Gadgety News

If you’re looking for something that’s like an iPod then you could do a lot worse than to check this little beauty out!

The Cowon O2 is coming to the UK and it is more than adequate to taunt the iPod and blow raspberries at the best of the rest.

Memory for all your media ranges from 16GB to a lovely 32GB of flash storage.

That’s not enough? Then whack in an SDHC card for up to 32GB more!

Video caresses those eyes of yours via the HD-friendly 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen and there’s compatibility for just about every audio and video format around - yes, even MP3’s!

If it wont play; well……you’ve probably made it up yourself!

Throw in video recording, photo viewing, a respectable battery life of 18 hours of music per charge and an open source operating system - the latter of which could bring forth some interesting downloads, stuff and things.

There’s no pricing details as yet, but as most of us know, Cowon players are generally very competitively priced

Cowon

DRAT!!

My last place of escape is slowly being eroded

I can’t be the only one who uses the Underground as an excuse not to be contactable - those days are number my friends.

O2 customers in the Glasgow Subway will soon be the first in the UK to use their mobile phones underground.

O2 will be the first operator in the UK to implement the multi-user distributed antenna system which enables mobile phones to work underground.  The swines!

The contract will see O2 services installed in five of Glasgow’s busiest Subway stations - Buchanan Street, St Enoch, Kelvinbridge, Hillhead and Partick.

This should all be live by the end of the year and could potentially provide a benchmark for rollout in other underground stations such as London, in future.  NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!

Although initially limited to platforms and station concourses in the Glasgow Subway;  users will be able to use 2G services including making voice calls and sending text messages as well as 3G services such as video, internet access, downloading and MMS.

The technology installed by Arqiva could eventually be used to provide coverage around the rest of the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) underground network.

Read the full release by O2

O2’s just revealed the results of its first NFC trial.

This is the jobby that allows you to pay for things using the wireless power of your mobile blower.

The next phase is to whack this tech into the SIM cards themselves so that more phones can be used as a mobile wallet.

Declaring the trial a success, O2 said 90% of trialists were happy with the wireless payment tech, while 78% would use more contactless services if they were available.

At the moment, O2’s technology is capable of payment in shops using Barclaycard Visa payWave, as well as letting owners use London’s public transport network, thanks to Oyster card compatibility built in.

“There are two main pieces of infrastructure,” explained Claire Maslen head of NFC at O2, “the secure element on the SIM, and the antenna in the device. We still need a range of devices from handset vendors, but the intelligence will remain on the SIM. That also means we can send updates over the air.”

When will it be available? O2 says “Launching in six months would be hugely optimistic,” said Maslen. “Being able to deliver the best customer experience is important for us… It has to be mass market to make it successful.”

Would you trust this? Would you use this?

Let me know

For all those waiting for the details of the iPhone PAYG package - here it is; and it’s before Christmas too!!!

I feel that I have to warn you though - it aint cheap!

£349 for the 8GB version and £399 for the 16GB - GULP!

Your cash will get you unlimited browsing and WiFi for the first 12 months, after which it’ll be £10 a month.

Also as a PAYG user, you also won’t have Visual Voicemail capabilities or call merging.

As far as top ups go, £10 a month will get you 500 mins to a landline or O2 number, whilst £30 or more will get you unlimited calls to either of those.

Now, let’s see…………

£399 divided by 12 months is £33 a month.

Add another £10 a month top up and you’re pretty much looking at the same numbers as the contract just without that 18 month tether.

So, if you’re wanting an iPhone without the contract and not bothered about missing out on a few functions and don’t mind keeping an eye on your data usage………..

The phones will be available at Carphone Warehouse stores, O2 shops and at Apple stores, but there’s no guarantee on stock availability - there doesn’t seem to be the ability to pre-order as of yet.

It’s suppposed to be available in the next coupla weeks.

O2

Here is the latest blower of choice for Mr Bond.

Daniel Craig will be using the Sony Ericsson C902 in the 22nd Bond film due out at the end of this year.

It’s a limited edition Titanium Silver version of the SE C902 and will be exclusive to O2 customers.

It comes packed with a load of Bond extras, including a spy game, trailer of the film, interviews with stars, and wallpapers and screen savers.

Even if you’re not much of a Bond/Daniel C fan there’s the 5-megapixel camera that has a BestPic mode which shoots nine shots when you press the shutter, thus guaranteeing at least one of the shots that you’ve taken whilst absailing down the side of the bad guys hide-out comes out nice and clear!

Either that or a pic of the head of accounts chatting up a potted plant at the office party……….

Expect it to be mission ready around the film’s release on October 31st.

Rejoice and give thanks my loyal flock; for I have seen the glory and bright white of my salvation.

Well, that may be overdoing it a tad - but after many years I am now part of the iFaithful.

Yup, I now own a shiny, 16gig, white-backed 3G iPhone and after my first 24 hours with it - I’m convinced I have made the right move.

As you may have read in my piece about Nokia’s E71, that was a good phone with a QWERTY board and easy email set-up. The iPhone is even easier to set up and after firing off a coupla texts and using the touch QWERTY to set up passwords, etc I find it just as easy to use.

I’ve added some tunes and apps via iTunes and as this was my first time with the whole iThing, again I have to say what a pleasure it is to use and thoroughly intuitive.

I actually attempted to get an iPhone on Friday.

I finished work early and sprinted across London to arrive at the Regent Street store at 4.20pm.  The line was closed 2 people ahead of me as they had “run out of 16gig phones” and “not sure when we’ll get any more”.

Quite miffed I consoled myself in the Phoenix Theatre’s members bar.

On returning home I checked the site and lo-and-behold they had some more in stock for Saturday! (check the site after 9pm for phone stock and note that they’re opening up at 9am Mon-Sat, there was a bunch of people turning up ‘early’ for the regular 10am opening and they had to queue outside).

This leads me to believe that they have a ration as to how many they sell per day - which is good but they’re also seemingly keeping this a secret.

I chatted to one of the guys working there and he advised that “as long as you’re here before 3pm you’re pretty much guaranteed to get one, although the black ones go real quick”.

Personally I prefer the white ones as they’re not going to show all the finger prints and scratches as bad.  Besides, it’s only the 16gig ones that come in this colour option so it also shows that you’ve got the good one.

I can also recommend you give yourself plenty of time.  For me on Saturday it was a 4 hour round trip. Got to the store at 9am (tube was playing up-I left at 8:30) and got home at 12:30. I had to queue around the lift in the store behind about 30 people then was lead upstairs to queue (this time sat down though).

The actual credit check, authorisation and activation of the iPhone takes between 20 minutes and half-an-hour.

As you can tell from the pic the apps that I have d/loaded so far include:

• Last.Fm
• Twitterific
• Facebook
• and most importantly PhoneSaber

If you’re not familiar with PhoneSaber it gives you the pointless but totally cool image of a lightsaber (you can chose the colour) and as you move your iPhone you get the iconic sound of the whooshing and clashing saber - depending on information received from the phones accelerometer.

By-the-way; all of those apps above are free, gratis! :0)

I am still slightly disappointed by the speakers and they are really easy to cover up when using the keypad for example and when you cover one speaker up you can hardly hear the remaining one.

Still on the subject of audio - the bundled earphones are ok but not brilliant.  I’ve got me some Koss Porta Pros - great headphones but I guess that the 80’s styling wont be to everyone’s taste but just think to yourself - there must be a good reason why they haven’t had to change these for 20 years………….

Righty, I’m off to see what else this thing can do!

Did you do it?

Did you get one?

What do you reckon?

Does it live up to the hype?

Or are you waiting for the next run of stock to get one and make sure all the servers stay-up this time and the little niggles in the AppStore are sorted?

So far the feeling bout the 3G iPhone is that it’s pretty good - but:

• Multimedia Messaging: Pretty much every other phone on the market has the ability to send images to other phones via multimedia messaging, or MMS. Yes, you can still email those photos, but MMS is such a basic feature these days - why wasn’t it on the Jesus Phone from the start?

• Copy and paste: Again, this is such a basic feature. Having copy and paste makes it easier to type out text messages and emails.

• Video recording: In the world of mobile video and the likes of YouTube, it’s a shame the iPhone doesn’t have video-recording capabilities. Yes, the quality won’t be that great, but it should be an option anyway - again a poke at that 2mp camera……..I mean, really!!

• Bluetooth flexibility: Ok. So you can use Bluetooth on the iPhone for headset voice calls. But how about Bluetooth and A2DP for streaming music wirelessly, the capacity for using the iPhone as a modem and a Bluetooth file transfer protocol so you can transfer files to and from the iPhone?

• O2’s coverage isn’t all that hot - I think London is pretty well covered from a selfish point :0P

• No ‘Read All’ function.

A couple of people have told me that if you’re not overly fussed about the GPS and 3G bits and update your 1st gen Jesus blower with iPhone 2.0 you’re practically riding with the incrowd and have that metal chassis not a plastic one.

I’m still going to get one - I was unable to join the queues for the first batch but the naff battery life is still causing a little niggle in my head.

C’mon - let me know what you lot are up to.

We’ve seen this tactic before.

Nintendo used it at the launch of the Wii.

And remember the launch of Apple’s first-generation iPhone release?

A year later, Apple still hasn’t changed with O2 sadly stating on their website that each store will have just a “dozen handsets in stock” for tomorrow’s launch.

We all know by now that customers are limited to one phone each, with business customers able to purchase two. WohooOOoo!!!

O2 claims “on average, we will only have a few dozen iPhone 3Gs per store”

So, if you’re gonna step up and claim an iPhone 3G you need to remember the following:

1. Two forms of identification,
2. A real, kosher, working credit or debit card
3. Poof of address
4. At least 20 minutes for the transaction to go through

Good hunting and happy iPhoneing!!!

O2 iPhone 3G info

Oh Pants!

That was my exlaimation when the lovely and helpful lady from the Carphone Warehouse told me that I would not be able to upgrade to the 3G iPhone unless I paid the remainding 12 months of line rental (£420) with O2 through them to close the contract.

Or, I could lower my tarrif from £35, to £30 then to £25 over 3 months and then pay off the new amount of £255 for the remainder of my contract.

I’ve usually had great deals from CPW but they are not selling the iPhone as the deal is that the new 3G blower is only available direct from O2 even though there are details and links on the CPW site.

So, I can go for the 8GB (I wanted the 16GB) version and pay 2 lots of contracts for 3 months and fork out 250 notes in October or just wait a year; a year of yearning and green eyes as others flaunt their new Apple phones and taunt me with all the goodies that it presents.

So, as I said earlier.

Pants!

Any ideas?  Any insider knowledge or help that you can provide would be more than helpful!

Yours in perpetual jealousy.

Jay

Word on the blogosphere is that Apple is a bit miffed at us here in Blighty and our propensity to unlock iPhones so they’re going to limit supplies of the iPhone 3G

Toys/Pram mean anything to ya?

ElectricPig reports that a source has said that ” Some are suspected of being sold abroad, while the majority are unlocked for use on other networks in the UK.”

The source goes on to say that the UK will receive a “very limited stock” of the iPhone 3G as a result, especially the 16GB model, which could go some way to explain the “one per customer” rationing.

It also sounds like we might be spanked further by way of not getting the white version (displayed here).

Next step is that all UK Apple Stores will include a ‘naughty bench’ for us to sit on and think of what we’ve just done. Just kiddin.

Or am I?

Do you think that this is fair?

Whoah there!

Thinking about using the glorious 3G iPhone when you’re abroad?

Don’t expect the same deal that you’ll be getting over in the UK with O2.

As you probably know, O2 have used the unlimited download facility in much of its marketing for both the first iPhone and the new 3G model, which will be available free on some O2 tariffs.

Apparently the unlimited data and WiFi allowances only apply in the UK.

If you use the phone overseas the charges shoot up to £3 for each megabyte (Mb) of data downloaded in the EU and £6 everywhere else in the world! ~GULP!~

Let’s say that you want to catch up on the gogglebox back in Blighty and watch an average iPlayer programme from Auntie Beeb; these are usually around 300Mb in size.

This will cost you around £900 if you were in La Belle France and £1,800 in the good ol’ US of A.

 Wha?????

So my advice would be to disable things like email before you leave the UK.

If you’re going to be needing all that kinda stuff that the iPhone has been built for the best option is to take out a data-roaming add-on for when you require the service

Remember though; O2’s new “unlimited” download policy is subject to a fair-usage policy - in other words, although there is no set limit, your connection may be stopped or dramatically slowed if you are deemed to be over-using it.

Hmmmmmmmmm………….

Source

If you were in any doubt; it looks like interest in the 3G iPhone is almost four times more than that generated by its 2G predecessor.

This comes direct from O2, Apple’s UK network partner for the device.

They say that over 130,000 people have pre-registered their interest in the new handset via O2’s website since the phone was unveiled a week ago.  Yup, that includes yours truly.

Compare that to the 35,000 people that pre-registered their interest in the previous phone between its unveiling on September 18 last year and November 9, when it went on sale in the UK.

Let’s face it.  The £269 initial price and being cuffed into an 18 month contract for the first iPhone was a bit scary, so Apple has allowed O2 to heavily subsidise the new handset giving it away ‘free’ on some contracts when it goes on sale on July 11.

O2 UK chief executive, Ronan Dunne, said that the cost of the 2G iPhone had been “an issue for some segments of the market”, but added that iPhone customers were spending 30% more a year on their mobile bills on average.

The fact that the iPhone has settled into a more standard UK mobile phone purchasing model and with that long awaited addition of 3G should see it breaking some records, if only those set by its trailblazing sibling.

Doing a bit of snooping as I’m still lusting after the new iPhone (although it aint perfect) it seems that O2 have taken another step to improve their iPhone 3G offering in the UK. 

This is by multiplying the available WiFi hotspots that are available to get hooked-up.

Hidden amongst the small print on the O2 page they confirm that iPhone users will enjoy free use of WiFi hotspots from its existing partner, The Cloud, and be able to use hotspots provided by BT OpenZone.

This raises the number of WiFi hotspots available to UK users to 9,500 and O2 promise that all these hotspots will be made available for use from 11 July.

9to5 Mac reports the network may plan the creation of a ‘mesh network’ across London (yay for me and millions of others!) utilising WiFi hotspots from both The Cloud and BT OpenZone, saying: “Coverage is supposed to rival the coverage of mobile phone towers”.

In a rare move for rip-off Britain, O2 are seemingly offering UK users the best iPhone 3G deals of all those announced so far!

New iPhone customers can purchase the 8GB model for £99, or the 16GB model for just £159. You can then sign up to a regular £35 contract (600 minutes, 500 texts per month), or a new £30 contract (75 minutes, 125 texts).

I’ve just registered my interest with Carphone Warehouse and the news from Apple and o2 this morning is that the new iPhone, launched last night (in case you’re still unaware), will be free on selected tarrifs.

As predicted Apple are wanting those sales figures so here how the tarrifs stack up:

£75 (3000 mins, 500 texts) and £45 (1200 mins, 500 texts) a month contracts will offer an 8GB iPhone 3GB for free.

The higher contract offers the 16GB model for free and you can pick one up for just £59 on the £45 a month contact.

There’s a new £30-a-month contract which offers a paltry 75 minutes and 125 texts, which will allow to buy the handsets for £99 and £159 respectively.

The same prices apply to the £35-a-month deal which offers 600 minutes and £500 texts. I’m guessing this would be the one I’d go for.

The biggest news, however, could be the fact that the iPhone 3G is coming to pay-as-you go! I didn’t really see that one coming but I think this shows how flexible Apple is prepared to be.

So, contact O2 or Carphone Warehouse online to register your interest and be fed more news as it comes :0)

The pics on this article shows the actual dimensions, etc of the new Apple blower.

Well, the moment we’ve all been waiting for:

19:30

First some stats were announced: the iPhone has 90% customer satisfaction, 98% of people are browsing, 94% are using email, 90% are text messaging, and 80% are using 10 features or more.

19:31

3G.  It has been mentioned - Now everything kicks off!

So what’s it like?

It has a black back, is thinner at the edges, and is totally plastic. It has a flush headphone jack, solid metal buttons, a 3.5-inch display and “improved audio” which, lets face it, shouldn’t have proved difficult.

There was then a demonstration showing how long it takes to load a website. 21 seconds on 3G compared with 2G’s 59 seconds. Apparently that’s 36% faster than a Nokia N95 but I’ve not noticed mine take 21 seconds…..Hmmm….

It takes 5 seconds to download an email attachment compared with EDGE’s 18 seconds.

The new Jesus blower has 300 hours standby time and GPS. It shall be shipped to 25 countries.

Righty; Prices:

8GB for $199

16GB for $299 - There will also be a white 16GB model!

It will go on sale around the world on July 11th - this has been confirmed by O2 and Carphone Warehouse. UK prices around £150.

T3 have some pretty cool info.

They say that they’ve had word that O2 has been warned that they are going to be “very busy” in the first week of July.

Also they’ve been told (as I have) that June 9th would also be a hectic day.

So the 3G J-phone should be with us in 4 weeks!!!

To read their wisdom click the link above or below :0)

UPDATE:

It sounds like the ‘press launch’ of Stevie J’s keynote will also be later for us lot in the UK as we’ll have to watch it after the event via the Apple website and not live streamed as per usual.

T3 iPhone News

In a similar move to the French Orange iPhone deal that I reported on May 27th - reports are circulating that the 3G iPhone will go on sale in the UK for around the £100 mark.

If this is true see me in the queue!

Apple is apparently adjusting its strategy to boost sales.  New deals with operators have revealed that the company is changing its fixed price (May 2oth), exclusive partner business plan in order to attain their 10 million iPhone sales target for this year.

UBS analysts think the iPhone will be available in Europe for as little as 99 euros, and suggest O2 could subsidise the cost of the phone, meaning the price to the consumer dropping to £100.

Ben Wood, a CCS Insight analyst, said:

“They are also looking for more flexibility on how the operators can price the iPhone, although I am not convinced that they will let them have open season on the price, as they have a lucrative iPod market to protect”.

Via - Times Online

If you’ve been keeping up with the 3G iPhone leaks and news you will have seen mysterious queues outside Apple stores and excited reports about cargo ships from China.

This one seems a little more real.

French iPhone owners are reporting that they are being contacted by Orange, the official French carrier-partner, with special offers for the (rumoured) 3G model.

PCInpact is claiming that a number of its readers have been called by Orange regarding an upgrade to the future Apple mobile. HMmmm……………..

The current owners are being offered a direct exchange of their existing iPhone and get the second gen version for 50 euros.

The other option being touted is for those who want to keep their current iPhone, but also want the (supposedly) 3G version means they can buy the new model and receive a “generous” discount - but I think that’s just plain greedy!  :0P

I’m sure all this will become apparent on 9th June

Electronista And - AppleInsider

I have just learned that The Samsung F400 will be launched in the UK and will be available through O2, Orange, Virgin, The Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U.

 :0)

Well, I don’t really feel like I need to add anything to the picture.

I think O2 are trying to tell us something……………..

The odd thing is that there hasn’t been any whisper of a release date for the next generation of the blower of the lord.