9 posts tagged “3skypephone”
My nephew, and fellow blogger, Chill Kid (aka Milky98, aka Ben10) has probably just been wheeled in to theatre (or O.R. to you guys in the States). A short while ago he was on the phone to his nan and myself, just after he had his pre-med!
I've got to hand it to Southampton General, allowing the use of mobiles makes a huge difference especially for a new generation that's used to being connected all the time. I can only imagine what my hospital experiences would've be like had I been able to stay in touch with friends and family at such scary times.
Earlier today, Chill Kid was happily playing away on his new DS game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village and getting tips for the more challenging puzzles from YouTube! ..on his phone! How cool is that?!?
Anyway, good luck to him. We've got about a 6 hour wait until the surgery ends and then however long it'll be before he wakes up. I may speak to him later if he is up to it. If not, then I'll see him tomorrow.
By simply topping up you can make unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls, Skype-to-Skype messages. It doesn't matter how much you top up, you only have to top up four times a year to use Skype (if you don't, you don't get to use Skype).
I highly recommend these despite the current issues I have with 3 UK, which says something. Want to know more about these issues? Of course you do...
In a nutshell, they are as follows: I can't access the internet half the time, can't send or receive MMS half the time, can't make (or, presumably) receive calls half the time and this is despite being in a good coverage area. 3's CS have known about this for nearly two months now and haven't rectified the problem. They haven't given me a time frame as to when the problem will be solved. They've offered me a less than generous £5 for my inconvienence and that was only after I spoken to numerous call centre folk for hours on end. FWIW I declined. I don't want credit on my account, I simply want a service that works again and, as a goodwill gesture, be allowed to change my tariff to one that's far more suitable than the one I'm on now (yet costs the same per month).
3 Mobile (Hutchison 3G) got the ball rolling back in 2007 with the launch of the world's very first Skypephone. From the plucky young cellular network an idea so revolutionary that many doubted how it could work.. to the world's biggest mobile maker. I guess it won't be long before all handsets have it built-in.
Found via snoyt's post on Darla Mack's blog
This has got to be one of those most useful items I've purchased in the last couple of years...
It charges almost any pocketable gadget that you'd want charging. So far I've used it on...
It can power most older Nokias including, as you can see from the above picture, my battle scarred 6630
I bought mine from 7dayshop.com who seem to be selling these the cheapest - £13.99 ex P&P. They had cheap delivery at the time, but that's over now.
How does this compare to the Proporta? I'd love to know, but I don't have one!
I was trying to take pictures of my newly acquired Sony Ericsson W595 with a 'proper' camera but it ran out of battery after just one shot. So out came a bunch of handsets and I used those instead. Not ideal, but will do until the camera is charged.
Anyway, I've just hooked up the Skypephone to the laptop and stumbled across this picture from long ago...
Above the candle there appears to be some entity. Conclusive proof that ghosts exist? No, of course not!
My sister is halfway through a business trip to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Right now she's in HK and I'm kicking myself that I didn't loan her a Skypephone. That's the second time I've forgotten since getting my hands on a pair of 3's Skypephones last year.
After her recent trip to New York, where she carried three handsets that didn't work, I don't think I could've persuaded her anyway. Why did she bring three handsets to the Big Apple? Let me explain with bullet points:
- her jailbroken iPhone on Vodafone couldn't receive texts for some bizarre reason
- her replacement iPhone 3G on O2 wasn't enabled for roaming (no one in the O2 store warned her of this)
- the Motorola on AT&T's prepaid service that I loaned her was cut off because it hadn't been used in a couple of months
I believe the current trend for one word summaries could sum it up best as: FAIL
In theory, I could've lent her my N73 (for the Far East, not NY) and we could've had 25 mins of video-telephony for free (or thereabouts - I have those included each month and never use 'em!)
...and reading listening between the lines.
Excuse the pun but I think Ewan at SMStextnews has done a stirling job covering 3's pre-pre-Xmas preview (all handsets and devices are out a good while before Santa has made final judgement '08 stylie) If anyone wants the run down on what's coming up, I recommend going there. I didn't Qik anything or take photos (I was going to ask nicely but forgot!)
Usually I'm useless at the smaller things, the minor details, that kinda thing but having a good read through of the press pack and remembering (another thing I'm not all that good at!) what was said yesterday I can think of a bunch of things that I don't think I've seen reported anywhere else or, if they are, I can add a bit more info to:
- In the Autumn, 3 will start transcoding websites for all handsets - making them look like they normally look on a PC. How will this work exactly? I'm not quite sure - there's a variety of different ways this can be achieved. Many of us are doing something similar at the moment... using the excellent Opera Mini.
- Mobile push-email will be on all 3's handsets in future - It'll simultaneously work with numerous email accounts, won't be a huge battery drain (due to some amazing trickery, well I was impressed!) and is unlimited on any internet package (they start at £2.50 p/m)
- Email attachments will be downloadable, won't come out of the user's internet allowance - I presume there'll be some fair-use thing in the small print, otherwise I'll be having mp3 mixes emailed to myself!
- 3 really like their Nokia E71 - I can't stress that enough. They're happy to have RIM on board with their BlackBerry Bold and everything, but they're smitten with their exclusive white paint-job E71. It's kinda weird as my love is for the Bold, not the E71.
- Bold, 3 in one device?* Yes, the BlackBerry Bold has all the usual fruitiness plus some 3 on top. It won't, however, clean and condition your smalls. The one on display was a vanilla Bold, the 3-ified version isn't ready yet. The Bold will be, if I understand correctly, a unique effort for 3 due to the way RIM's devices work (most stuff going in and out of a Blackberry is via RIM's servers**)
- Upcoming USB modems will not be Linux-friendly - I got the impression that 3 understand the ever-increasing importance of Linux sub-notebooks (note the Mini-Note) but that Huawei don't. Whatever the case may be it's a huge oversight in my opinion as the smaller and cheaper the laptop, the more important cheap mobile internet is ...and laptops are cheaper without Windows!
- Nice new UI for dongles on Windows - Connection, account and usage all there in dashboard-stylie, nice and clear and now looking fit for the 21st Century
- HSDPA router on display - they've not decided whether to go with it or not. The one I saw doesn't actually have 3G built-in, it accepts a USB dongle instead. It's also mains powered, so no WiFi hotspot on the go.
- The new Skypephone is noticeably heavier than it's predecessor and... my own view is that it doesn't look or feel as good. The screen is bigger and better, I liked the menus and they did a good job with Facebook but... those keys and the shiny back. Horrible. That's more personal taste than fact, of course. The keys however, might pose a problem for anyone that likes Skype chatting or texting lots. Only available in black. White not gonna happen, people didn't like the original in white. They weren't 100% certain but they believed it would be usable in the US (as a normal phone, the Skype part will, like the original, only work in countries where 3 have sister networks.)
- There was talk of pink devices in the future - I don't know any female that likes pink consumer electronics, I don't know any blokes that like (or will admit to liking) 'em either. And the Skypephone wasn't well received in white. What are 3 considering bringing out in pink? Damned if I can remember (this is what happens when I don't do Brain Training everyday!)
- They're happy to get Samsung on board at last! - Not touched on this yet so throwing it at the end.
Thanks to the folk at 3 and Sam at 3mobilebuzz for the invite. They treat bloggers, both big and small, the same as they treat the mainstream journos. Which is nice.
*I tried but failed to come up with a Bold 3-in-1 pun that would make sense, that was the best I could do!
**I won't pretend to be an expert on BlackBerrys. Hell, I've only just learnt that the second 'B' in the name is capitalised and that the plural of BlackBerry isn't BlackBerries - it's BlackBerrys.
Pictures of the next '3 Skypephone' have popped up on the web. I knew about the original (and had a little play) before it made it's way on to the web (then had to bite down really hard on my tongue!) This time I'm a little behind on the curve. 3mobilebuzz mentioned it on Monday, they've got a link to Just Another Mobile Phone Blog which have a few pics c/o the FCC - Do devices that don't work in the US still have to pass muster with the FCC? Or does this mean the new Skypephone is quad-band?
Further Googling brings me to a couple of Italian blogs that have a picture of the phone's homescreen as well: Cellulari Ad Hoc and well, er, the other is in Czech - how did I mistake that for Italian!?! Oh well, it doesn't seem to offer more than the Italian one.
If you check out the screen, you'll see there's that little RSS feed symbol in a carousel. Kinda cool to have that on a phone that's a mass market proposition. It's right there almost straight away - no going through menu after menu. It also kinda looks like the Skype function has moved from the dedicated big square key to that carousel too. If that's the case that's probably to lessen the confusion that many felt was a problem with the original.
I'm not liking the keys. I hate the look of them, and I'd imagine they'd be a pain if you were typing out many SMSes or IMs. Much preferred the original's - oh well! Also, no sign of a front camera - same as original - so no Skype Video any time soon. But the camera that is included is said to be 3.2 MP.
Is it HSDPA enabled and have WiFi? My Italian sucks and I don't trust any web translators 100%.
BTW this post hasn't been spell checked, it's almost entirely 'live'.
Not the catchiest of titles, I know! But anyway...
There's now a free rival to Nokia's also free, Sports Tracker. It's Wayfinder's er, Wayfinder Active! It works on more phones than Sports Tracker which is the underlying reason for this here post. Yes, that's right, it work's on the 3 Skypephone!
As I'm posting this on an N800, I'm gonna keep it short and sweet. I'll post an indepth look (well slightly indepth!) when I get a chance on my PC. There's a couple of pics in the gallery, if you want to peruse them in the meantime.
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