Finally after 2 years of aimlessly wandering in the wilderness of PAYG, I am back on a contract and a new mobile. A major argument with t-mobile over a £600 phone bill caused my departure from contract world and I swore I’d never return.
The phone of choice at the time was the iphone 3g in 16gb black flavour, courtesy of carfone warehouse and an o2 PAYG sim at £10/month. Life was good, apps galore and best of all it was cheap to run. The 3GS came and went, the iphone 4 arrived and after all the problems at launch, the aerial and the glass black, I decided to give it a miss. Actually the state of my finances precluded from buying one, but that’s another story. The good thing about being in apple’s walled garden was it encouraged me to buy a mac, a mini to be exact, and I can safely say I will never go back to a pc ever again. Without wandering off and a tangent, the apple mac, iphone and mobile me, make a wonderful combination. Throw an ipad into the equation and it truly is something you cant ignore, despite the punitive (£70) price tag of mobileme. Someday I will get back there, but with my new contract just commencing, I think I will miss the iphone 5 (May ’11) and will be looking at the iphone 6. This time in 2013?
HTC Wildfire
Not buying a case for a smartphone, is truly a false economy. Especially when you have a habit of charging a phone and leaving it on the arm of a sofa. One fall too many and it was the demise of the iphone. Dead as a dodo, not charging and wouldn’t boot. A quick search on the net (August ’10), suggested that android and HTC was the way to go. Being on a tight budget and still clinging to my giff gaff contract, the only phone open to me was the HTC wildfire. The galaxy S’s of this world are pricewise … erm … in another galaxy. A cracking little phone, but maybe a little underpowered in the processor department was acquired on ebay from vodafone’s ebay store (yes they have one) for £100. Another £15 at a online unlocking store and the wildfire was mine. A wonderful bundle of google touch screen colourdom was mine for not a lot of wonga.
On the subject of PAYG and giffgaff, I recommend them highly. For £10 a month you get a goody bag of texts (unlimited), voice (250 minutes) and data (unlimited). It’s a network that piggybacks on back of the O2 network on a phone you provide yourself. Either an old O2 phone or one you have unlocked yourself. If you want to try it, quote my used ID ‘aed’ as a reference and you (and I) will get a £5 bonus. Giffgaff FTW.
Android heaven once lived with, wasn’t for me. It’s got the potential if you have a decent model and the network is up to scratch where you work. But in my case, I work in a fairly rural area and all day the wildfire struggled to find a signal and by lunch time the battery had died. A smart phone that cant see you through a day, isn’t that smart is it? When you have a wife that is 99% of the time on the wrong (right?) side of the Atlantic, a reliable way of communicating using email, fb and twitter is essential. A few days of hanging phone calls, missing facebook updates, twitter DMs not arriving and my usual patience of a saint was smashed into a million pieces.
Blackberry Bold 9780
I was straight online and looking for a phone. What did I want? Forget windows phone, been there and done that with mobile 3 etc. Sony was a slight temptation but not for long. Hold it? I had a blackberry years ago and that was excellent. It worked like a dream, never let me down, but it was a bit dull. Back then no one used email much and facebook wasn’t even a twinkle in Zuckerberg’s eye. Had it improved? Onto various review sites and it was obvious that RIM improved dramatically. By the time I got to the blackberry site and after a days browsing, I was sold on the newly realeased ‘6’ operating system with its bells and whistles social networking integration. The torch was discarded quickly because of its surplus to requirements touch screen, undoubtedly poor battery life (because of the screen!) and slidey action (I just don’t do them after a bad HTC experience) and after 10 minutes the only contender was the Bold 9780 with its sexy new ‘6’.
Obviously PAYG and blackberry push email don’t work so a contract it had to be. Time to bit the bullet and make amends with contract world. Carfone warehouse once more came to the rescue and thanks to my mate (not) at DHL, I have been a ecstatically happy owner of the 9780 for a week now.
The crazy thing I have just realised (and as my better half reminded me a few weeks ago) as I type this and by cooincidence, on the same day that Nokia and Microsoft have announced some kind of deal, that in the same period of time I have gone through 3 mobile phones, spending around £500 all together on the actual hardware, my work provided Nokia (6301 on orange) has never given me a problem. It’s been dropped, thrown around and generally abused, but it still makes and receives calls perfectly. Texts always arrive (unfortunately) and I can charge it up on a Sunday and not even think about charging it again until the following Sunday.
Nokia 6301 (Orange)
Maybe, just maybe, I am looking in the wrong place… :/
