Recently I lost my mobile, not in the conventional way of leaving it on the bus, dropping it down the toilet or giving it a free ride in the washing machine. No. I lost my phone via work ending the contract.
This was an issue for me, because I don't really do phones. The problem was suddenly I was placed in the position of having to find a new one. The other nightmare was contract or PAYG. I used to be PAYG, but would need a new handset and did not want to pay for something ridiculously fancy, then again I did not want something that held 5 text messages before you had to empty the inbox.
So I was stuck. I could not justify the average-ish price of about £30 per month that contracts seem to be, but also did not want to fork out about £60 for a decent phone.
Until now.
I had recently reinstalled Skype, I used to use it along time ago but had gotten rid via a system format. I was browsing the Skype website to see what business solutions they offered, and I was confronted with the revelation of the 3 Skype phone.
With a little digging I found out that it was a mere £12 a month on contract, but within this contract you could get 100 free texts or mins a month and 300 mins to other 3 users. This was great, but reading on I found that I could use Skype for FREE. Not only that I could use MSN Messenger for FREE as well! (as well as a plethora of other planet 3 features)
I purchased it that same day, and as was promised it arrived next day at around 9:45am.
Opening the bag, I was greeted by a nice small 3 box and a loose 512mb memory card. I did not realise but that was another freebie that they had dropped in! On opening the 3 box you see the handset, it was much smaller than I had originally imagined, nice and slim, and also very light! Also in the box you get a good few instruction books, a nice 20% off 2gb Scandisk memory cards, charger and standard USB connection. A hands free earphone kit is also provided.
The phone connects using the same USB connection as most cameras do, which is useful if you need to buy a second one, meaning its not going to cost the earth.
Putting the phone together was easy, although I must admit I was quite concerned about the battery cover being able to slide off too easily. It is magnetically sealed after you slide it into place, and unlike most other phones, when you want to get it off it comes off very easily. I thought that this could be an issue when taking the phone out of my pocket, but so far it has held fast and actually has not budged.
The display is bright and clear with a very sharp colour screen. After waiting a few hours for my 3g net connection to become active I was able to quickly download and install MSN messenger, and log into Skype. MSN Messenger works well enough, its a Java based application so not the smoothest application in the world. It does the job though, and its free.
The integration of Skype into the phone is almost flawless. It prioritises Skype as highly as normal network calls. The application runs smoothly and the sound quality on the calls I have made to other Skype uses has been near perfect. You can not use Skypeout, which is the service that you can use on your computer to call other phone devices via Skype's cheap call rates, but it does allow you to call and be called by any Skype user for free, anywhere in the world. This also applies to other mobile phones using Skype. Skype can also double up as an instant messenger, so between Skype users on phones or computers you will be able to receive messages.
The phone itself comes with a 2 mega pixel camera, full 3 mobile net access with selected pages free to browse. Other 3 services also include TV channel rental, which I have not tried, but if the free media examples are anything to go by, it will be great. You can receive channels, like BBC1, BBC3, ITV1, and many more. The prices charged by the network for the services are very reasonable as well.
Blue tooth is the main means of communication between hardware, which is a good feature as it would be almost pointless to have a phone these days without it. There is also a nice media player that will arrange your MP3's into categories automatically. Other tools that you have are:
- Alarm - Setting 3 different times
- Calculator
- Calendar - Supporting alerts for events and to do's
- Notepad
- PC Sync
- World time
- Stopwatch
- Games and Applications - available via 3
- Email Access
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