People have been talking about mobile internet (access to the internet on the go) for a long time. Access is too slow and too expensive, devices are too slow, screens are too small, WAP sucked… But change is coming, finally, in the form of faster 3.5G/4G access, reasonable data plans, and developers getting the standards ’thing’, making more sites more easily mobile accessible.
So when Three released the X-Series service in the UK end of 2006, I was anxious to see if they would introduce it in Australia too. Because that would tickle my fancy…
I only bought a SE K750i about a year ago. It had a 2M camera, a radio, playes mp3’s and mp3 ringtones, all in all, a nice phone. But I was lacking some ‘power’, picture quality was disappointing most of the time, radio reception not to good, a propriatery headphones connection, limited internet access (improved using the fab Opera mini)…
If I was to have a new phone, it would need to have GPS, and preferably with WiFi. It didn’t need to have a camera, as it remains hard to get decent pics from a phone camera anyway (it needs a good lens, processor, some zoom). It didn’t need to have a radio either (as radio isn’t that good down here). I was looking at the Mio A701 which had been around for a while but was still costing a lot of money, it’s old school technology (except the gps chip which is the best), no 3G, no WiFi, but it is a good GPS device in itself.
Then Three Australia introduced the X-Series plan end of March 2007, with a couple of ‘compatible’ phones, two Nokias, an LG and this Dopod (which at its heart is a HTC Trinity). The plan includes Skype, Google, eBay, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Orb, mobile mail and mobile internet. For 20AUD(16USD) you get 500MB, 1000 Skype-to-Skype minutes, unlimited IM, eBay access, some video channels. For 40AUD(32USD) you get 2GB/4000 minutes. All this over a 3.5G network (HSDPA). In a world where mobile operators charge you 70AUD for 10MB on GPRS, this is a great deal!