I had a quick look at the Garmin Nuvifone A50 at Mobile World Congress as I had heard that the OS was slowed than a asthmatic snail with bags of shopping. I’m please to report that it isn’t and the only slowness was a result of the, probably quite clogged, 3G reception in the venue. Whilst the Sat Nav isn’t exactly the prettiest in the world, the Operating System overlay by Garmin was quite pretty and extremely finger friendly. Read on for the Video:
I was given a brief tour of the Toshiba TG02 by someone who knew less about it than my Granny (happy 94th today Granny.) Oddly the TG02 was running SPB Mobile Shell and not a Toshiba created GUI. Size-wise it’s quite nice but lacks many of the refinements we see in offerings from HTC and Samsung of late. Video after the break:
A university student ran up a bill of almost £8,000 on his mobile internet broadband abroad in one month because rules introduced last year to prevent this have taken nine months to implement.
Although EU rules will be introduced in the UK on 1 March to protect users against “bill shock”, 22-year-old William Harrison (below) was initially told by Orange that it would have infringed the company’s customer privacy policy to monitor his usage.
Harrison, a third-year Nottingham university student, started a six-month internship in Paris last September and wanted temporary internet access in the flat he was renting there. He and his father, Roger, asked an Orange store in Hertfordshire about the best way to access the internet abroad and queried whether a dongle, a small piece of hardware that connects to a laptop or desktop computer allowing wireless internet access, would be suitable.
“The woman in the store said the dongle would work perfectly in France, especially for a short-term contract,” says William. “She said there was a 3GB (gigabyte) limit on data use but that this would be ‘perfectly ample’.”
In France, William used his internet account to access Skype, a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the internet, on a daily basis. “I was unaware of how expensive this was. On my computer at home it’s free,” says William. He says he did not use the internet to download anything that would have been data-heavy, such as videos.
On 17 October, his first bill arrived. It was for £6,101.56. “I immediately questioned it and asked for the dongle to be blocked,” he says. “But there was a further charge which covers the cost of the dongle use between the bill being sent and the dongle being blocked. I am now faced with a bill of £7,648.77.
“It is an absolutely awful situation, both in the short term because of the £8,000 debt and in the long term because the potential damage to my credit rating could be disastrous.”
Roger contacted Orange on behalf of William to query the bill, and was told by a shocked operator that there should be a £40 monthly limit on dongle usage. However, what he was not told, and which Orange’s own operator did not seem to be aware of, was that this does not apply to overseas use.
“I sent Orange a cheque for £158.66, which is what I had worked out to be reasonable from the bill. However I never received a response from Orange.”
He says: “I am concerned William was given unlimited credit. There was nothing to stop this going up to £100,000. I think it is wrong the way this [dongle] has been sold and that there was no ‘flagging up’ to highlight that a bill of this size was being built up. Even Orange said the size of this bill was exceptional. For my son, at his age, to be saddled with this amount of debt is terrible.”
Full story at The Guardian
The main news story of latest days, when it comes to iPhone app store is: Apple has removed thousands of apps with adult content and is rejecting new ones that have some adult content, even if it is just silhouette, not photo, that might be visible. While browsing apps that were released in latest 3 days, we have encountered this one, that obviously must have slipped through Apple’s strict review process (approved merely few hours ago!):
Whilst the big names are blasting out samey-samey phones with Android or Windows Mobile it was refreshing to see something a little different. From the video you can see I was having a little bit of trouble with one handed operation but the OS is striking and might they might have something if they can spend a little more time refining it. Video after the break:
HTC announced they would be pumping out their Smartphone for the people at Mobile World Congress and here is a quick flip through the operating system and a look at the device. It’s okay so far. Appealing and swish are two words that come to mind. For the Kids out there who are wanting to get into Smartphone’s this seems like a great starting block. Video after the break:
We managed to get a little show and tell with a new MSI Tablet. Hidden behind most of MSI’s other toys we thought this was actually an iPad and for good reason. From a distance they look almost identical however when running you can clearly see this is an Android powered device. Even though this is not finalised and they device we played with was about to undergo a serious hardware revision it’s still something of a head turner. To be priced competitively and have a more handsome feature list, this MSI Tablet is something I’m going to keep my eye on. Video after the break:
Firstly Apple introduced ability to view info about individual apps as individual web pages – without the need to open iTunes, but now users can also browse categories of apps to find what they like!
Alcatel the budget manufacturer are taking on the big boys with this attractive slider. Running Android 1.6 and due to receive the 2.1 upgrade the handsomely spaced Qwerty slider will please quite a few out there. Featuring a 2.8” touchscreen, A-GPS, 3G and Wi-fi the OT-980 is mainly aimed at the social networker. The keyboard is a little bigger than the Palm Pre or Treo Pro and is quite pleasant to use. The demo unit seemed to be broken as the screen wouldn’t turn on. Couple more pics after the break.
This grubby devil is the Else Intuition. Running v3.0 of the Access Linux Platform this is a big device with a rather striking screen and not to mention an interesting user experience. The Else has a 3.5” FWVGA, capacitive touchscreen with tactile feedback., 3G/HSDPA, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, GPS, 5mp camera and boasts a TI OMAP 3430 processor.
The Operating System is striking and senses be to very geared towards one handed use. It’s going to take some getting used to as it’s not the easiest to use straight off the bat. Some more pictures after the break:
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