featured handset with 8GB of memory.

• Other rumours for tonight’s announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference include an anticipated cloud-based music streaming service for iTunes, a new and improved Apple TV (that would be one with a clearer, more sellable consumer proposition), new version of Mac’s operating system Mac OS X 10.7 (OS X Lion, perhaps?)

The latest iPhone 4.0 operating system – a reminder

iPhone 4.0 was announced in April and released in beta format for developers. Here’s the quick guide to the new features:

• Multitasking: the oft-requested feature has finally been added after Apple worked on how to balance multi-tasking without sucking battery life or performance. Multitasking has been organised through seven types of service, so music apps would be able to play while you make a VOIP call, for example.

• Folders: Something similar to that pretty stacking feature for folders on the latest OS for desktop Macs will be added, which will make it easier for those of us with loads of apps to organise them in folders.

• iBooks: The feature launched with the iPad will now work across iPhones an iPod Touch too.

• iAd: Apple’s fledgling mobile ads system is designed to deliver ads without taking the user away from the app or game they are using, and will give developers a 60% revenue share.

• Mail: Apple’s email client gets a unified inbox, so anyone with multiple accounts can see all the main in one view. Messages will be organised by thread and attachments open in third-party apps.

• Business: Apple has added email encryption and encryption for other apps to increase support for enterprise users, as well as improving mobile device management features, support for SSL VPN and wireless app distribution.

• Gaming: A major step-up in Apple’s competition to portable games consoles, like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, Apple is adding a layer that unifies players’ social profiles across all games.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, apple iphone, blog, card, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, email, HD, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, released, review, sam, service, sim, Sim Card, sol, sony, test, three, Touch, uk, vodafone, world

It’s the fourth iPhone launch in three years, and this one comes with the added bonus of all that juicy stolen-phone leakage back in April. So unusually, we know what this phone looks like before Steve’s Big Reveal at 6pm tonight.

If you’re too busy for the full colour prelude to Apple’s announcements, here’s the condensed guide to what you can probably expect.

• It looks like this:

• Though the working title, at least for the press, has been iPhone 4G (as in fourth generation) this will probably be called iPhone HD.

• A smaller, lighter, slimmer handset.

• A five-megapixel camera with flash.

• A glass back that improves reception.

• Micro-Sim cards, like iPad.

• The same A4 processor as the iPad (that means a much faster phone).

• A larger, sharper screen at 960 x 640 pixels – increasing screen resolution by four times.

• Improved battery life.

• iChat software will enable video chat with other iPhones and desktop Macs.

• Two models: 32GB and 64GB.

• Available through the existing retailers: Orange, Vodafone and O2.

• iPhone HD will become as the premium phone in what will become a range of iPhones with iPhone 3GS repackaged as a cheaper, less featured handset with 8GB of memory.

• Other rumours for tonight’s announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference include an anticipated cloud-based music streaming service for iTunes, a new and improved Apple TV (that would be one with a clearer, more sellable consumer proposition), new version of Mac’s operating system Mac OS X 10.7 (OS X Lion, perhaps?)

The latest iPhone 4.0 operating system – a reminder

iPhone 4.0 was announced in April and released in beta format for developers. Here’s the quick guide to the new features:

• Multitasking: the oft-requested feature has finally been added after Apple worked on how to balance multi-tasking without sucking battery life or performance. Multitasking has been organised through seven types of service, so music apps would be able to play while you make a VOIP call, for example.

• Folders: Something similar to that pretty stacking feature for folders on the latest OS for desktop Macs will be added, which will make it easier for those of us with loads of apps to organise them in folders.

• iBooks: The feature launched with the iPad will now work across iPhones an iPod Touch too.

• iAd: Apple’s fledgling mobile ads system is designed to deliver ads without taking the user away from the app or game they are using, and will give developers a 60% revenue share.

• Mail: Apple’s email client gets a unified inbox, so anyone with multiple accounts can see all the main in one view. Messages will be organised by thread and attachments open in third-party apps.

• Business: Apple has added email encryption and encryption for other apps to increase support for enterprise users, as well as improving mobile device management features, support for SSL VPN and wireless app distribution.

• Gaming: A major step-up in Apple’s competition to portable games consoles, like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, Apple is adding a layer that unifies players’ social profiles across all games.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, apple iphone, blog, card, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, email, HD, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, released, review, sam, service, sim, Sim Card, sol, sony, test, three, Touch, uk, vodafone, world

Apple’s ’4G’ device is out this month. Will Steve Jobs also cut the price of the current model and challenge Nokia head-on?

Steve Jobs will appear before the Apple faithful tomorrow to reveal the latest version of the Californian technology group’s mobile phone. Nicknamed the iPhone “4G” – on the basis that the last one was the 3GS, with the “S” standing for speed – it will be the summer’s must-have gadget, hitting the UK this month. But it is also seen as being in the vanguard of an all-out assault on the mobile market.

In the three years since it launched its first handset, Apple has grabbed the headlines and, more importantly, snatched a lucrative share of the more mature mobile phone markets of the US and Europe, where consumers are willing to pay upwards of £30 a month to get an iPhone. Now, speculation is rising that the company is approaching a so-called “iPod moment” in mobiles: the point at which it will decide that it can capture a much larger slice of the market by producing more than one device.

The success of the App Store, which has seen iPhone users download billions of applications, coupled with the pressure to have a wide market to attract advertisers to its embryonic iAd platform, is pushing Apple towards diversifying, just as it did with the iPod six years ago when it introduced the iPod mini. There is also increasing competition from Google’s Android platform. After two and a half years, handset manufacturers are finally producing compelling Android phones – such as the HTC Desire – and more are slated for release this year, including the mass-market HTC Wildfire.

But rather than unveil a new, cheaper version of the iPhone, Apple is expected to position the iPhone 4G at the top of the smartphone market and reorganise the existing range. The company is likely to halt production of the iPhone 3G – which cannot cope with Apple’s new multi-tasking software – and scrap both existing versions of the iPhone 3GS, which have 16GB and 32GB of memory. It will replace them with a new 8GB version of the 3GS, which is expected to be aimed at the wider market.

The iPhone 4G – according to mobile industry insiders who have seen one and confirmed widespread web leaks – will be available in two versions: 32GB and 64GB. These will put “clear blue water” between it and the mass-market 3GS, as one industry executive puts it. The 4G is slightly smaller and slimmer than the current 3GS. It has an improved 5-megapixel camera with flash and uses micro-sim cards, as seen in the iPad. It also has a glass back, which greatly assists phone reception. In the UK, it is expected to be sold by the same mobile phone networks that have the current iPhone: O2, Orange and Vodafone. It is unclear whether Tesco Mobile will have the 4G when it is launched in the last week of this month.

The parallels between Apple’s current position in the mobile phone market and the place it held in the digital music market when it introduced the iPod mini are revealing. The first iPod appeared in late 2001, but it was not until 2003 that Apple launched the iTunes store. One million tracks were sold in the first five days and 70m in the first year. That showed Apple there was a real mass market for digital music and was a spur for the creation of the first variant of the iPod line, the iPod mini, the following year.

At the time, Apple was lodged firmly in the high end of the market for digital music players. The iPod was the benchmark by which all others were measured and Apple had a share of about 30%. The iPod mini – replaced at the end of 2005 by the Nano – was designed to grab a large part of the next third down. In similar fashion, the iPhone has become the handset by which other mobiles are measured, and in markets including the UK it has made Apple the third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia and Samsung. It is now a question of how much of the rest of the market – chock full of me-too touchscreen devices from the likes of Nokia, LG and Samsung – Apple wants.

“I would argue that they may already have reached the tipping point,” Ben Wood at CCS Insight – a long-time follower of the mobile market – says. “The iPhone has become a ubiquitous product in the markets where its pricing is acceptable.”

He believes that a real driver behind Apple’s growth will be the iAd platform, which Jobs announced this year alongside the new version of the iPhone software – which is also in the iPad. The new mobile advertising platform is designed to allow iPhone app developers to create in-app advertising. Currently, anyone who clicks on an advert in a downloadable app is bounced out of it and on to the advertiser’s webpage. As a result, many users are put off clicking on adverts. In contrast, iAd will allow full-screen video and interactive advertising content to be served within an application. Crucially, Apple will sell and serve the adverts, and developers will receive 60% of their iAd revenue.

“With iAd, which could be as significant to Apple as the iPod franchise itself, Apple has a tremendous opportunity. It will provide a further chance to lock in their leading position in application development,” Wood says. “If iAd becomes the kind of phenomenon that Apple appears to be able to create, and becomes as big as it could, then potentially Apple could really disrupt the market by subsidising the iPhone from their iAd revenues.”

But whether iAd means that Apple needs to go all the way into the low end of the market is doubtful.

“IPhone users are a segment of the population that has affinity with technology and disposable income, and that is a marketeer’s dream already,” Wood says.

And Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at rival analysts Gartner, is not convinced that this is the right time for Apple to go mass market, citing price constraints on the iPhone’s most important feature – its large touchscreen.

“On the iPod touch and the iPhone, the screen is very important,” she says. “Music is easier [to do in a mass-market device] because it is just [data] storage, and with the price of storage coming down you can experiment with design. But when you have applications running on the device, how much dumber can your device become before it is useless? And that is where they are going to struggle. What else do you cut?”

Apple could cut its own profits, but it has shown little desire to do that in the past: the switch from the 3G to the 3GS actually reduced the manufacturing cost of the phone, analysts reckon.

“Yes, of course, they can expand their addressable market so much quicker, but do they want that?” says Milanesi. “Just as Jobs says Apple does not want to be the Dell of the PC market, [so] Apple does not want to be the Nokia of the mobile market.” How true that is will be revealed tomorrow.

Focus on Apple’s factory

While Apple fans will drool over the new iPhone this week, tragic events in China have thrown a spotlight on the human cost of the west’s obsession with shiny toys. A spate of suicides at the massive Chinese plant run by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn has called into question working conditions at one of Apple’s largest suppliers.

The Californian company has dispatched a team of investigators to discover why 10 people have killed themselves so far this year. Management at the Shenzhen facility, which stretches across three square kilometers and employs more than 250,000 people, are trying to solve the problem by hiring counsellors, playing soothing music on production lines, increasing wages and asking new recruits to sign a ‘”no-suicide” contract. They are also taking more direct action, installing netting around outdoor stairwells of the dormitory buildings, where workers sleep eight to a room.

Speaking last week, Steve Jobs said Apple was “diligent” when it came to understanding the working conditions in the supply chain, auditing its direct suppliers as well as tertiary suppliers.

“We are over there trying to understand what is happening and more importantly trying to understand how we can help because it is a difficult situation,” he told the D8 conference organised by All Things Digital. He said many young workers came from poor rural areas and were away from home for the first time.

“They are probably less prepared to leave home than your typical High School student going to college in this country. I think there are some real issues there,” he said.

But he stressed: “Foxconn is not a sweatshop. They have got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it is a pretty nice factory.”

Some of Foxconn’s workers disagree, complaining the monotonous workload causes depression. “I do the same thing every day,” Xiao Qi, a college graduate who works at Foxconn in product development told Bloomberg Businessweek. “I have no future.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Anyone going to the World Cup or abroad can minimise the cost of mobile calls, text messages and internet fees

As if the thousands of UK travellers trapped abroad after the recent volcanic ash drama hadn’t suffered enough damage to their bank balances, many are now facing mobile phone “bill shock“.

These holidaymakers, many of whom are just receiving their latest mobile phone bills, may be dismayed when they discover how much they have spent on calls and data roaming while stranded abroad. The Observer recently ran a story about William Harrison, a student who accidentally ran up an £8,000 phone bill with Orange while in France by using his mobile to access the internet.

In theory, mobile bills should no longer be too painful for those travelling to Europe, as from 1 March all European mobile operators have been obliged under EU roaming rules to offer their customers a cut-off limit of €50 (about £45) for using the internet on their phones. However, it is still early days and not yet clear whether all operators are complying with this rule.

In a month’s time the regulations will tighten further, as at the moment customers need to opt-in to this limit, whereas from 1 July the cut-off limit will be set at €50 by default unless they opt out.

For those travelling further afield the cost of calling, texting and using the internet on their mobile can still be an expensive pastime. Independent consumer body Consumer Focus warned World Cup ticket holders last week that costs for calls, texts and data use could add up to more than £100 on a match day – more than the face value of a ticket.

Mobile phone operators are expected to start bringing out more competitive overseas mobile phone packages in the next few weeks as the holiday season hots up.

But for now, anyone who is about to go abroad has a number of options: doing nothing and sticking with their operator’s standard overseas charges (expensive); switching to their operator’s overseas calls package (cheaper); buying a global or local sim (potentially even cheaper, depending on usage).

Mike Wilson, mobiles and broadband manager at moneysupermarket.com, says: “Don’t underestimate how easy it is to rack up a hefty mobile bill if you are going overseas and planning to use your phone.

“Before escaping the country be sure to check with your operator how much calls, texts and internet use will set you back when you’re away, because you won’t be charged the same rates as your UK tariff. I would advise asking if there is a cheaper international tariff available.”

Paying as standard

For standard call charges in Europe, T-Mobile and Virgin are the most expensive at 43p a minute, according to moneysupermarket.com, while 02 is the cheapest at 35p a minute. Network operator 3 is the cheapest for receiving calls at 15p a minute compared to Orange, T-Mobile and Virgin, which all charge the most at 19p. Sending texts is 11p a message with all networks, and all are free to receive.

The cost of using the internet is where operators’ charges vary hugely, and where holidaymakers are most likely to run up large bills. T-Mobile, 3, 02 and Orange all charge a flat fee per megabyte (MB) of between £1.25 (3) and £3 (02 and Orange), while Vodafone and Virgin offer the option of either paying per MB, or paying either a daily or hourly fee for web usage (with a cap on how much data can be used).

Virgin, for example, charges £5 a MB, or £4 for a one-hour pass with a 3MB limit and £6 for a 24-hour pass with a 5MB limit.

Whichever package you have you need to be careful about how much data you download. One MB is not much – watching a two-hour film uses about 800 MB.

All these charges when incurred within Europe are considerably lower than in some other countries. For example, if you visit Egypt with your Orange phone you will pay £1.75 a minute to call home and £8 per MB of data used, while in Australia you will pay £1.20 a minute per call and £7.50 per MB of data with T-Mobile.

Package things up

To keep costs down, a good alternative is to opt for your operator’s travel package. Vodafone’s Passport deal, for example, means you pay your standard home rate to call the UK from more than 35 European countries (and from Australia and New Zealand) after paying a 75p connection charge. These calls can be part of your inclusive minutes if you are on a contract. To receive calls you pay the 75p connection charge and you can talk for up to 60 minutes free of charge. After that you pay 20p a minute.

02′s My Europe Extra, on the other hand, is £10 a month for 25p-a-minute calls, free received calls and 11p texts.

Go global – or local

You can avoid your UK operator’s charges altogether by switching your network sim card for a global or local sim using websites such as 0044.co.uk and UK2Abroad.co.uk. A global sim card will work across a number of countries so is particularly good for frequent travellers or backpackers, while a local sim will only work in one country. You can buy these before you travel, but you might need to get your phone unlocked by your operator so you can switch cards.

Most global and local sims cost somewhere between £15 and £30 and come loaded with differing amounts of call credit, which you can top up by credit or debit card at any time. For those travelling to South Africa for the World Cup, for example, 0044′s South African local sim costs £29.99 and gives you ZAR 55 (about £5) of credit.

After that, local calls cost 10p a minute off-peak, calls to the UK are 63p a minute, while texts to the UK are 15p. This compares with the standard pay-as-you-go rates on Orange where charges for local calls within South Africa and to the UK are £1.45 a minute and texts are 50p a message.

Buying a local or global sim will mean you temporarily have a new phone number, so you will need to make sure people know this before you go.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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• Mobile internet use as much as £8 to view 20 pages
• Fans urged to check with phone operators before travelling

Football fans lucky enough to be travelling to the football World Cup this summer are being warned that they could face huge mobile phone bills if they call, text, tweet or surf the web while in South Africa.

Many mobile phone companies count the country in their most expensive bracket when calculating the cost of mobile phone calls and texts, while accessing the web costs as much as £8 per megabyte with some operators. Football fans will run up that much data usage after accessing as few as 20 web pages, while any that download an “app” while abroad could run up far higher data charges.

Mobile phone operator 3 will this week slash its prices for customers going to the tournament, which starts on 11 June, while Vodafone has already announced it will extend its Passport cheap calls package to include the country.

But with more and more mobile phone users carrying smartphones that can access the internet, use social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and send emails, the tournament could turn out to be very expensive for football fans who do not check first with their mobile operator.

“The rise of smartphones, like the iPhone, means that all it takes is a bit of browsing or a downloaded app and you are going to get absolutely stung if you don’t know what you are paying for,” warned Mike Wilson, broadband and mobiles manager at moneysupermarket.com. “The high cost of roaming is always an issue in the summer but the fact that the World Cup is being held in South Africa has upped the ante.

“The first thing that anyone considering travelling this summer should do is speak to their existing provider and find out what they are going to charge and whether there are any special deals that will reduce that amount. Don’t forget to also shop around for better deals.”

This week 3 will announce that it is dropping its data roaming prices by more than 50% during June and July. It will charge £1.25 per megabyte of data, which compares with as much as £8 per megabyte with Orange.

Owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, 3 is also dropping its call charges for South Africa – making calls from the country to anywhere else in the world will be charged at £1.40 per minute, while receiving calls will be 99p per minute and texts 25p.

While 3′s data roaming charges are cheaper than its rivals, its voice prices are still relatively high. Both O2 and Vodafone charge less, while all four rival networks offer discounts to customers who sign up for special international calling promotions.

Vodafone, for instance, has extended its free Passport service to include South Africa for June and July, meaning football fans who register before they travel can make calls from their existing bundles, after an initial 75p connection charge.

Vodafone has also dropped its data costs but only from 15 June, which is four days after kick-off in the first game. It currently charges £14.99 for 25MB of data a day in South Africa, but from 15 June it will charge £3 per megabyte for the first 5MB used by customers and £15 for every subsequent 5MB.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, charges, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, free, gadget, gadgets, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, roaming, service, sol, twitter, uk, vodafone, world

O2′s combined broadband and landline bundle is cheaper than TalkTalk and BT

Are you paying separate bills for your landline and broadband? If so, it may be time to switch to a combined deal.

Mobile phone giant O₂ this week launched one of the UK’s cheapest bundles, undercutting the likes of TalkTalk and BT.

For £17 a month, it will supply your landline and phone package including free calls in the evenings and weekends, alongside 8Mb broadband.

Most people, though, will want to opt for the £20-a-month deal which includes all the phone calls you can make to other landlines and 0845 numbers, as well as calls to 20 popular international destinations.

O₂ says it is open to anyone with a BT line into their home – some Sky and TalkTalk customers may be able to switch depending on their local exchange, assuming they are out of contract.

To get these prices, households have to be an O₂ mobile customer. All those with a contract can access the deal. Pay-as-you-go users have to top up at least £10 every three months. Non-O₂ customers pay £5 a month more.

You have to sign a 12-month contract – and the only downsides that we have spotted are that you have to pay an extra £1 a month for the 1571 answer phone package, and that those on the £17-a-month deal have to pay for calls to 0845 numbers.

Unlike most other basic internet packages, O₂‘s home broadband is not subject to download limits. And the offering is certainly going to cause some shockwaves. Until recently, TalkTalk prided itself on the UK’s cheapest home phone/broadband packages. They start at £18.48 a month – but you need to add £4 a month for unlimited calls any time and a further £2 a month for international calls. BT’s similar package costs in excess of £30 a month compared to O₂‘s £20/£25.

One of the advantages of signing with O₂ is that it provides good customer service – meaning any problems should get sorted out relatively easily – not always the case in the market.

Matthew Wheeler, communications expert at uSwitch.com, says: “O₂ has been voted best broadband provider for the last two years in our independent Customer Satisfaction Awards.

“If it’s able to maintain these very high standards with its home phone service it will provide an extremely viable alternative to existing bundle suppliers. Obviously O₂ mobile customers get the best deal, but £25 a month is still a great deal. The other really good thing is that they are upfront about the line rental cost which is wrapped into the price they promote.”

He says home phone and broadband bundles usually bring better value to consumers, “but they are also very easy for people to get wrong. If you are dissatisfied with one element of your bundle you may not be able to cancel that part of the service without sacrificing the rest of the deal,” he warns.

Customers can text their home phone number to 61202, call 0800 954 1427 or visit O2′s website to check if they can get O₂ Home Broadband and Home Phone.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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The competitor to Apple’s iPhone will be on sale from 30 April, though prices do not significantly undercut it

Vodafone is making Google’s Nexus One mobile phone free for any customer willing to sign up to a two-year contract at £35 a month.

The mobile phone company will start selling the phone on 30 April, but customers can pre-order the device on its website from today.

Vodafone is the first European operator to offer the Google phone, which has been available in the US since the start of the year, and it has taken longer than executives had expected to get hold of the device.

But Vodafone’s price plan is unlikely to set Nexus One sales alight in the UK. It pitches the phone in direct competition with the iPhone, which Vodafone also started selling earlier this year. The Nexus One may be a faster phone than the iPhone, but it there are far fewer downloadable applications available for Android devices – giving the Apple phone has the upper hand.

When it launched in the US, Google sold the phone solely through its website and sold it unlocked, so that customers could put their existing SIM card into it. European customers could buy it from the website and have it shipped over.

But customers who experienced problems with the device were forced to rely upon email for technical assistance, sometimes waiting days for a reply.

Eventually, Google introduced a freephone customer support line in the US, but the support problems experienced there gave the company reason to pause over the phone’s launch elsewhere, to make sure it has its customer service operations in place. As a result, the UK launch has come later than Vodafone expected although Google has always maintained that it intended to launch in the UK “in the spring”.

Google has since optimised the device for some American networks – such as AT&T – to reduce customer’s problems. It has also struck a deal with Verizon Wireless which will see the phone subsidised for new users.

Analysts have described sales of the phone – the first phone using Google’s Android software over which the search engine company has had full control – as disappointing, although Google has denied that the launch has been a flop. Last month, Goldman Sachs slashed its estimate for Nexus One sales this year from 3.5m units to just 1m worldwide.

The Nexus One also faces competition from another Android handset, the HTC Desire, which is very similar and has been better received by critics. The HTC Desire is available from several UK networks.

The Nexus One will be available on cheaper contracts for customers who are willing to pay some of the cost of the device, which in the US retails for $529 (£342). For customers who only want to sign up for 18 months, the phone will cost £99 on a £30 a month contract, or £59 for £35 a month. It is free on an 18 month contract at £40 a month.

On a two-year contract, the phone will cost £99 for £25 a month, or £59 for £30 a month.

Vodafone UK customers with the Nexus One can use up to 1GB of mobile data as part of their price plan as well as take advantage of unlimited access to Wi-Fi in the home and free, publicly available services throughout the country. Customers using Wi-Fi can also use an additional 1GB of data at premium BT Openzone hotspots throughout the UK.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, card, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, email, free, google, HTC, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, phone, phones, prices, service, sim, Sim Card, sol, uk, vodafone, world

Holidaymakers are being milked by extortortionate charges to access the internet on their mobile phones

We are planning to go on holiday next month to France. Which is nice. I am also planning to take my phone now that the mobile internet is exploding. Which is also nice. The trouble is that I am actually planning to use my phone in order to access the web (email, Twitter, Flickr etc), and that’s where the problems start. I have been ranting about excessive data charges abroad for years so I was interested to see how things had changed now that “unlimited” data packages are widely available in the UK.

The man in the T-Mobile shop said they charged £1.50 a megabyte in data charges for mobile phones accessing the internet in France. To give some idea of what that means, I recently uploaded a three-minute video to YouTube, which was over 80MB. For nothing. If I had done that on T-Mobile’s tariff, it would have cost me £120. A single song these day could be 10MB, which would cost £15 to download.

I decided to ring my current provider, O2, to get a comparison. An extremely helpful assistant quoted me £3 a megabyte for France – twice the rate of T-Mobile, which was starting to look cheap. She pointed out that “bolt-ons” to my existing tariff were available offering a package of 10MB for £20 or 50MB for £50. A bit better, but still crap.

My final port of call was Vodafone, which used to be my operator of choice until they tried to charge me £250 for the privilege of staying loyal to them when I upgraded my phone. I wondered whether they had changed their spots. The man in the shop quoted me £4.25 a megabyte – which would have pushed the cost of uploading that video to £340 and a single track to £42.50, with no special bolt-ons to bring down the price.

So what is going on here? This is not something happening in a computer game, it is the real world. Unsuspecting people going abroad regularly get milked by those extortionate charges. And savvy people get caught as well. I know someone in the business who checked before he left for eastern Europe that he was not going to be exposed to these charges only to find out he had run up a £600 bill the first morning.

It is happening because the operators have treated their customers with scarcely concealed contempt for years. Not only did they build walled gardens around their phones, thereby shutting out rival products but they also paid content providers a pittance to create games and other stuff for their sites. This was not only bad manners but bad business. If they had paid content providers decent prices and had cheaper data charges they could have built up a market for apps years before Apple came on to the scene. But it took Apple to break their monopoly by popularising “all you can eat” data charges and letting developers keep 70% of the income (before VAT).

But where is the white knight who will ride to the rescue over data charges abroad? The European commission has done much to improve roaming charges, but hasn’t so far made much impact on data. It would be called daylight robbery except that it goes on through the night as well. It is not even in the interests of business because if international charges were capped it would lead to an explosion of data traffic, which would more than make up for the willful exploitation of their so-called customers.

There is an alternative – to use free Wi-Fi hotspots – but not everyone has access to them. The other possibility is that I may have missed something and there is actually a sensible argument for high data charges. Is there anyone out there from the operators who would care to put the argument for the defence? If not, then they should immediately put a stop to this outrageous scandal.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Technology blog Engadget has pictures that it claims are of Apple’s new iPhone 4G

Engadget seems to have acquired a prototype version of a fourth-generation iPhone – possibly lost by an Apple employee who was using it “in the wild”, as the site says that “apparently the phone was found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case”.

The updated phone is expected to be launched in June, and according to the specifications, the “iPhone 4G” (as it is being called) has 80GB of storage, a front-facing camera, and looks exactly like a Twitpic posted in February (though possibly it’s been removed by now if the phone was lost by an Apple employee – who, if Steve Jobs finds out about this, can surely look forward to an interesting future in the foundations of some new building).

The phone at first booted up into a “new” iPhone OS (probably the iPhone OS4 that was announced last week) but has since stopped booting – which would indicate that Apple has remotely disabled it.

Some suggestions that it was a Japanese counterfeit have been discounted after images posted in Japan turned out to be faked.

Engadget said yesterday:

“Additionally, a source – who confirms this is the next Apple iPhone – also tells us that the device apparently does have a higher res screen on-board, a front-facing camera, a higher resolution camera with flash, and takes MicroSIM cards (that’s the little ‘button’ around the side you see in the Twitpic which is floating around the internet).”

What has intrigued people is that the back of the prototype iPhone 4G seems to have an unusual enclosure.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball also points to a patent that Apple was awarded in 2006 for a “handheld computing device [that] includes an enclosure having structural walls formed from a ceramic material that is radio-transparent”.

Gruber says that this answers two questions he’s had about the iPhone 4G leaks. “Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass,” he writes. “Now, the thing I’ve been curious about ever since hearing about this ‘glass’ back is durability. Everyone knows that dropping your iPhone is like dropping a piece of buttered toast – there’s a good side and a bad side it can land on. Put a glass back on these things and, in terms of drop survivability, it’d be like a piece of toast with butter on both sides, as it were.”

Ceramics, though, could be glass-like – transparent, yet also tough. (Or, of course, potentially fragile; that mug you dropped on the kitchen floor is ceramic.)

The key thing about radio-transparent enclosures being that you’ll get better phone reception with them – or that you can use lower power systems and get the same quality of phone reception. The use of ceramics is ingenious: the problem with metal casings for phones is that they shield the aerials from the signal (in a Faraday cage effect). If you can replace that with something that’s both radio-transparent and comparably tough as metal, you’re onto a winner. According to the patent, the enclosure would be a “tube-like main body that is extruded in its entirety with the ceramic material”. That sounds like quite a manufacturing/engineering feat; I can’t think of any ceramics that have been widely used for consumer electronics – and certainly none that are presently used for. In case you’re thinking “Bakelite!”, that’s a plastic. Have I missed a few? Apple says in the patent that:

“It should be noted that ceramics have been used in a wide variety of products including electronic devices such as watches, phones, and medical instruments. In all of these cases, however, the ceramic material have not been used as structural components. In most of these cases they have been used as cosmetic accoutrements. It is believed up till now ceramic materials have never been used as a structural element including structural frames, walls or main body of a consumer electronic device, and more particularly an enclosure of a portable electronic device such as a media player or cell phone.”

The Apple patent is intriguingly broad: it allows for the structure to be used for a mobile phone, media player, handheld computing device, and offers both zirconia and alumina as the ceramic bases.

But why use ceramics rather than cheaper and more easily malleable plastics? Apple, after all, has plenty of experience with those (it pioneered a particular translucent material for the first iMac). The company answers that in item 0018 of the patent filing:

“The lighter enclosures, which typically use thinner plastic structures and fewer fasteners, tend to be more flexible and therefore they have a greater propensity to buckle and bow when used while the stronger and more rigid enclosures, which typically use thicker plastic structures and more fasteners, tend to be thicker and carry more weight. Unfortunately, increased weight may lead to user dissatisfaction, and bowing may damage the internal parts of the portable computing devices.”

Besides which the mechanical assemblies mean you get seams, cracks and fastenings – things that Apple finds unacceptable. (That’s not in the patent. Just implied.)

And Apple already has its eyes on particular implementations: it suggests that the ceramic enclosure could be applied to future iPod Nanos or its smallest iPod, the Shuffle, or its remote controls.

And they could come in lots of colours: Apple helpfully explains how you make a ceramic for manufacturing (though of course it’s obliged to, because it wants the patent):

“Zirconia may be embodied in a variety of colors including white, black, navy blue, ivory, brown, dark blue, light blue, platinum, gold (among others). The colors may for example be created by adding doping materials to the ceramic material. Other materials may also be added including Yttrium, which helps keep the crystalline structure intact across all temperatures especially for maintaining strength as the part cools down.”

It’s an excursion into the rare earth metals: you’ll be seeing zirconium, yttrium, hafnium, chromium, and possibly others.

Quite aside from the iPhone 4G details – which look predictable enough, in that you’d expect a phone with a better camera and so on – the use of ceramics could make a dramatic change to materials. The original iMac drove a swathe of engineering companies to retool to produce translucent plastics with that “iMac look”; but ceramics hold out a lot more promise.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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