How to find a new mobile phone

For those who are looking for a new mobile phone, it can be very overwhelming.

Buying a mobile phone should be easy and simple. With the rise of smart phones, this is no longer the case.

I am looking for a new mobile phone, I have a 2 year old Samsung mobile phone which is unheard of. I do not want to spend more than 25 pounds a month but I would like to have at least 300 minutes and 500GB of data download. I will share with you my quest for the ideal mobile phone:

1) Vodafone
I started my mobile phone journey with Vodafone as I have been with them for over 10 years (although I have never received any loyalty points or benefits from being such a loyal customer)
.
I do not want to be on a 24 or 18 month contract. That is too long. I switched to a SIM only contract with Vodafone in November and my bills have not been more than 25 pounds. So what can I get with my money?

BlackBerry: BlackBerry Curve 8520, Curve 3G 9300,
HTC: the HTC Wildfire only
LG: LG Cookie,
There are a number of Nokia phones on PAYG
Nokia 6700 Slide, 7230, C1-01, C2-01, C3-01, C5-03.
I can get 6 Samsung phones , C330, Ch@t 335 E1150, E2550 and the Galaxy Mini. I can get just 2 Sony Ericsson phones, the Spiro and the X10Mini Pro.

All of the Vodafone phones are available on PAYG.

Mobile phone operators

(source – flickr.com/photos/marksunderland/4543099719/)

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Reasons to closely monitor your twitter account

A Vodafone employee posted an offensive message this afternoon which read “Is fed up of dirty homo’s and is going after beaver”

This was sent out to Vodafone’s 8,663 followers. Vodafone has since apologised to its followers and says the employee in question has been suspended.

Vodafone are not the first company to be embarrased by their twitter account

Habitat returned to Twitter in September last year with a message, “We’re back. Sorry it took so long. This time we want to get it rightt. Tell us what you want to hear from us and we’ll mark suggestions in our favourites.”

Habitat was criticised for using Twitter site to spam the community back in June. It used hash tags, which help users track conversations on the microblogging site, to promote marketing messages that had no relevance to the topics used. Habitat’s defence was that the campaign was a mistake and the posts were made by an intern.

However, HabitatUK, was putting out marketing messages such as ‘Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off!’ on Friday, using tags such as #mms, #Apple, #iPhone and even used an Iranian election hashtag #Mousavi.

Although all the messages were replaced with sales and marketing tweets, the damage had already been done. Many Twitters already saw the messages and tweeted their annoyance.

This is a classic example of how a big brand such as Habitat was unable to execute a social media idea successfully. They jumped on the twitter band wagon too soon without truly understanding the full damage it could do if implemented incorrectly.

Vodafone launches the iPhone

Today, January 14th was the day the third UK mobile operator, Vodafone launched the iPhone.

I went to London Bloggers last night and Dan Bowsher from Vodafone was there to promote the iPhone. One lucky winner won one of the first Vodafone iPhones. Congratulations.

According to Dan Bowsher, there have been more than 50,000 iPhones sent to customers today.

There are a range of deals available at the Vodafone store.

iPhone on Vodafone

Images from the Vodafone store.

Google’s mobile strategy – Nexus one

Google has launched its new smartphone, the Nexus One. It will sell the phone directly to consumers, aiming to boost its position in the emerging mobile Internet market by exerting greater control over the new generation of Web-surfing devices. It hasn’t even hit the UK shelves yet and is already being slated saying it is not as revolutionary in design as the iPhone was. Well that is a hard act to follow. The Tech sites have said it is not that different from other Android phones. HTC, the company making the handset have said the new phones are built on the same Android 2.1 software that runs Droid smartphones but it has updated features such as 3D graphics and speech recognition.

The Nexus One is sent from Google’s online store for $179 with a two-year contract from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA, or $529 if you do not want to be tied in to contract.

Unfortunately, all phones are shipped from the US so if you order one from the UK, you will have to pay the base price of $529. Plus an extra $30 for DHL shipping and $20 for UK adapter (if you want one). And don’t forget the VAT – now back up to 17.5% making this one expensive phone. I would wait if you can’t afford to buy one during this credit crunch.

But good news people, Vodafone are apparently getting the Nexus One in March. So watch this space….

Sony Ericsson Satio on Orange, Vodafone and O2

The world’s first 12mp camera phone is now available on Orange, O2 and Vodafone.

The first 12mp camera

There has been a lot of hype and publicity around Sony Ericsson’s first touch screen phone. It has to an incredible 12.1 Megapixel sensor, Autofocus, touch focus and a Xenon flash. It delivers top quality photographs, so you never need to take a separate camera out again.

It is a true multimedia phone. It has a built in 3.5 inch touchscreen and has Wi-Fi connectivity for high speed web browsing. As well as GPS for SatNave and support for music and video file formats.

It is avaible on Vodafone, Orange and O2. Vodafone are giving the Satio away for free but requires at least a £35 a month on a 24 month contract or a more expensive plan on a shorter 18-month contract.

However, now tha the phone has been out for a couple weeks, it has been getting some negative reviews from customers. A lot of reviews have mentioned poor battery power and the phone freezing. Some also say the exterior looks too plastic.But despite some of these poor comments, we still have to give credit to Sony Ericsson for its first Symbian S60 smartphone, it normally releases J2ME phones.

For more information, have a read of the following:

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/sony-ericsson-idou.htm

http://www.cnet.com.au/sony-ericsson-satio-339295076.htm

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/12/four.touchscreen.phones.hit.vodafone.uk/

More to be added shortly…

Blackberry Storm 2 on Vodafone

Vodafone will be releasing the new BlackBerry Storm 2 available from tomorrow (26 October) and will come on a two year contract for 35 pounds per month. Vodafone will be the first mobile operator in the UK to sell the BlackBerry Storm 2. This handset follows on from the BlackBerry Storm which was the first touch screen launched by (Research in Motion)

Blackberry Storm2

RIM are hoping to offer some stiff competition against the Apple dominance of the smart phone market. The first BlackBerry Storm released last November, although was successful, there were some issues which the BlackBerry Storm 2 has addresses.

The touchscreen which had many complaints, has been upgraded. SurePress technology has been used to allow for better typing accuracy as well as a more natural feel for the touchscreen. Previously users had to click the entire screen to confirm a touch input, which compared with the iPhone was a major drawback.

The BlackBerry Storm 2 has a 3.2MP camera and 2GB of on-board storage. It has 3.5G connection and Wi-Fi, something the previous model was missing. It has a 3.25-inch HVGA touchscreen, as well as full integration with Windows Media Player and iTunes thanks to BlackBerry Media Sync.

Some argue that BlackBerry remains the best mobile email device on the market. I will let you decide, there is now a lot of competition in the smartphone market – Motorola Dext was released earlier this month and Palm Pre last week exclusively on O2. It will be interesting to see how these handsets compete against one another in market that seemed to be dominated by Apple for the past two years.

I don’t proclaim to know everything about the Blackberry Storm 2, so please feel free to have a look at what other people are saying like geek , techradar and the guardian and the telegraph

Vodafone making headway in social media

Ok so this post is a little late, but better late than never. Vodafone announced a new service last month to connect all social network contacts called Vodafone 360. Vodafone are reinventing themselves as a software and social networking provider. Seem familiar to Nokia and its Ovi product? Vodafone 360 includes a cloud-based address book, full-track music downloads, app store (called Vodafone Apps shop which will launch with 1,000 mobile applications) picture geo-tagging, and integration with social communities such as Facebook and Twitter.

This service is available on a wide range of handsets and to make this launch even more special (or more marketable) Vodafone will have two new exclusive 360 handsets developed by Samsung that syncs automatically with the PC. The H1 followed by the M1. There will also be four Nokia Symbian smartphones pre-loaded with Vodafone 360 but these have yet to be announced.

The famous tag line “make the most out of now” will be replaced with “power to you” as Vodafone sets to rebrand itself as a communications specialist. (words from Vittorio Colao CEO of Vodafone). The new mobile internet service is expected to launch by Christmas in 8 different European countries.

As you are well aware of since the explosion of the mobile apps, all mobile operators have been jumping on the bandwagon and Vodafone is no exception. For those aware of mobile sync and back up, Vodafone bought Zyb last year for £28.5m. Zyb was a small mobile start-up that had developed software that lets mobile phone users share information and messages between their contacs in their address book. This was the start of Vodafone 360.

One year later and the 360 internet service has developed further to include gathering all customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites such as music, games, photos and video in to one single place. It brings together all contacts from the user’s mobile phone, social networks and their gmail, hotmail and any other internet account. What is great about this service is that it is automatically backed up and synchronised, regularly and wirelessly, between the mobile and PC and yes the mac as well.

Some interesting articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/20/vodafonegroup-telecoms

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news_analysis/115121/Vodafone_launches_360_services_and_devices.html

Who is the leading network provider in the UK?

I have decided to add more to the mobile technology section of this blog. With the increasing number of smart phones with accessing the internet, this is not an area to ignore.

This data is over a year old, but then if I want data for this year, I have to buy the report and I thought… well this is good enough for the time being. It is important to share what has been happening in the mobile market. If you all have any more recent up to date reports, please let me know.

http://www.telecomsmarketresearch.com/resources/UK_Mobile_Operator_Subscriber_Statistics.shtml

As you can see Vodafone and O2 are the leaders in the market place in the UK. O2 has been very successful since it got its hands on the exclusitivity of the iPhone. The first generation iPhone came out November 9th 2007, 5 months after it was launched in the USA. The second generation iPhone hit the market in July 2008 and the third generation came out June this year.

O2 UK sold 1 million iPhones during 2008 which has boosted revenues for Telefonica (parent company of O2) for Q4 2008. Revenues rose 10.4 percent in the fourth quarter, based on stable local exchange rates, climbing to €1.755 billion (£1.6 billion). So O2 has a lot to be thankful for. However, they are set to lose this exclusitivity October 9th this year and O2 are already starting to get their hands on other smartphone manufacturers such as the Palm Pre to make up for any exodus in customers when the exclusitivity runs out.

Source: http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-earnings-iphone-boosts-o2-uk-q4-revenues-grow-10.4-percent/

Exclusivity can have a dramatic effect on the mobile operator’s sales. According to ZDNet news, as of March this year, the G1 Android handset accounted for 20%of T-Mobile’s contract sales. The G1 was at the time, the only handset on the market to use Google’s Android software stack, which was launched exclusively on T-Mobile at the end of October 2008. And according to T-Mobile, the G1 produced the operator’s “best-selling launch of 2008″.

According to Strategy Analytics, they forecast 900% Android phone sales growth during 2009 and shipments of Apple’s iPhone will grow 79%.
The reason for the big forecast is due to Android’s low-cost licensing model, its semi-open source structure and Google’s support for cloud services. Vodafone recently launched the world’s second Android phone – the Magic May 30th this year. Smasung and Orange are also jumping on the Android bandwagon and will launch their phones by then end of the year.