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€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?

60 second review: Nokia E65

The E65 slider phone has one feature I hadn't used before: the 'Message Reader'. This 'reads' back your text messages in a choice of two voices (male or female). It's quite smart insofar as it recognises certain commonly used text abbreviations, like 'btw' (by the way) and reads them as if they were spelled out. Its only limitation is that it can't be targeted at a certain message (ie it starts at the beginning of your inbox and just works its way down).

The E65's negatives?

The buttons on the front of the phone are positioned in a way that's probably more awkward than most other Nokia models I've used. And there are too many: 15 buttons (not including the keypad) on the front, with another four on the side (the camera/volume controls) and the on/off button on top.
Another significant downside is that the web browser has cut out unexpectedly on me several times. I'd go as far as to describe it as being unreliable.
The other (slight) downside is that the software continues to be fairly slow at running through commands. For example, backing out of the messaging programme seems to take ages (I count 5 seconds as being ages).

Now the positives.

It has loads and loads of applications. Nokia really is out in front when it comes to business phones -- only Sony Ericsson's high-end smartphones can rival them. Though only 2 megapixels, the camera's decent, too. Wi-fi's here, but no radio (that I can find).

The other very nice thing about the phone is the material it's made from: feels like a sort of hard leather. Very nice to touch and a welcome break from cheap plastic alloys.

The phone costs €460 sim-free or about €250 on contract.

Why it pays to shop around

Case in point: Motorola's KRZR K1. Price on Phonesonline.ie -- €364. Price on Expansys.ie -- €181.

Latest HSDPA phone for 3 Ireland

Here's the latest HSDPA phone that 3 Ireland is likely to introduce later in the year: the Sony Ericsson Walkman Shinobu. It'll probably be the slimmest high-speed broadband phone on the market.

Nokia N95 for Voda, O2 and 3 Ireland

Nokia's wonderphone, the GPS-loving, music-playing, 5 megapixel powerhouse, will be available on all three 3G operators, it has emerged...

First decent iPhone demos

Courtesy of Engadget. Also, check out PCworld.com's impressive stress test.

3 Ireland boss slams "backward" iPhone

The head of music at 3 Ireland, Graeme Slattery, has called the iPhone "a step backwards" and says that it would have "little chance" of success in any European market without heavy modification.
In an interview to be published on Sunday, he said that the iPhone's lack of bandwidth capability, lack of downloading ability and lack of operator software were big barriers to the gadget's chances in Europe. He also said that the commercial model adopted in the US, where customers must sign up to a 2 year, $60-per-month plan, plus pay the full, unsubsidised $500/$600 handset price, "hadn't a chance" of working in the Irish market.
"I expect that it will prove reasonably successful in the US," said Slattery. "But they only started texting about two years ago. We're more advanced in Europe."

60 year old US 'guru' gives iPhone thumbs up

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's grand old man of technology coverage, has given the new iPhone a positive reception compared to business smartphones such as the Palm Treo and the Blackberry. As for what we young folks in Europe call 'texting', he (and co-writer Katherine Boehret) had this to say:

"The iPhone's most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a non-issue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt -- who did most of the testing for this review -- was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly."

So in a test against bulky, business-oriented smartphones, the iPhone is off to a good start. (Thanks to Adam for the link tip.)

iPhone for Meteor?

A week from today, the ill-fated iPhone will be launched in the US on AT&T.
But what about Ireland? Industry focus is now on Meteor, it seems. It is the only non-3G network with no huge emphasis on garnering revenue from music downloads via its own network (which the iPhone won't facilitate). And it is definitely the favourite if T-Mobile has secured Apple's European carrier deal.
Quite how the €600 iPhone would sell on Ireland's low-cost, pre-paid, cheap calls network could be interesting to follow.