News

Orange PAYG customers to get free premium headphones

From 7 November to 24 December 2011, Orange is rewarding new and upgrading Pay As You Go customers who purchase a new phone for £30 or over with a free Christmas gift box. Filled with free festive treats, the offer is available to customers who buy directly with Orange in-store, online or via telesales.

The Christmas gift box offers customers a selection of seasonal goodies including stylish Angle & Curve headphones (RRP £60). Offering superior sound quality and sophisticated design, these new headphones are perfect for listening to music or playing games on a new Christmas handset – all with crystal clear sound.

The box also includes some fun festive treats:

· A headphone splitter to share the Christmas entertainment with friends and family

· An Orange piggy bank to keep your Christmas shopping kitty in check

· A screen cloth to keep your phone screen pristine while sharing Yuletide photos and videos

Pippa Dunn, Chief Marketing Officer, Consumer, at Orange UK said: “This year’s Christmas gift box is our best yet – offering Orange Pay As You Go customers a top quality pair of Angle & Curve headphones, as well as some other brilliant added extras, all of which will no doubt add to the excitement of the festive season”.

Pay As You Go devices available to customers include the Orange RIO, Orange San Francisco, Orange Stockholm and Samsung Galaxy Mini.

Posted by: James

giffgaff to support BlackBerry

As from the 24th November giffgaff will offer Blackberry services, which have not been possible on the MVNO previously.  These include Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry (push) e-mails and Blackberry Internet.

So you will soon all be able to purchase a Blackberry Add on when purchasing a goodybag.

As giffgaff aim to provide fantastic value for money the BlackBerry add on will only cost £3 (in addition to the cost of the goodybag).

In the same way as current goodybags, the Blackberry add on will last for a month.  As the goodybag and Blackberry add will have to be bought at the same time, they will expire on the same date as well.

Nokia Lumia 800 delayed sim free

Bad news I am afraid if you were waiting to pick up the Nokia Lumia 800 sim free. Clove have today confirmed that the device will now be available in January and not November 16th as expected.

I’m pretty sure this news will not affect new contracts that you may take out from the high street stores. It is however bitterly disappointing if you were holding out for the Lumia 800 sim free.

Roll on the New Year.

Posted by: James

Best Buy to close stores in the UK

Carphone Warehouse has confirmed plans to close its eleven Best Buy stores here in the UK due to a lack of profit. Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy initially planned to open 200 Best Buy stores across the UK and continental Europe. Sadly that will not now happen.

Carphone Warehouse said the focus would now be on selling more electronics goods from Best Buy Europe’s 805 Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK, and 1,648 Phone House shops in continental Europe.

“Best Buy believes that there is a significant untapped opportunity as connections migrate from phones to other connectable devices such as tablets, laptops, TVs and eReaders. This transaction will enable Best Buy Mobile to accelerate the deployment of operational and connectivity expertise to these devices and for Best Buy to fully capture the profit potential of these opportunities” Best Buy

Posted by: James

HTC Sync for Mac OSX

I found this article over on The Smartphone Centre blog and it looks pretty interesting for all you HTC Android owners.

HTC Sync has always, up until now, been a PC only application. However that could be about to change. Pre-loaded on the brand new HTC Sensation XL with Beats Audio is a version of HTC Sync especially for Mac OSX.

The file, ‘HTC Sync of MacOS-3.0.mpkg’ can be found once you mount your HTC Sensation XL. Simply double-click to install HTC Sync to your MAC. Once installed, a new icon will be added to your menu bar, click this and select ‘Open’. This will load the main interface window. The first time you launch this, your device will be identified. Simply click ‘Save’ to continue. From the main window you will be able to install applications as well as rename your device. The ‘Music’ tab will allow you to sync all of your music found within iTunes. You can also select which Play Lists you wish to sync. The ‘Gallery’ tab will allow you to sync specific folders from your Mac. The ‘Calendar’ tab will allow you to sync your iCal calendars and of course, the ‘People’ tab will allow you to sync with your Macs Address Book. Using the ‘Bookmarks’ tab, you will be able to sync you Safari, Chrome and FireFox bookmarks. And finally the ‘Documents’ tab will allow you to sync and chosen folder.

Whilst there is no official download available form HTC for this version of HTC Sync, we expect HTC to roll this out across all Android devices.

Posted by: James

Motorola MOTOKEY SOCIAL

The MOTOKEY SOCIAL popped up on Motorola’s website the other day. Much like the HTC ChaCha this one sports a dedicated Facebook key on the bottom row of the keyboard.

As well as it’s full QWERTY keyboard the MOTOKEY SOCIAL sports a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 3-megapixel camera, email, Web access and a 910 mAh battery rated for 480 minutes of talk time.

I am not sure if we will see this one here in the UK but if we do I would imagine the price would be very low.

Could this one be a BlackBerry killer? No, of course not!

You can see the specs of the MOTOKEY SOCIAL below.

Motorola XOOM 2 images and video

With the earlier announcement of the Motorola XOOM 2 and XOOM 2 Media Edition I thought we had better show you the available images in case this one is of interest to you.

There is also a short promo video which you can see below:

Xperia Play FIFA 12 Trailer

Attention football fans. FIFA 12 for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is coming real soon, although we don’t know exactly when. In the meantime if you are gagging to see what the game looks like you can view a trailer of the title.

I’m not a big football fan, in fact I’m not one at all, but FIFA 12 looks pretty good.

You can see the trailer below and of course we will let you know when the game gets a release date.

Christmas comes early thanks to O2 and Priority Moments

Following its successful summer launch, O2 is extending its Priority Moments service to include a special seasonal selection of money saving deals and experiences from a raft of new partners. These additions to its location-based offers service are set to deliver a Christmas to remember for O2’s 22 million customers.
The news will bring much needed festive cheer to millions of shoppers by providing them with an exclusive range of offers and experiences from a number of UK leading retail brands. Taken together, they can give O2 customers a £75* spending power boost in the run up to Christmas with some of the most popular high street stores. This is in addition to the existing Priority Moments money saving deals and enhanced everyday experiences that customers can currently benefit from.
The Priority Moments Christmas campaign will also deliver a much needed boost to high streets around the Country by encouraging shoppers to take advantage of a wide range of great offers at popular destinations whilst they are shopping including:

Gmail app for iOS released

Google have officially announced a Gmail app to run on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

It is not showing up in the App Store for me as I write this but keep checking, it will appear. 

With the Gmail app, you can:
Receive notification badges for new messages
Read your mail with threaded conversations
Organize your mail by archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam
Keep track of important messages with priority inbox
Auto-complete contact names as you type
Send and receive attachments
Search through all your mail
The Gmail app is available for devices running iOS 4+.

Sounds good. Let us know what you think.

Posted by: James