Samsung’s ultra-durable ruggedised handset – the Solid - is finally being released in the UK courtesy of O2.
Manufacturers don’t release enough handsets like this. It’s all very well having a swanky new iPhone or N96 8GB, but as soon as you drop it or use it in the rain you’re scared it’s not going to work. If you’re working on building sites or have an active lifestyle, then you need something that’s going to bounce of the ground and carry on working.
Originally due in December on Orange, the Solid is shock, water and dust resistant being encased as it is in a thick rubber body. It has a FM radio, Bluetooth and a camera, but also a built-in flashlight. Cool.
Another cool unique feature is SOS Dialling. If the owner gets into trouble, pressing the volume button three times sends an alert message to a nominated person. The next incoming call is then automatically answered. Handy in an emergency, but not, we think, if you’re struggling to catch the bus home from work.
Anyway, if you want one, the Solid’s available free on all O2 12 month contracts, or £59.99 on pre-pay.
Orange has had HTC’s iPhone-lite Touch Plus for a while now – probably something to do with it having an exclusive deal? Anyway, T-Mobile’s jumping on the Touch bandwagon and has posted an HTC Touch Plus on its British site as ‘Coming Soon’.
While O2 has the iPhone market sewn up thanks to its deal with Apple, other operators have had to scramble around for alternatives and HTC’s nifty little device certainly fits the bill for people hankering after a touch-screen smartphone. Oh, and the HTC Touch Plus certainly won’t cost £270 AND a hefty 18-month contract!
Other ‘Coming Soon’ devices posted on T-Mobile’s site are the Nokia 1650 (Due February) and 8800 (January) and Sony Ericsson’s HSDPA-enabled Walkman phone, the W890i (Also due in February).
It’s fair to say there’ve been a few rumours that the iPhone hasn’t been selling as fast as Apple and O2 would like in the UK. However, just before Christmas O2 tried to dispel the speculation by claiming that it was on course to sell 200,000 of the devices by “early January”.
O2 boss Matthew Key also said that iPhone owners are using the device’s web browsing capabilities, despite it using the sluggish EDGE network. In fact, 60% of UK iPhone users are apparently consuming more than 25MB of data a month, compared to just 1.8% of O2’s customers on other phones. If that figure just relates to network data, it’d be much higher if you include people’s usage over Wi-Fi.
Also, O2 is keen to scotch the rumour that a rival UK operator could bag the 3G iPhone when it comes out this year, with the FT saying he’s “confident” that o2 will have an exclusive on the device too. I wonder why he didn’t say “We WILL have an exclusive on the 3G iPhone”, but that could be just that Key isn’t supposed to be talking up the device publicly for the moment.
(via FT)
O2 has finally caught up with its rival networks in refreshing its Active mobile internet portal.
The new-look site will according to O2, ‘for the first time’, look and feel the same regardless of whether its being viewed on a 2G or 3G handset. ‘First time’ for O2 at least, as Vodafone and others have been doing this for ages.
A useful personalisation feature is that the user’s most visited sites will be shown at the top of their homepage, with content viewed tailored to suit their browsing habits. For instance, if someone likes football and browses a lot of news, results and transfer stories, then these will appear at the top of their homepage.
It sounds interesting and we’d love to hear about user’s experiences, because if sounds like O2 owners will finally get the browsing experience Vodafone offers with its Mobile Favourites service.
Nokia’s released an exclusive ‘adventure pack’ for its brand spanking new N82, just in time for Christmas.
Available only from Nokia’s online store, the ‘adventure pack’ includes a Sim-free N82 (naturally), but also a pre-installed copy of Nokia’s Sports Tracker app and a Salomon backpack, as well as the 2GB microSD card and music headset which come as standard. And all this for only £399.
The phone itself is quite a nifty piece of kit with a five-megapixel camera, built-in GPS and Nokia Maps (in case you get lost while jogging), mobile internet (on 3G and Wi-Fi), plus a music player and FM radio.
The handset, currently available on O2 with a range of mobile retailers is already a pretty hot device, and presumably the ‘adventure pack’ is going to prove pretty attractive for sports enthusiasts.
Nokia Music Store customers can get free access to it over wi-fi after it signed a deal with The Cloud. The deal gives free access through The Cloud’s 7,500 wi-fi hotspots.
The deal means that Music Store customers with wi-fi handsets and laptops can connect to The Cloud and browse the millions of tracks on Music Store without having to pay their operators’ browsing rates.
Aside from the obvious financial benefits, customers will also get faster, more reliable connections than on operators’ 3G networks, meaning quick and easy downloads.
The Cloud’s wi-fi hotspots are in all sorts of places such as McDonalds, Coffee Republic, airports and the Square Mile in London. It’s already done deals to offer free wi-fi access to iPhone users and O2 and Orange customers. If it keeps growing at this rate, soon no-one will ever need pay for wireless broadband internet again…
Apple is facing a Brit backlash against the iPhone, with accusations that the handset has sold less than expected since its launch this month, and a report suggesting the price tag is what’s putting people off in the UK.
Check this article on The Register, which quotes “reliable channel sources” as saying that O2 has activated just 26,500 iPhones since its launch on 9th November - which puts the early estimates of 100,000 sales in the first weekend into perspective. The article does point out that more may have been bought as Christmas presents, and so not activated yet.
Meanwhile, research firm Gfk NOP has conducted a poll of 500 Brits, and found that 72% said they won’t be buying an iPhone due to its high price, with just 2% considering adding it to their Christmas lists. Analyst Richard Jameson reckons that people simply aren’t used to paying more than £200 for phones here in the UK.
We think it’s too early to label the iPhone a flop - and don’t forget, if that 26,500 figure is correct, at £269 a pop that’s still over £7 million worth of sales, and a minimum of £927,500 a month in contract payments…
If you live in London you’ll have struggled to avoid the billboards for Barclaycard’s OnePulse cards that combine a credit card with the Oyster travel card.
The upshot is users can make sub-£10 purchases just by waving their card in front of a scanner, like they do with the Oyster. Well, now Barclaycard has said that from early next year, trials will begin of OnePulse using specially-equipped Nokia phones, so users wave their phone, not their credit card.
OnePulse can already be used in around 1,000 places in London, and for the trial several hundred Barclaycard customers will get Nokia phones embedded with the special radio chips - most probably the 6131 NFC (pictured) announced earlier this year.
Nokia reckons mobiles will be safer than contactless credit cards because they can be locked. Some have claimed that contactless cards will be open to fraudsters using portably radio receivers to get people’s card details.
Mind you, there is also another problem. Most people using their Oyster card will wipe it across the reader. If they did that with their phone it’ll soon get covered in scratches - imagine doing it with an iPhone! Hopefully Nokia’s thinking of ways round this!
[Via The Observer]
There’s developing news in T-Mobile’s spat with Vodafone in Germany, after the latter won a court injunction to prevent T-Mobile from selling the iPhone on an exclusive contract there. T-Mobile has now announced that it will also now sell an unlocked version of the iPhone, but at a price.
How much? It’ll set you back a whopping 999 Euros. That’s about £720! Although for Brits who really really want an iPhone on an operator other than O2, it might be a price worth swallowing (plus travel costs to go and get one, of course). T-Mobile will continue selling the iPhone for 399 Euros (£287).
It’s the implications elsewhere in the world (and specifically the UK) that I’m interested in, though. It’s unclear if this kind of legal challenge could be mounted in the UK, due to differing trade laws, but with the principle of selling a legally unlocked iPhone established elsewhere in Europe, Apple may come under pressure to follow suit here and in the US too.
(via MobileCrunch)
Continue reading ‘T-Mobile to sell unlocked iPhone in Germany… for 999 Euros!’
With rumours floating round the blogosphere that Apple may (finally) launch a 3G iPhone in the first half of next year, what happens if you’ve snapped up a first-generation model here in the UK on an 18-month contract? Under usual conditions, you wouldn’t be able to upgrade to another handset until at least 12 months in, which would be extremely frustrating if an all-new improved iPhone comes out in the meantime.
Mobile industry consultant Jon Mulholland reckons Apple and O2 have already got the problem licked, though, suggesting in an interview with SMS Text News that O2 will actually encourage customers to upgrade to the 3G iPhone as soon as it comes out:
“Usually networks prevent handset upgrades during contract term because the cost of the device is subsidised in line rental over the lifetime of that contract. This is not the case with the iPhone, as all of the handset cost has been paid upfront by the customer at point of sale. If a customer wants to upgrade from the current iPhone to a newer version less than 18 months later, where is the downside for O2? In fact, why not happily upgrade customers to a newer iPhone (taking another small percentage of the hardware sale in the process) and use that opportunity to reset and extend their existing 18 month contract?”
It sounds sensible enough, and would ensure that there’s not as big a rumpus in the UK when the 3G iPhone is released as there was in the US when Apple slashed the iPhone’s price just a couple of months after its launch. Alienating your early adopters, as the company has learned, is something to be avoided…
(via SMS Text News)
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