Gareth, James, Matt and Andy are back for another chat about all things mobile. In this weeks episode Matt gets all gooey over the HTC Desire and slightly less gooey about the Xperia X10, new Tarrifs hit for 3 and Orange and a dreamy new phone emerges for the American market.
Regulars: James Richardson, Matt Davis, Gareth Myles and Andy Lee
I don’t think this has hit their main website yet but I received a text from 3 with a link to their mobile portal (which unfortunately I can’t link to as you need to be connected via 3’s 3G to view it) which details a raft of price increases as of April 22.
I won’t list them all, but here are the main ones:
* Voicemail access is going from free to 15p/min
* Calls to other networks and landlines increasing from 20p/min to 25p/min
* Picture messages increasing from 25p to 30p
* Calling other countries in band 0,1,2 increasing by 5p/min
* Calls while roaming in band 0 increasing 4p/min
* Receiving calls in band 1 countries increasing 9p/min, band 2 increasing 25p/min
* Calling most 084 and 087 numbers increasing 5p/min or per call
Free texts, data, and 3 to 3 minutes when topping up remain unchanged, and data prices also seem to remain unchanged.
I’m quite disappointed that they’ve decided to start charging for voicemail when they were the only network not charging for it (it was a selling point for me when joining them) – and that they decided to go with per minute charges for voicemail instead of per call as some of the networks.
This gives the ridiculous situation where you could ring someone also on the 3 network to make use of free 3 to 3 calls, and if you get through to them it is free to talk to them, but if you leave a message, it will now cost them to play that message back…
I’m struggling to see the rationale behind them raising calling prices pretty much across the board without an obvious precedent, and when you have MVNO’s like Asda offering rates as cheap as 8p/min, 3 increasing their off network calls from 20p to 25p/min just makes them look silly.
I have been using Vlingo for just over a week now and boy, has it made my life easier. If you have not heard of Vlingo then to summarise it, its an application that will allow you to convert speech to text.
I spend anything from two to five hours a day in my car which means if i want to email or instant message people I need to either pull over or wait until I have stopped. Not any more!
With the touch of a button Vlingo records your voice and converts it into text in pretty much any application on your phone.
Interested? Read more after the break.
He’s got an iPad and he’s put together a very short unpacking video. He doesn’t unbox but shows off a handsome array of accessories to compliment. Obviously he is going to have a productive day.
Americans will be getting iPads via UPS on Saturday and also in several retail outlets some iPads will be available. Generally iPad is sold out in USA and if you would like to order one now, you would have to wait 2-4 weeks.
But what about Europe?
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Top consumer electronics retailer will open first store in Thurrock, May 2010
Best Buy – a leading consumer electronics retailer – today announces that its first UK store will open in Thurrock, Essex in May 2010 followed by Hedge End (Southampton) and Merry Hill (West Midlands) both due to open in June before further stores open across the UK.
A dedicated area within the new stores will showcase and allow customers to experience an array of the finest affordable and premium home theatre and audio available in the UK. It will include a compelling range of full HD and 3D televisions, brought to life at the Thurrock store in an immersive 3DTV experience, with surround sound systems, speakers, Blu-ray receivers, headphones and wireless streaming solutions.
Vodafone UK’s Android April is fast approaching and customers can now pre-order the HTC Legend Smartphone, which will launch exclusively on the UK’s best network.
The HTC Legend handset will be pre-loaded with Vodafone 360 apps, giving customers access to services like Vodafone Music and MyWeb, in addition to full access to the Android Marketplace with over 30,000 applications and the Android operating system.
The HTC Legend boasts a unique design with a smooth, continuous surface, sculpted from a single aluminium block into a seamless compact frame. The advanced technology featured in the HTC Legend is cleverly hidden to ensure the phone is lightweight and the battery and SIM card slide perfectly into place within the unibody design.
This is a web-based untethered jailbreak solution for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, and similar to what Geohot is working on, could also serve as an iPad jailbreak as well. The video demo above proves that it addresses the tethering issue, but if you compare it with the Geohot untethered iPhone 3.1.3 jailbreak tool, we’re not quite sure how this new one differs from latter as they’re almost identical with each other.
[blogsdna via redmondpie]
Since the launch of the iPhone that shook the smartphone world, the mobile device value chain has seen more changes in two years than in the preceding twenty. The mobile device landscape has evolved with such a magnitude that we could not ignore it so we have called upon experts to explain to us how it is reshaping:
From London: Salvatore Rinaldo, Apps & Services Technology Specialist at SYMBIAN,
From Dublin: Stephen Sharkey, Director Telecom Business at LIONBRIDGE,
From Belfast: Jim O’Neill, Bus. Dev. Director & Andrew McCartney, Technical Director at SPEECHBUBBLE.
Register today for securing your place and your name badge at this not-to-be missed event, at the BlackBox Cafe, Cathedral Quarter, on MONDAY 19 APRIL 2010, start your dose of networking at 5:15pm.
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