For the last 2 years, I’ve ignored the Cardinal Rule of IT Gadgets.
And I only realised it last night.
If you know me in three dimensions (that sounds rude – oh, you know what I mean), then you will have met my phone. I show my phone off at the drop of a hat. If someone mentions telephony within earshot, I pull my phone out and press buttons to make it bleep and get everyone’s attention. If I could wear it in a holster, I would. A face holster. I’m that proud of my phone / I’m that tedious.
My phone is a T Mobile Vario III smartphone, and I’d recommend it to anyone, mainly because it’s an excuse to show it off, but also because it’s a terrific piece of kit on a terrific little contract (free web access with no data tariffs; free GPS; free Microsoft Word / Excel / Powerpoint / Adobe Acrobat built in; slide-out keyboard that actually works, and not just in a technical sense; and Other Cool Stuff).
But I was so bowled over, so giggly and hair-toyingly won over by this half-brick of wizardry, that I ignored the cardinal rule of IT gadgets.
Cardinal Rule Of IT Gadgets:
When you get a new IT gadget, immediately look on the Internet for better software.
As wonderful as my phone is, it has been pre-installed with Internet Explorer Mobile. In another age and another universe, this would be cutting-edge. In this one, it’s like trying to get onto the Internet by rubbing two bits of exposed wire together. I see this now. I see it fully, for what it is.
The first time that someone shows you their iPhone, they make a big deal about poking the screen with their finger. That’s because the browser on the iPhone is designed by someone who actually wants to browse the Internet from a mobile phone. With your finger-tip, you drag the screen around, yanking, whipping across pages like you’re waving a camera lens about. It’s dazzling. It’s utterly unlike what we’ve been putting up with on normal, non-touch screens. It’s instantly intuitive. It’s right.
Opera Mini 5 (beta) does exactly the same. The frontscreen is thumbnails of 9 user-defined bookmarks, ie. your 9 favorite websites, all ready to go with one fingertap. When a webpage loads, it fits the screen so you see it all, unreadably small – and then you double-tap on the screen, and it zooms in to normal readable size. Then you drag your finger around, and the page slides around like it’s been greased.
It’s gorgeous.
But that’s not all. I also installed Skype Mobile. This means I can instant-message or talk over Skype from my phone, entirely for free. International calls (to other Skype-installed gadgets), free, over your phone. Free.
To be fair to me – and I know I’m biased, but I’d like to be fair to me, please – these applications are only recently available. In fact Opera Mini 5 is only just out. But that’s not the point. The point is…I hadn’t been looking. I’d been making do, with the unwieldy relatively backward preinstalled gubbins on my phone, for years.
This evening, I have an entirely new toy to play with, it’s true….
…but I am so ashamed.
Ian and I have been using Skype mobile for ages. Very cool for international communication wiithout being tethered to your PC.
Very.
When I tried it out the other night, I had a problem with the sound coming out of the phone’s back speaker rather than the normal ear-speaker.
But I’ve realised the way round this is plugging my headphones in.
This isn’t something you’ve encountered, is it?
Truth be told, this is why I moved out… I just could not stand your refusal to try new phone apps!!
Oh, the tears of humour streaking my face.
In fact, dear readers, this is the man who was cooking with a brand of soy sauce so potent that it could melt wood. (Nathan, your wooden spoons are still here. I’m presuming they’re spoons, anyway).
So in fact Nathan was driven out by crowds chanting “Just Soy No!”.
ps. Nate – We should have beer. You about this weekend?
those are *not* your fingernails. I have met you in 3D, so i know.
You could be onto something there. Or I could be like Eddie Izzard.
I shall comment no further, shrouding myself in a tantalizing cloak of mystery, and stuff.
Hair-toyingly, really? So, how do *you*… ?
*ducks incoming marmite-laden missiles*
I owe you email. And blushes. Don’t go thinking for a minute that your lovely compliments about my use of the written word (so many months ago — not that I haven’t written words since, despite what some of my writing collaborators and/or email correspondents have been insinuating recently) went unnoticed or unappreciated.
I did however resent you characterisation of my work as “playing with numbers” or something similarly patronising… I remember a time when you more grandiosely described it as “manipulating the very building blocks of Life”. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I’ll have you know that while the top of my head is follicularly modest, it still grows as normal at the sides, and when I’m older and my hair goes white, I’m going to become a mad professor. Tremble, world. Brick thyself, Dr Horrible.
I owe you an e-mail too. We mututally owe each other e-mails. That’s silly. Why don’t we agree that each one cancels the opposite one out, and start again without all this owing-guilt business going on? Waddayasay?
When I say “playing with numbers”, it is the highest compliment. Building blocks of life, meh, whatever. Biological Lego. Whatever. But numbers are REAL power. With numbers, you can do things like (a) send spacecraft to the furthest fringes of Creation, and (b) write computer games. These are the two main justifications for the field of computer science, and computer science is the best, juiciest kind of science (because of the Space/computer games connection).
All facts.
I like that phrase, knowing someone in 3D …
So you’re saying you DON’T have to pay for a data-plan?? That sounds like such an amazing deal. I say that even though I’m an iPhone evangelist myself; if I could get free web access, my iPhone life would be perfect.
Interestingly I had the precursor of this phone: the T-mobile Vario II. It was fine, for 6 months, and then various things started to go wrong on it – mostly the OS which was an oh-so-cruddy Windows Mobile 5. The Vario range is made by HTC whoc make the current crop of Google Android phones.
I swapped to using 3 mobile when T-Mobile wanted to charge me 200 quid for an UPGRADE at the end of my contract to a Noike N97. That, and their contract was 35 pounds a month. I went next door (literally – the shops are next to each other in Milton Keynes) and got a INQ1 with an all-you-can-eat data package, free unlimited Skype (T-mobile used to make veiled threats about data usage in connection with Skype – perhaps they’ve changed) and lots of other goodies.
Of course, I am imminently naffing off to the USA where mobile, er I mean, cell contracts are a VERY different animal; pay to RECEIVE texts and phone calls anyone? Although, due to the lack of a ‘termination fee’ which all UK phone operators have to pay they do lots of “pay a fixed fee and everything else is covered: unlimited data, calls, texts and roaming”. It’s going to be fun to find out what the network coverage is like. I may crumble and get an iPhone… maybe…