As you’ll have seen from our previous story, yesterday 3 UK announced X-Series, its new service which promises to offer you proper mobile broadband. If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, here’s a primer. Click the links throughout this post to find out more info from 3’s official X-Series website.
What is X-Series?
It’s a new tariff and bundle of services from 3, which offers high-speed internet access from your phone using HSDPA technology, which is faster than 3G. You’ll pay a monthly flat fee to use it, just like your home broadband, and the services available include mobile versions of some of the Internet’s biggest and most innovative companies. Plus you’ll be able to access any website you want, rather than being restricted to 3’s own portal, as in the past.
Which companies is that then?
First off, there’s Yahoo and MSN, who’ll be offering their existing instant messenger applications on 3’s X-Series phones, with unlimited usage part of the tariff. Yahoo is also preloading its Yahoo Go app on the phones, which stores your contacts, accesses your Yahoo Mail account, and lets you upload photos to your Yahoo Photos account.
Google is also involved, with its search homepage being on the phones. eBay will be letting X-Series users search, browse, bid and buy on auctions from their handsets, while a Skype application preloaded on the phones will let you call other Skype users (on their mobiles or PCs) for free.
Finally, two really exciting applications. Slingbox lets you stream your home TV to your mobile, whether it’s terrestrial, cable, satellite or Freeview. Meanwhile, Orb lets you do the same thing for your home PC, streaming MP3s and videos from your hard drive to your phone over the air, and accessing your photos remotely.
What phones does X-Series work on?
Initially, 3 has announced two X-Series phones, although neither is exclusive to the operator. The first one is the Nokia N73, which has a 3.2-megapixel camera. The second is the Sony Ericsson W950i, which doesn’t have a camera, but does have a 4GB hard drive inside to store your MP3 tunes.
These are just the first two handsets though. 3 will be announcing more in the coming months, hopefully including one with a full QWERTY keyboard, to make best use of all the Internet features of X-Series.
How much will it cost?
3 was a bit vague on the exact pricing yesterday. What they did say was that you’ll pay a flat monthly fee to use X-Series, which will probably be a bit less than you pay for home broadband every month (i.e. £15-20). For that, you’ll get unlimited internet browsing and usage of the basic X-Series services like instant messaging, email, eBay and Skype.
If you’re planning to use the more data-intensive Slingbox and Orb services, you’ll pay an extra flat fee on top of this. And whatever you pay for X-Series will be on top of your existing 3 monthly tariff for voice-calls, texts and picture/video messages.
When does it launch?
1st December is the date when the X-Series phones will be available to buy, and the UK is the first country in the world to get the service. In the meantime, 3 has launched an X-Series blog, where you can get answers to your questions about the service.
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