Slashdot Mirror

How about http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/ALCATEL-OT-209/PPAY?src=phoneFinder&tariffNetworks=&clearance=false £4.95 + a £10 top-up voucher.

I suggest you search the whole thread for UK, Britain, England, London (as people could have used any of those words). Someone's suggested T-Mobile, another Vodafone.

There are no restrictions on buying SIM cards in the UK, you will be able to pay cash and top-up by buying vouchers from corner shops or supermarkets (or online) or perhaps at cash machines (ATMs) with a green arrow logo. The main companies (Vodafone, O2, Orange/T-Mobile, Three, ...) have shops everywhere, some supermarkets sell their own SIMs which may be cheaper (Tesco, Asda), and some companies sell SIMs online or in some corner shops (Virgin Mobile, Lycamobile).

Here's a comparison of some deals from the larger operators. Three's looks like a good option, but if you intend to phone/text Canada check the prices of that. (I would search Google.co.uk for things like "pay as you go price comparison". Also "mobile" rather than cell, and SIM only as you already have the phone. There are often wikis/forums targeted at visitors answering your question, I used this one when I visited Germany last month.)

Open WiFi networks aren't very common, but many cafes, restaurants and larger pubs have WiFi. (I may be wrong here, I usually have WiFi turned off.)

Bring an old phone to put your Canadian SIM in, if you still need to be contactable on that number.

The happy-rainbows-EU-regulation-low-(ish)-prices thing only applies while roaming or calling within the EU, so don't assume a call to Canada will be cheap (there is competition, but no regulation). But receiving a call on a UK mobile phone while in the UK is always free.

Have fun!

No. This is the NA perspective. Understand this: only in NA are phones subsidised as a norm.

Not true. In the UK (and I suspect most of the EU) phones are subsidised as the norm on 12-24 month contract plans. e.g. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/iPhone-finder If you sign up to a 24 month contract you get an iPhone for free.

They seem to be ~$500 (£340) on pay-as-you-go here. It's a lot, but I remember a friend saving a similar amount of money from a small job he had to buy a PC when he was 14.

A Samsung E1100 for £4.95 ($8.16) from Carphone Warehouse. It comes with a PAYG SIM, but you can take that out and put whatever SIM you want in there.

FAIL. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/buy/SAMSUNG-E1100-VRW15-WEB15

* when bought with £15 Airtime

So you can't buy it without spending a minimum of "Only £19.95". That's several times more than "under $10.00" - more like $33.25 at today's rates.

You can get a laptop free with a cell phone contract. You can get up to 8 Mbps adsl for around £6 per month. Hardly upper middle class territory. Considering most chavs have sky tv it's not a stretch.

I am not sure where you are based, but here in the UK I took out Lifeline insurance from The Carphone warehouse.

It's even possible to get smartphones in the US for $99 or so (iPhone comes to mind).

In the UK you can currently get an iphone for free on 24-month contract, with unlimited data, ten hours calls (to landlines or uk mobiles), 500 texts, no charge to receive calls within the UK, for US$60 / month. And it's (very likely) about to get cheaper, since two other phone companies will soon also be distributing them.

"Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free"

Eh? This has already happened in the UK, without any carrier-specific crapware installed.

As I said on the last article - the japanese and europeans don't really "hate" the iphone, but it's just another phone, and not a particularly great one, in those markets. It's only in the USA where it was somehow amazing, due to the incredibly crap nature of the US phone market prior to its introduction.

Go to the website of a typical UK mobile phone supermarket and check out the sort of phones the eurotrash gets. Yes, the Apple iphone is there. But it's just another phone among *many*, and due to its lack of functionality that europeans expect like java, and its well-known lock-in, it's not wildly popular. It's not the prettiest (check out the motorola jewel), and certainly not the most featureful (see, well, most of the other comparably priced phones)

It hasn't really "failed", it's just failed to live up to hype, apple have to compete as just another vendor in non-US markets.

As I said on the last article - the japanese and europeans don't really "hate" the iphone, but it's just another phone, and not a particularly great one, in those markets. It's only in the USA where it was somehow amazing, due to the incredibly crap nature of the US phone market prior to its introduction.

Go to the website of a typical UK mobile phone supermarket and check out the sort of phones the eurotrash gets. Yes, the Apple iphone is there. But it's just another phone among *many*, and due to its lack of functionality that europeans expect like java, and its well-known lock-in, it's not wildly popular. It's not the prettiest (check out the motorola jewel), and certainly not the most featureful (see, well, most of the other comparably priced phones)

It hasn't really "failed", it's just failed to live up to hype, apple have to compete as just another vendor in non-US markets.

what UK phone had amazing integration with Google maps

Google maps has long had a java client - remember standard phones support mobile java apps in the UK, and for a long time have had web-browsers powerful enough for the web-interface your desktop uses too (but smart people use the java client as it's cheaper and faster, the UK often still suffers from charging for mobile bandwidth).

Which UK phone had multitouch?

No one really cares all that much about multitouch, they grew up using keypads for texting anyway.

Which UK phone had a great app store?

That's not the model in the UK - people get java apps from an online store of their choice (most usually their mobile provider's captive home page) if they want that sort of thing.

Which UK phone had a full blown browser years ago

Most any of them with a screen big enough to make it worthwhile? Sheesh.

Which UK phone integrated perfectly with your music collection on your computer?

Any of the zillions that play mp3s?

But honestly, from my point of view the iPhone is really advanced, not just for the US market, but for every market

It's not somehow "terrible", but your point of view is presumably limited and parochial to the USA, by the sounds of it.

I don't think you appreciate how the mobile market works in the UK and other parts of Europe. You have large walk-in stores that sell a vast range of phones like Carphone Warehouse.
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles

You pick and choose a phone with the features you want, stick your SIM in. iphone has some features, in other ways it sucks - and most people are NOT enamoured of the provider locking thing.

Hi. Just for your UK readers, struggling to buy a Wii for Christmas - we're pleased to announce that we currently have plenty of Wii stock at Carphone Warehouse, and are giving them away for free with contract mobile phones. Please see http://shop.carphonewarehouse.com/?CODE=FREEWII&PORTAL=CONSUMER&URL=pay-monthly/all/?SEARCH=wii&TAG=1 to buy online. To guarantee delivery before Christmas, you will need to order on or before the 6th of December. Thanks, The Carphone Warehouse Online Team

It has more than a touchscreen in difference.

A touch screen (the only thing the iPhone has that others don't) certainly isn't worth £269.

It has more than a touchscreen in difference.

It has more than a touchscreen in difference.

A touch screen (the only thing the iPhone has that others don't) certainly isn't worth £269.

It has more than a touchscreen in difference.

Who knows, maybe someday you'll be able to buy a cell phone in your local supermarket--a cell phone not marked "Tracfone." [grin]

http://direct.tesco.com/homepage/phones.aspx

online as well, wooo!

Local supermarket always has 20 or so models in stock from major phone companies.

Goodness knows how many mobile phone shops there are selling handsets and comparing deals for you. People like Carphone Warehouse.

I guess you do things differently in the USA, not as free and independent a system.

It's only expensive in the US market: presumably because of the deal with Cingular - here in the UK it is launching as a free phone with 12 month contracts (9 months of which are half-price) - and doesn't look such a bad deal.

In the medium term, apple will need to be involved with more phones so that apple computer buyers can download pictures and video from their phones as well as uploading music and other stuff to them.

Well, you can pay less for SMS. On Carphone Warehouses' Fresh mobile virtual network you can get SMS for 2.5p and 7.5p/minute to any UK mobile or landline at any time with no monthly tariff.

I nearly bought one once. http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/pogo/spec/index.h tml

GPRS? 3G's better.

I've been using GPRS for about a year (in the UK). It's handy for low-bandwidth stuff. Web browsing's nice with images disabled - email's also perfectly usable.

However, general-purpose 3G is great. Our company's got a few 3G cards on Orange (a UK network operator - related link), and the speed makes totally wireless, (almost) ubiquitous internet access a reality.

As for faster bluetooth: I use BT for device-to-device syncing. It's reassuring to know that my Mac, PC, PDA and mobile's data are synchronised fully with minimal intervention on my part. Additionally, it's good for peripherals (I love my Logitech Cordless Desktop MX), and for the occasional transfer of phonebook entries to friends (no more reading out and repeating) numbers. For how I use it, BT does the job just fine.

Range is acceptable for the purpose it serves too. Just enough to discover your mate's *somewhere* in the crowded pub because BT shows their phone ;)

Pogo is, iirc, another item (besides the already mentioned tungsten) which fits a phone into a pda like thing and requires you to use a headset.
And I wouldn't get one. I have a handspring treo 180, which seems to suffer from a problem with the connections to the speaker in the flip lid. For about a month (it took me a while to get around to having it replaced), I had to carry my hands free adapter around with me to hear the other person on the phone. It's such a pain to get the wire out and untangled that I generally either had to flip the treo open and tell the person to hang on (they could still hear me fine), or I'd miss the call and have to call back. Even if it is a little big, the treo is still more usable as a flip phone than with the headset wire.

In an ideal world, though, I would like a bluetooth headset which could connect to a pda/wide-area-wireless(phone) device (as well as a landline base station or desktop computer VoIP system).

She uses it quite a lot, and I've never heard her complain about it at all. Perhaps she has a newer firmware version or something? She's had it for about six months.

It's odd. It's almost like we're talking about different phones here.

If you want a different phone so badly, Carphone Warehouse are selling some repackaged Nokia 8210s for £110 no-contract at the moment. I'm sure you'd be able to sell your T68i for more than that...

There has been a cheaper wind-up cell phone charger available in the UK for a while, I've seen ads for months. I can't find a web site, but there is a product page for it on the Carphone Warehouse site. At £9.99 I suspect it lacks the extras of the Freeplay FreeCharge such as the built battery and added torch, but it does the job, and it is available for more than just Motorola phones, it will charge Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson phones as well.

I think it could just be supply problems, it hasn't officially been put back to August; but if you go into any Carphone Warehouse store, they will tell you that the 7650 won't be available til August.

As for the 9210, yes you're right, it does have a colour screen, I was just being stupid and forgot about it. :) What I really meant to say was that 7650 is the first "everyday" phone from Nokia with a colour screen.

No no, you want a POGO

From the article:

Meanwhile, all your data is stored on a centeral server and backed up everytime you go online, so there's no need to sync your Pogo manually with your PC.

Wait. OK, so all my personal info is being synced with some company that has root access to that said info? Does anyone see a problem here?

What about the servers? Let's just say this device really takes off, what's gonna happen when the un-avoidable upgrade happens? What if the upgrade goes boom? Does that mean all my data is MIA? Is there ANY WAY I can sync my info with another PERSONAL computer?

To speak quike frankly, if this wasn't actually being sold, I'd call it Vapor-Ware(tm).

Er... it has an MMC card! I agree about the Mhz being fairly meaningless though - if its fast enough to play MP3s and render websites then what else do you need?

According to the specs it comes bundled with Macromedia Flash Player 4. This brings to mind the recent stories about Flash virii. Are they also going to bundle it with anti-virus software, or give the user the ability to uninstall Flash?

This looks very similar to the Vtech Helio in terms of memory (2MB flash, 8MB SDRAM) and display (160x160 greyscale). The Helio lacks IRDA, but makes up for it with a 75MHz RISC processor with proper MMU as opposed to the Powerplay's 16MHz DragonBall. The Helio can also run Linux, but comes preloaded with Vtechs own VT-OS.

The Helio is also keenly priced. Brits can pick them up for £49.99 from the Carphone Warehouse, whilst you chaps across the pond can get them from a number of sources (often for less than $50, apparently).

These phones cause the Police in the UK a significant headache as any 'crim' worth his wonga will have 3 or 4 of these, on different networks, at any one time and will simply throw them away after a couple of months.

You can buy a contractless SIM for £20UK here which you plug into any phone. Your first phone is just £100UK - nothing!