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Black Friday

Black Friday, Orange Wednesday, ... any other days with colours?

The iPhone is a very expensive phone

Off-contract, the iPhone 4 is the same price as the Galaxy SII, and the iPhone 4S is not a lot more than the SIII. Granted the iPhone 5 is about GBP 150 more though, but until that was released they were about the same price as Samsung's competition.

Example

I recently switched from a dumb phone to an android device, I use orange UK and had chosen the "dolphin" package on pay as you go, which defines "unlimited" data as 100MB per month, the moment you pass that limit they appear to start charging you £2 per megabyte(the all time data usage on my girlfriend's t-mobile android phone would have cost her ~£9,000 at such a rate), with no daily limit, frankly insane. Once your account begins hemorrhaging credit due to data use, the clever trick of avoiding a contract suddenly starts to look as dumb as your old phone. The best part is that orange's own website for their dolphin pay as you go terms state that this shouldn't happen, they'll give you up to 25MB per day for £2, rather than completely draining your credit silently...

A contract makes far more sense, as these sometimes offer 250MB data for the amount you'll need to top up by each month to get the paltry 100MB free data that orange offer on pay as you go, as well as more inclusive minutes and texts, of course dropping orange like a stone makes far more sense, too. I think i'll look into tesco mobile and t-mobile's £10/m contract offerings(available in both 1month and 12month varieties)

Just buy it in the UK on Orange then.

http://www.orange.co.uk/

It's not entirely worthless - it makes good kindling, and bad toilet paper. (or very bad kindling if you use it as toilet paper first)

It is not even the best for that. http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Hungarays_needy_given_money_to_burn

No, BT's range of competing ISPs will get a lot more popular. Virtually everyone who can get BT can get one of those and be switched over to them in two weeks (just switched to O2 from BT, best move I ever made - BT are retards).

I'm no particular fan of TPB, I think they're a bunch of dicks, but for christ's sake blocking access is not the answer for the British record industry. Legal downloads, although markedly less profitable, are still something of a money-spinner for them, and given some of the shite that has reached No.1 recently they must be selling something...

I don't remember Orange going into receivership.

Really? Looks like it's available in Black or White from a retailer.

Another example is the "San Francisco" handset from UK carrier Orange. It's a cheapish-n-surprisingly-cheerful Android phone with 800x480 screen for around £100. http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey

Thanks for that, I've been looking for a decent, cheap Android phone (INQ 1 is great, but not 'droid) - I might just have to buy it.

Another example is the "San Francisco" handset from UK carrier Orange. It's a cheapish-n-surprisingly-cheerful Android phone with 800x480 screen for around £100.
http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey

You are full of shit.

http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/sim-only-plans/all-sim-plans
http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/sim-only/
http://www.telenor.no/bedrift/produkter/mobil/tjenester/datakort/
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Cell-Phone-Detail.aspx?cell-phone=T-Mobile-SIM-Card
https://www.wireless.att.com/GoPhoneWeb/goPhoneLanding.do?method=activatePayGo
http://www.thebeijingguide.com/communications/mobile_access_in_beijing.html

Vodafone and O2 are actually being relatively up-front about the limited nature of their packages (in O2's case, starting on Thursday). It's Orange that are still labouring under the delusion that 750 MB constitutes 'unlimited'.

Apple has (for all intents and purposes) one phone on one carrier.

Some of us live in Europe, you insensitive clod!

I'd look into Orange --- from what I understand they don't care for non-residents registering ( though they used to, and may still do, allow an hotel as a valid address ) --- but here is their Camel Pay-As-You-Go sim, if you hit show details you can see the rates for each country which average 15p a minute ( but 6p for the USA ). http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/plans/paygSimPlanList.jsp?selectedTariffName=Camel You could prolly get someone in England to post you one, or buy one off Ebay.co.uk. If there was difficulty registering to a non-British credit card ( and that's not a given ), nearly every other damn shop in Britain sells top-ups for all the sim providers. Alternatively, starter packs of sims are sold in stores, but those would not have cheap roaming. Here are a couple of quite recent links discussing this problem: http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/graffiti134.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10251727-94.html The latter affirms: 'Buying a SIM card when you get to London from a local operator, such as Orange, can offer even better deals. Orange offers a variety of service options for prepaid customers. In general, domestic calls range from 30 cents to 40 cents a minute, depending on the exchange rate. (All calls are billed in local currency.) And texts are about 20 cents to send and receive. With a special international plan, customers can also make international calls for as low as 10 cents a minute. Orange also offers free text messaging for customers when they "top up" or add money to their phones. One plan offers 300 free text messages with a 10-pound top up. And you can get 600 free text messages with a 20-pound top up and a 30-pound top up gets you unlimited text messages until the card expires.'

I disagree with that. I live in a rural part of Hampshire, I used to use O2, but I switched to Three for better speeds.

The Register had an article in July with the coverage maps for different mobile companies; Three and Orange came out best.

For a tourist, I'd suggest that Three's pay-and-go dongle would be the best option.

There usually is, from the mobile operator's website.

Oh, look what I found! Just because the great unwashed don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I loved Spaced.

I bought the Region 2 (UK) DVDs from Amazon.co.uk quite some time ago because they hadn't released here in the US yet. They since have released in region 1 and I HIGHLY recommend Spaced... it's full of video game, movie, and comic references, and the music and directorial style are brilliant. Large numbers of "laughed so hard I shot cola through my nose" moments as well.

Simon Pegg (the co-writer and co-star of spaced... the one who gets fired in that clip) and Edgar Wright (director of Spaced) are very obviously true fans of comics, horror, sci-fi,etc, and when they make fun of bits of our subculture, it's done very much from the standpoint of "laughing at ourselves"

In Spaced, at one point, Bisley (Simon Pegg) is talking about "sure things" and says "just as every odd numbered Star Trek movie is shit"...
needless to say, the irony of him being in an odd numbered Trek movie isn't lost on him.

http://www2.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?c=OUKService&pagename=OUKPersonal&cid=1096023564458 [orange.co.uk]

"Orange has the largest integrated 2.5/3G network in the UK. This means that our 3G network covers 85% of the population, so if you happen to go out of our 3G range, you'll be seamlessy transferred to our 2.5G network" ... which is of very little use to me when I am working in the Highlands of Scotland supporting geology students. I can assure Orange that about half the locations we work in still have *no* phone connectivity whatsoever. Not 1G let alone 3G.

In the UK the phone companies still advertise coverage by population rather than by geographical area because that makes them look a lot better. There's some very low populated but large geographical areas once you head away from the south east and big cities... :-)

And your cell provider will become your ISP. And all will be right with the world.

In the UK at least, that already happens.

As I'm from Britain, I looked at Three, T-Mobile, O2, Orange, and Vodafone.

The ones you link to are CDMA modems, which only work in US, Canada and one or two other countries. The rest of the world uses GSM based networks, and the modems for them are USB.

Vodafone £15 a month (3GB download limit) Orange £15 a month (3GB download limit)

I have a great deal of respect for Jim O , but he knows that he and I differ in our opinions regarding the destruction of 193. As one of those observers who followed this bird through 2007 and as the unfortunate soul who was , seemingly , the only person to obtain high power images of it on a number of occassions , I formed my own opinion , based on what I saw and the fact that there was no way the Pentagon was going to allow this satellite to fall any lower , let alone , re -enter. Its quite simple , at 300 km I could see the basic outline of the satellite using back yard equipment.At 200 km I would have seen "much" more detail had I had the opportunity. If I could do that , then the opposition , using much more expensive kit , and adaptive optics would have been able to discriminate the exact shape and proportions of the spacecraft , from which it could then glean a great deal of intelligence. ( See my recent images of Persona ) As I stated back in mid December 2007 "The Pentagon will not allow this bird to come much lower and will probably destroy it on orbit." Those words were , at the time , met with derision but proved to be correct. The chances of the tank making ground in tact in a densly populated area were infinitesimal. We will probably never know the truth , but for my part , I'm convinced that the toxic ice cube theory was simply fabricated to mask the real reasons for the satellite's destruction. More details on both Persona and USA 193 at http://satcom.website.orange.co.uk/

It's about time that cell phone companies introduce per second billing, but this is not going to happen anytime soon as it is a major part of their business... and fat profits.

They bill per second in the UK (e.g. Orange, O2)

If you are a UK Orange member, you can write to them directly to complain and tell them you are unsubscribing here: http://www.orange.co.uk/knowledgebase/webforms/contactus/formWBO.cfm

Television shows aren't much better. I have a friend who does TV editing - a major complaint he has is that there is dozens of hours of footage for hour long TV shows now - movies are worse. Major motion pictures can have over 200+ hours of footage for a 2 hour movie. Here a few cites I could find with a quick google on "feet of film" (the industry standard):
Titanic - 1.3 million feet of film (about 240 hours of footage) - http://www.northern.edu/wild/th100/flmprod.htm/
Dukes of Hazzard - 620,000 feet of film (120 hours of footage) - http://www.avid.com/profiles/080805_dukes_filmcomposer.asp?featureID=910&marketID=/
Knocked up - over 1 million feet of film (180 hours of footage) - http://www.orange.co.uk/entertainment/film/19332.htm?linkfrom=%3C!--linkfromvariable--%3E&link=link_1&article=filminterviewknockedupsethrogenpart1/

Or, one of his gamma ray experiments goes haywire, and whenever he gets angry, well, you wouldn't like him when he's angry!

Since they're done with Apple, will they go after Orange next?

Yes, I know I'm comparing Apples to Oranges...

In the UK only one provider (O2) has Edge *at all*

I was under the impression Orange did too? (though probably very little coverage)

Either way, a lot of Europe has EDGE too (well, at least reportedly), and they should have 3G with fairly seamless degradation to EDGE, and when necessary, a further degradation to standard run-of-the-mill GPRS.

Not sure if this is the case in the UK, but in the US there always seems to be the same statement--"up to X mbits". I don't know of any large ISPs that do not use that phrase.

Yup, they all use that phrase - I wasn't arguing that that was misleading (although now you come to mention it, if your network is overloaded to the point that there's no way anyone's going to get 8Mbps you probably shouldn't be allowed to advertise "up to 8Mbps").

I do not know any company that explicitly states their residential service is "unlimited".

Orange: "unlimited monthly downloads (fair use policy applies)"
Be: "Unlimited usage"
Tiscali: "a fast, affordable service with unlimited usage every month."
Toucan: "all packages are unlimited"
Pipex: "Our Pipex Max + Anytime package gives you both unlimited broadband AND unlimited local and national calls all day every day"

Thats just from a quick Google for "unlimited broadband". I hear radio ads quite frequently for "unlimited broadband" too, and infact it wasnt that long ago that Tiscali's radio ads said "Up to 8 megabyte unlimited broadband" (which was clearly a mistake and whoever let that through needs a kicking).

Right now in the US, no company has ventured out into metered billing like PlusNet has.

It's pretty common place in the UK amoungst the smaller ISPs. The bigger ones are still misleading everyone with their "unlimited" claims though.

Ultimately, many who complain a lot about residential service not being unlimited have no clue what such a service actually costs.

The customer shouldn't need to care how much the service costs the ISP. If the ISP sold them an "unlimited" then the customer has every right to expect it to be unlimited - if the ISP misadvertised it then it's the ISP's responsibility to swallow any costs required to meet their commitment.

I thought Apple was a computer company, not a mobile phone company...

The only people who pay full price for unlocked phones are early adopters and geeks. Others, like me, buy the phones the early adopters are bored of via ebay, and unlock them ourselves.
I've just got myself a nice HTC Wizard for 120UKP this way, which I've unlocked and debranded, and sped up by around 40% using a "Mr Clean" ROM via http://www.xda-developers.com/.

They have already done it. Since TFA mentions Orange, I'll link to their offering - http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/orange_ spv_m3100/detail/pay_monthly . O2 and TMobile have identical offerings, except they are called XDAs and MDAs rather than SPVs. Vodafone have a fairly similar offering, but it is an IPaq rather than an HTC model.

Orange is apparently only in the UK.

Orange in the UK have been running something like this for ages. Text some stuff, and you get a code that lets you have 2 tickets for one. Orange Wednesdays.

I know this is a bit late but I found a link to this while looking for "motorized bar stool" (minus the quotes) on google.

then it'll truly be apples and oranges.

I think you are in the minority. Either that or you have alot of pockets and enjoy juggling multiple AC chargers in a feeble attempt to keep all your devices charged and ready should you want to use them. I for one CAN'T WAIT for a decent music phone/camera/PDA. So far the best I have seen is only available in the UK: http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handset/orange_ spv_c550/detail/pay_monthly Dedicated music player buttons! And, they even offer a full-track over-the-air download service. When will stuff like this hit the States? The best one available in the US that I've seen is the AudioVox 5600, which has been around for awhile. Alas the desktop side of the equation in weak, relying on off-the-shelf Microsoft applications, rather than well-designed, easy to use, applications targeted to the mobile phone/music player user.

Perhaps it cost that much at first, but right now you can get the V3 for free. No, I don't work for Orange, that was just the first link on a google for "V3 RAZR".

For example, cell providers could simply provide a data service instead of application service. $N for x MB of data (and maybe $M for y MB of real-time data), and the rest is up to you. That would produce a market in which many companies are trying to figure out how to build and sell the applications that consume the least amount of data. Instead, though, cell providers would prefer to be able to price discriminate based on application usage. So instead of being a data transport service, they retain their vertical monpoly.

FWIW, this is how things work in the UK. While the cellphone networks are application carriers as well - they also sell raw data, if you want it.

Cost of a text message: 6.7p - 10p (any time period) orange.co.uk
Cost of a 30-second peak voice call: 6.5p orange.co.uk
Cost of a 5-minute peak fixed-line call: Free on a call plan comparable to a typical mobile package, or 15p on a basic tariff (10p eve, 5p wkend). ntl.com

Cost of a text message: 6.7p - 10p (any time period) orange.co.uk
Cost of a 30-second peak voice call: 6.5p orange.co.uk
Cost of a 5-minute peak fixed-line call: Free on a call plan comparable to a typical mobile package, or 15p on a basic tariff (10p eve, 5p wkend). ntl.com

Motorola flip phones sold in the UK don't have the capibility to take a photo while they are closed. There is a shutter button on the outside to enable this but I believe it is disabled by software in the UK following concerns such as those raised in the article.

It was was of the first to get the 600. However, that was still IIRC substantially after the first two carriers in the US (one CDMA, Sprint, the other one of the GSM providers) had theirs. Given the fact that even today you can basically only get the Treo 600 through Orange anyway, I would expect that you'd be able to get it through orange pretty quickly, but I still expect a couple of month lag between first customer ship in the US and first customer ship in the UK. Even today, it doesn't show up on the Orange web site (again, much like it doesn't show up on the PalmOne web site for the UK either).

My point is that the phone is basically almost ready, but given how much stuff happens over the next couple of months here, we'll get the phone so late as to miss the entire holiday season, which matters quite a bit. In other words, I have no doubt that we'll get it pretty early, but even a couple of month delay basically shows where the priorities lie.

Besides, Orange blows. I actually specifically moved away from them when I made my recent purchase and really don't want to go back to them.

Oh thanks, now how am I suppost to get my Orange Wednesday's 2 for 1 cinema ticket.

Plenty of us already have mobiles that run Windows.

I just got a new Orange SPV e200 - 176x220 screen, 132 MHz, Bluetooth, 32MB onboard plus a SD card slot (with a free 32MB card (and I'm salivating over the SD GPS unit)), VGA camera, etc, packed into 130g of brick. But - hey - I got it free on a fairly cheap contract, so I'm not complaining.

Oh yeah, and it runs Doom.



Not Linux, though. But it's fairly open (Windows Smartphone is based on Pocket PC) so it shouldn't be too difficult to get a fair amount of OSS software working on it.

This kind of thing has been in the UK for quite a while now. I've used both the VodaPhone 3G and the Orange 3G datacard for employees. I personally prefer the Orange one for the benefit of the superiour network, but the Vodaphone one has a real no-brainer user interface, so I spend less time with employees ringing me up with that one. The one I'm REALLY waiting for is a 3G datacard that incorporates an 802.11b tranciever with seemless switchover when our employees enter one of our WiFi zones.

Too late

And they'll create their own mobile ring tunes just to rub it in.