Mobile Choice Blog

Patchy EDGE coverage may hamper UK iPhone users

At last, Apple has announced full details of iPhone's launch in the UK. It will only be available on O2, will cost £269 on an 18-month contract, and goes on sale on 9th November (for more details, see the story on the main Mobile Choice website).

At the launch Apple boss Steve Jobs said he wasn't worried about the handset's lack of 3G, because "The EDGE network works really well for most of the iPhone's applications", while surfing the internet using Wi-Fi is faster than 3G, if you're within range of a hotspot.

But there's a catch. According to O2, it will only have rolled out EDGE to 30% of the country by the time the iPhone launches - everywhere else, it'll be surfing at GPRS speeds. That's S-L-O-W if you're viewing full websites through iPhone's Safari browser. Here's hoping O2 provides full details of where you will and won't have EDGE access before taking people's money.

If mobile music really wants to rival iTunes, why not go ad-funded?

The name SpiralFrog won’t mean much to the average UK mobile user. Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with Jamster. SpiralFrog is a US company that’s just launched a free music downloads service supported by advertising. You get songs from famous bands for free, and the advertisements shown while you download them pays for it.

That’s one trend. Now think about the way mobile companies - operators and handset manufacturers alike - are keen to make mobile music a rival for Apple’s iTunes. All the operators have their own dual-download services, for example, while Nokia is preparing to launch its Nokia Music Store.

Yet it’s clear that for the most part, these mobile music services are copying iTunes. Imagine if they took a lead out of SpiralFrog’s book instead...

When is a Christmas mobile exclusive not an exclusive?

Want a Sony Ericsson W910i music phone this Christmas? You'll have to switch to Vodafone then, as they've bagged the exclusive. Oh, but wait a minute, that's only on the Havana Gold coloured edition. If you want the red W910i, you'll need to go to Orange, who've - you guessed it - bagged the exclusive.

Presumably later this week, O2 will announce that it'll be exclusively selling the khaki-coloured W910i, while T-Mobile will proudly unveil the exclusive cheese-shaded W910i, and 3 will parade its exclusive pigeon-coloured W910i. Possibly.

It's enough to make us wonder: would people actually switch operators in order to get a particular shade of their most coveted mobile phone? And if not, what's the point of all these exclusives? And cheekily, we wonder how many of these handsets will be advertised with a big EXCLUSIVE tag on them, with the implication that, say, the W910i isn't available on any other network.

Thank goodness for higher quality Bluetooth headsets

There's an interesting shift happening in the Bluetooth headset market, with the swelling ranks of cheap devices now being accompanied by an expanding niche of high-end headsets, focusing on features like audio quality.

Take the new Sennheiser VMX 100 for example, which has just been reviewed over on the main Mobile Choice site. It sports two microphones and Digital Signal Processing to ensure unwanted noise gets screened out, so your voice comes through loud and clear.

Poor call quality has been one of the things that's stopped many mobile users from going wireless (well, that and their shame at walking down the road seemingly talking to themselves, of course). The development of headsets like the VMX 100 should help sway some of those refuseniks. Now, if Sennheiser could make an 'I'm Not Mad - I'm Just On The Phone' hat, they might persuade the others...

Analyst claims mobile phones will slow the growth of MP3 players

Forrester Research has released its latest consumer technology report, and it claims that the growth of music-capable mobiles will restrict the growth in sales of MP3 players, which are set to go from 40 million households at the end of this year to 48.4 million in 2012 (these figures are for US households).

It's a plausible theory, with phones getting ever more storage capacity and slicker interfaces for playing music. It's arguably also shown in Apple's decision to launch the iPhone, to try and cannibalise its own sales, rather than have Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc nab its customers.

What about in the home though? We can't help feeling there'll still be growth in the number of people buying iPods and similar devices to store their music on and pipe it through their hi-fi. Although maybe more hi-fis will come with built-in hard drives and MP3-playing capabilities, come to think of it.

(via Cellular News)

Mobile hotlinks: 11 September 2007

Check these five slabs of mobile news:

T-Mobile revamps search feature on T-Zones portal (Cellular News)
Nokia takes its mobile maps to the next level (SlashPhone)
Netvibes launches iPhone version (The Cell Freak)
Texan teacher rapped for risque TXT homework (Pocket Picks)
Wales to get giant mobile phone recycling plant (MobileCrunch)

Top 5 ways mobile phones make you feel old and confused

Once upon a time, owning a mobile marked you out as a young hip gunslinger, at the cutting edge of mobile communications. Not any more. Now it just shows you up as a frazzled old fuddy-duddy. Here's some examples:

1. You get annoyed at kids on the bus playing music through their handset speakers - not because you think it's rude, but because you've got no idea how to make your phone do it.

2. Your children openly laugh at the way you write text messages with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.

3. You get your fingers tangled up playing the latest mobile games. Even the ones designed to be played with one thumb.

4. You keep forgetting to lock your phone before putting it in your pocket, meaning that at the end of an average train journey, the battery's run down, you've called your mum for 45 minutes, or you have 17 photos of your pocket fluff.

5. You think mobile TV is a silly idea. Actually, this marks you out as 'wise', not old...

Mobile hotlinks: 10 September 2007

What's happening in the mobile world today:

Apple sells one millionth iPhone (SlashPhone)
The mobile phone design based on fruit trays (Textually)
First photos of the Beyonce phone. Well, probably... (Dialaphone)
What to call singles + ringtones bundles? Ringles! (MocoNews)
Lewisham healthcare trust cuts missed appointments with texts (SMS Text News)

Does O2's EDGE upgrade mean the UK iPhone won't be 3G?

An internal memo from O2 has revealed that the operator is upgrading its GPRS network to offer EDGE technology for faster data speeds. However, the news has been seized upon as proof that O2 will be selling Apple's iPhone, which in the US uses EDGE for its mobile internet surfing.

If true, the news isn't worth celebrating, as it would seem to imply that the UK iPhone won't be 3G, as has been rumoured. In the US, Apple has tackled criticism over slower EDGE speeds by pointing out that the iPhone also has Wi-Fi for faster surfing, but here in the UK we're a bit behind in terms of the rollout of public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Either way, the details won't be known for sure until Apple actually announces its UK operator partner, which is likely to be later this month.

(via Engadget Mobile)

How Vodafone's MusicStation subscription service could take on the iPhone

Mobile music is set to be the key battleground for the UK mobile operators this Christmas, and while Apple hasn't announced which operator will be selling the iPhone, you can bet that the ones that miss out will be pushing their own music phones and services hard.

Take Vodafone, which has just announced an exclusive deal with Omnifone to launch the latter's MusicStation subscription service in the UK this November. It will allow users to pay £1.99 a week for unlimited song downloads from a catalogue of more than a million tracks, with the ability to share playlists and songs with friends added into the mix.