Orange and T-Mobile Merge Networks

Ah, just had a lovely few days off including a lovely trip to Tilgate Park to see some farm animals (more about that, probably, tomorrow), get to the station and hop onto my (for once perfectly on time) train and get a text message from Orange telling me I'm ready to go on the new super network that has resulted from Orange and T-Mobile combining their base stations! All I had to do was reply "Yes" to a text message, turn on "Roaming" data (which results in an extremely scary message about how much it could cost - as you would only normally use roaming data when overseas), set network detection to "Automatic" and off we go! Hopefully this means the gaping holes in Canary Wharf Orange mobile coverage will now be significantly reduced! Guess I'll find out at lunchtime when I try to ring Flyingpops to see how her and Thomas have enjoyed their morning! :)

Time for a new telephone...

So, while changing my Orange contract to get a slightly better rate (down to £19) I also noticed that my handset was *well* overdue for an upgrade, even better than that - I had accumulated so much "loyalty" that almost any telephone was being offered to me for free (including iphones)...however, I didn't want an iphone, and I'll explain why...firstly, and most importantly, iphones use a lot of bandwidth, and while they will probably work just fine in most of the country, I work in Canary Wharf where (as you can imagine) there are quite a few iphones...all I hear all day long is people complaining that (while they appear to have a signal) they get missed calls, delayed text messages, network busy, slow internet connection (etc. etc.), it's probably not *so* bad on Orange (as they only recently adopted the iphone), but the older iphone networks around here are pretty swamped (apparently it's just as bad in New York City)...secondly, the battery life is extremely poor on iphones, the few charging cables in the office are traded *constantly* and I've got used to week-long battery life with my little Nokia...thirdly, the iphone (unless you risk your warranty) is highly restrictive, people worry about even plugging it in to charge it in case itunes wipes off all their music, and (actually) I really don't like itunes, I don't want to have to manage all my media via itunes, I want to drag and drop files in file manager (and have them just work without itunes converting them to some other format)...so, I decided to take a look at the latest HTC devices (loved my C500 running Windows mobile), and I noticed with no little amount of interest, they run Android - the operating system made by Google (which is completely open source - much more my sort of thing - as I'm an "under the hood" sort of fellow)...

iphone=locked/idiot proof, Android=open/flexible (nothing against all those millions of iphone users, it's just not for me - how can 8.5 million iphone sheeple users be wrong)...? Baa... ;)

After a little reading, I settled on the HTC Hero (the review is a little old, the latest software eliminates the lag they talk about - and apparently Android 2.1 is due any day now - so I've avoided the "ironing out" phase)...it's got all the flashy things the iphone does - digital compass, gps, multi-touch screen, wifi, accelerometer, ambient light detection, 3.5mm headphone jack (yes!), and just a few very nice things the iphone doesn't - it connects via standard USB (mounting itself as a drive), takes up to 16Gb MicroSD expanded storage, connects you up to all the Google services right out of the box (email, RSS reader, calendar etc.) as well as things like twitter/facebook etc...even does augmented reality through the camera and (purportedly) voice to text (so less fiddling with little keyboards on the screen), so I'll tell you tomorrow (when it is due to arrive), if it is as good as it looks and if I find any good apps to install (all the decent ones from the iphone have already been ported apparently)...!

Nokia N73 3G Cameraphone - Orange

Well got my new phone today, tearing myself kicking and screaming from the Windows Smartphone experience - I have been *very* happily using the classic SPV C500 (IMHO the best phone *ever* made) for the last 3 years, but the bills have been the wrong side of £40 for most of that time and it was, I thought, time to ditch the contract and go "pay as you go" (not being made of money)...so I got on the phone on Tuesday night to Orange, told them I was pissed off with paying so much and could they cancel everything and send me a new (cheap) SIM Card.

By the end of the conversation (at least half of which was contract negotiation by Flyingpops who had been through the process a few months back) my bill was down to £15, a new handset was in the post, and my benefits included infinite free text messages and stupid amounts of free cross-network minutes...I told them my only real concern was that the device must contain Carl Zeiss optics and the Nokia N73 was mentioned, sweetended with the offer of a free 2Gb SD card, I did a quick Google (as you do) and the spec looked good - 3G, built in radio (a first for a phone of mine), 3.2 megapixel camera (with the CZ optics I coveted), and the game that comes shipped on the handset was "Tomb Raider Anniversary"...(bit of a shock!)...

Anyway, as I said, the camera bit was the most important to me, so I charged the phone up this morning (they shipped it next day delivery on Wednesday, and sent me regular updates by text to tell me where it was, meaning I got to the post room to collect it just after they had signed on the dotted line) and it's quite an impressive camera on board actually, 3.2 megapixel (which is plenty), it even has a rudimentary flash (which seems to work up to about 2 feet away, no optical zoom (well, what do you expect), but it's got a macro mode good to 10cm, burst shooting (a bit on the slow side, but functional), and the image quality is pleasingly good giving nice warm colours (the C500 always balanced a bit on the grey/blue side) and the amount of noise is extremely low -



- only complaint, it doesn't seem to ship with a wrist strap, and when I popped into Jessops the only one they had was £4.99 (rip off)...sure I've got one laying around at home somewhere... ;)

Now I'm sat here listening to Classic FM through my headphones (one of only 4 radio stations I seem to be able to pick up from the 20th floor of Canary Wharf) feeling quite smug... ;) Well, I would be feeling "smugger" if I had managed to register my SIM, but when I called Orange they said their server was down...bah... ;)