How to back up your mobile contacts online
In case you’re in danger of dropping
your mobile down the toilet, this excellent website backs up your mobile numbers
for free – www.zyb.com. Register on it and it will send you
a text message.
The 'free phone' era in Ireland has begun
And it's about time. Vodafone leads the way, with a whopping 18 mobiles 'from free' with a monthly contract (including Motorola's K1, left). 3 Ireland comes next with 11 phones 'from free' and then O2, with four 'from free models'. This has been the norm in Britain for years and is a sign that ordinary competition is arriving in Ireland.
Next from O2 Ireland: the 3G iPhone
The operator has finally followed its British counterpart (and other operators around Europe) in dropping the price of the 8GB model -- from €400 to €300 -- to make way for a 3G version, expected in June. Incidentally, a fairly senior Apple Ireland source indicated to me that it wasn't wild about O2 launching the old iPhone so close to the 3G debut.
iPhone: 0.3 per cent global share
That's a good deal less than the 1 per cent Steve Jobs predicted this time last year. (In fairness, the gadget only launched in the three big European markets last Autumn.) Jobs said at MacWorld yesterday that the iPhone sold four million units last year, out of a total global market of roughly 1.2 billion units. It still has some way to catch up on Nokia's high end devices, too, with the iPhone trailing Nokia's N-Series and E-Series phones in sales by at least 13 to 1 in markets where they're competing against each other (notably the US).
So this is what a Tesco mobile looks like
Those who turned up to the launch got "complimentary phones". Mine is a Samsung J600 (left). As for the service, it'll be e13 per month for unlimited calls and texts to another Tesco Mobile. They're not going much for web stuff (GPRS phone only) and it's 1 cent per kb downloaded, which is very expensive (there is an alternative €1 per day browsing package).
Tesco Mobile launches tomorrow
At lunchtime. Pricing details and phone ranges revealed then.
iPod Touch to sink iPhone in Europe?
Is it me or has Apple lessened the reason to buy an iPhone, with the launch of its new iPod Touch? The new gadget has the same touchscreen system as the iPhone, has wi-fi and also has more memory for music.
Tomorrow, we'll find out about Apple's plans for its "UK" iPhone launch. O2 is expected to be the operator unveiled as the "UK" partner. Surely it'll feel a little miffed that half the iPhone's functionality is now available to the wide world on the new iPod? Why bother signing an expensive contract with O2?
iPhone fact of the day:
Apple has reached 1 million iPhone sales in 10 weeks. Nokia sells 1 million phones every day.
€5 per MB if you go over Vodafone's data cap
That's the small print behind Vodafone's latest mobile internet offering, which is a €10 per month tariff for 500MB of data downloaded. I'm not hugely impressed by the data cap. The alternative is an up-front €1 for a one-day only 50MB of data, aimed at pre-paid users. I asked a Vodafone spokesman to justify the data cap policy. This was the response:
"If a customer exceeds the daily limit they are charged 0.5c per KB (or €5 per MB). However, to put the download limits into perspective, 50MB = 50,000KB or about 1000 adapted web page views. An average web page adapted for use on a mid-range mobile would use approx 75KB. Likewise, 50MB = 50,000KB or about 2,000 WAP pages. An average WAP page on your mobile would use approx 20KB."
Okay, but I've just come back from a Nokia conference where they launched an online music store aimed at downloading over the air. Given that one of their MP3 files is 3MB, once over Vodafone's O.5GB data cap it would cost €15 to download in data charges alone!
Notes from a mental case
There are some people who believe that they are simply cursed with technology. That over and above all reasonable glitches, they simply give off bad vibes which make gadgets, IT and electronics fail all around them.
I have a different affliction: I believe that some brands of mobile phone bring me bad karma. Specifically, Nokia.
About a month ago I switched back to one (the E65, reviewed below) from a Sony Ericsson W880i. To say that my personal life has been turned upside down since then is an understatement.
Specifically, where my phone used to bring me messages of hope and positivity, it has morphed into a weapon of doom. Texts have turned incendiary. Calls have left me fighting uphill battles. Even the weather has turned into a disaster.
And the only difference I can ascertain in my circumstances is my phone.
Is my using a Nokia E65 sparking a mini Chaos theory in the environment around me? Is it possible, even, that others have suffered a downturn in their fortunes in the last month? Should I, for the sake of peace of mind, just give in to this superstitious hunch and switch back to the W880i?
I feel like the paranoid football supporter (which I am) who sits watching a penalty shoot-out, convinced that my thoughts, actions, or attitude have some minor effect on the outcome 1,000 miles away.
I feel, ridiculously, that my using this piece of tech has disturbed some harmonious continuum and I've wreaked a cosmic backlash.
Ridiculous? No question. Laughable? Undeniably.
Wrong, though?
