Mobile Phones

In answer to Lisa’s question!

I’ve looked at these, and although they ‘re a nice phone (and even nicer with the 3G option) I think I’ll give it a miss at the moment…

I’m still loving my HTC Trinity, but might be tempted into the HTC Touch Diamond in the not too distant future (I’d be more tempted if it had a memory card slot - actually not just tempted - I’d want one right now!!!).

As an aside - check out Lisa’s hunt for Harry Potter with her G3 Canadian iPhone in London!

I synced my new SPV M700 with my work PC today, it did it again and created duplicates of every single item in my Contacts (that took at least 10 mins), it’s still working on the Tasks, and Calendar (I dread to think what it will do given the size of my Calendar!).

I did tell it to combine items but that’s because I don’t want it to lose anything… But now I’d have to spend several hours de-duping…

I’ve found several tools which I’m going to try in the vain hope that they’ll sort the problems out..

http://www.slipstick.com/addins/mail_duplicates.asp
http://www.modaco.com/content/pocket-pc-software/267793/dupededupe-remove-duplicate-contacts/

Update: The DupeDeDupe software sorted my Contact out free of charge, and it’s probably quicker just to change the view in Outlook and remove the Calendar items by hand!
photo credit: Pacdog

After the recent post about Orange, it seems that details of the new data plans are available from coolsmartphone.com and that the HTC Diamond will be available on July 14th.…..

I’d almost bordered on getting rid of my Orange contract recently, and moving over to either T-Mobile (for their data plans) or O2 (for the iPhone obviously!), but they’ve surprised me in the last 24 hours and I may well stay with them.

Yesterday for some unknown reason the main keypad on my SPV M700 (O2 XDA IIs, HTC Trinity, HTC P3600 whichever you want to call it!) just stopped working. I promptly rang Orange and asked the all important question…..

No, it wasn’t will they replace it, it was:

“When are you going to release the HTC Diamond?”

I’d noticed it on their website as “Coming Soon” and already knew it was a phone I wanted. The very helpful lady at Orange couldn’t give me any answer of when, but immediately offered to have a new handset to me this morning…

I now have a nice new SPV M700 and am frantically installing all my software back onto it!

In the midst of some of the tinkering I have to do to get my phone talking to Thunderbird/Lightning (not as easy as it is with just Outlook!) I spotted the news from CoolSmartphone.com that data tariffs look set to improve with Orange!

UPDATED: More info available here!

I used to believe so, apart from one incident many moons ago when I bought a phone in an Orange shop and the manager wouldn’t let me take it away as it needed a new SIM, I nearly exploded as I needed the roaming functionality that weekend on my shiny new phone! I finished my complaint letter with:

The future may be bright, but it will be brighter without Orange!

Things improved for a while, but just recently they seem to be going backwards, rumours that it’s since France Telecom took over could well be true I suppose!

The latest in their immensely odd strategies (in a week where Vodafone has announced free data on all tariffs) is the charging for “Orange Messenger” when they purposely remove Windows Messenger from all their devices. Of course you can go and install the CAB for Windows Messenger but many people are questioning whether they’ll be charged for using that as well (are Orange port monitoring!).

I’m off to investigate T-Mobile.

I love my phone, it does everything I want it to, meaning I can run the business, play games and even find where I am when I’m lost with TomTom. I do however have a few annoyances so have gone on the hunt for fixes or software that will help me with those.

The first annoyance is that the phone always vibrates when it sends an SMS. It probably makes a noise as well if you have the sound on (but I don’t normally have sound on), after a quick scan on The XDA-Developers Forum, where Tinity Hacks is suggested, a great little tool with allsorts of little extra’s that saves you going into the registry to play with them!

Backups, I’m on a bit of a backups binge at the minute both at work and at home - PPC PIM Backup
can backup your SMS as well (a failing of most phones now solved!).

MyMobiler, I’ve been looking for something that means I can control my PDA from my desktop for a long while, all the old software I had for my SPV M2000 / HTC BlueAngel wouldn’t work. This didn’t initially - my first thoughts were - here we go again… After a little (read that as a lot!) of digging I found the way to get it working was this:
Start -> Settings -> Connections -> USB to PC, if you have enabled advanced network functionality then untick the box!

I installed SPB Keyboard a while back on a trial - didn’t get on with it as well as I’d hoped and deleted it, but ever since I’ve not been able to set a new keyboard other than the built in ones! I quite liked the look of one of the skinnable ones in this thread - so installed HappyTappingKeyboard and still it didn’t work. So reading through this mile long thread I found out for WM5 I might need IM Selector (also to be found deep in the depths of this thread), this seemed to solve the problem and I can get a different keyboard now! Now I need to find a skin I like!

When I get more time I’ll explore some more apps!

I have used my nice shiny new SPV M700 for a few days now, it’s fantastic and I’m bound to burn loads of data on it, one of the reasons for my upgrades was the press release that this was coming:

Orange cuts cost of plugging into the internet on a mobile phone 3G facts
(April 23rd 2007, The Times)

The general concesus behind it being that we need to get people using the data services on their mobiles to take them to the next level, and that it’s never going to happen while it’s a rip off to use data services. I couldn’t agree more!

This announced the following offers for contract users:

Internet “snacks” - 30p for 15mins with daily cap of £1.50 or a “bundle” priced at £1 per day or £5 monthly for evening/ weekends or £8 monthly “anytime”

As the first commenter on the article states, the general feeling is this was all a scam to get people to sign-up into long term contracts, have they been duped?

It appears that unlimited is not what it seems anymore and is capped at 30MB! James Kendrick & Kevin Tofel call it seedy they could blow this limit just downloading a podcast, and I’m inclined to agree.

Running a hosting company I am truly aware that there is no such thing as “unlimited”, but there is such a thing as common-sense, a 1-2GB cap would probably have handled most users!

News of this cap has brought widespread criticsim from Orange who in recent years have removed all the added extras that made them the great network they were. They no longer want to be seen as good, and want to run with the pack it would appear. Ongoing discussions appear on AVForums, .

What confuses the issue more is that some people have had it in the past (a previous special offer maybe), Rob Evans is one such user, but his commenters have had mixed fortunes getting this applied to their accounts. I’m personally waiting for the dust to settle on this one as someone at O may sit-up and take notice with the amount of noise this is generating! Rob goes on to post that his bill actually says 1GB available but that it may have been withdrawn

I love the post at smstextnews:

Watch this space, as rumours are abound the industry is about to change the definition of the word ‘free’ to mean something that costs money. It’s nothing that an asterisk and a bit of small print can’t handle..

One commenter over at SMS Text News, Chris, says:

The only thing he could find was reference to an unlimited data package for £8 that is available Mid-July (I think he said 17th onwards, but don’t quote me on that).. however it is only listed as being available to business customers (not personal ones).

Now that’s interesting!!!

Other bloggers around the web that are annoyed:

• Tracy and Matt looked forward to a Web’n'Walk killer, instead they’ll probably head off to T-Mobile now
• The Smart PDA, are worried that Orange actually believes 30MB means unlimited!