November 2007 archives

News of another unboxing has reached the fair and digital shores of 3mobilebuzz, this time it’s the turn of ah ok lah.

Clearly excited at receiving not one, but two 3 Skypephones, Adam photographs the new arrivals and relays some of the vital statistics. It is my duty to highlight a small error in the price, however, as the phone retails at £49.99 as PAYG, not the £59.99 that Adam has quoted. Aside from this, there is more to come as Adam stands by to give the devices a full trial, something that 3mobilebuzz will undoubtedly cover when it arrives.

Whenever a lost soul within the world of online discussion needs a question answered, there is more often than not a suitable FAQ - the 3 Skypephone is no exception.

The 3 Skypephone forum contributor sopasteve has pulled together 3 (how appropriate) FAQ’s to come to the aid of those in need regarding any questions and queries relating to their device. As he points out, most pondering posts are rapidly replied to by the ever-helpful moderators and fellow forum users but it is also likely, however, that a simple scan through a decent FAQ will provide a suitable and effective answer. As such, it’s certainly worth jumping onto the lists suggested by sopasteve.

To get involved at the forum click here.

PR guru Richard Bailey, author of PR Studies blog , was recently embarrassed by a digital native while exclaiming his amazement at being able to update his Facebook status via the 3 Skypephone.

His new found ability was laughed at by one of his students dismissing the discovery as old news. Never mind Richard, the digital age is a fast mover and it’s one heck of a task to stay in touch. Besides, it’s no wonder everyone knows about Facebook - your own estimates suggest that 99.9% of your class are members of the prominent social network. I’m sure if your giggling pupil showed you what they believed to be the finer points involved in blogging, an art practiced by less than 2% of your audience, then the roles would have been reversed.

The UK Gadget Blog has written on the blogger update session that recently took place at 3 UK headquarters.

Much like UK Mobile Report, the UK Gadget Blog guys have picked up on the words of Adam Davies, the Head of Marketing and Product Management UK Handsets. Specifically they focus on the mention of SkypeIN/OUT - something that they believe would make the 3 Skypephone an even more interesting proposition than it already is. They state that once these features are available “3 could be selling even more of these devices”, and they conclude by highlighting that the iSkoot Skype product utilised by the 3 Skypephone, already has the workings in place to make this happen.

An interesting proposition indeed…

Johng has got his 3 Skypephone and unboxed like the best of them. The self-confessed media-junkie has taken some great photos of the device emerging from it’s cardboard cocoon. I’ve included a couple of the images below, for the whole collection head to his Flickr account.

Those lost and without a shepherd, adrift in the land of 3 Skypephone have a saviour. He is our very own ‘guru’ Matt.

Examples of his work can be found proliferated across the internet, where there has been befuddlement and furrowed brows he has appeared, leaving in his wake only enlightenment.

To see some of his finer moments jump to comments section of either this Inside View article by Bernie ‘topgold’ Goldbach or the SMS Text News post on marketing the 3 Skypephone to the masses.

He isn’t averse to arriving in forums if required, as this thread in the 3 Skypephone venue shows.

We salute you Matt, may your good work continue.

Rob Miles of Robmiles.com has a set of trial 3 Skypephones and is getting up to speed with the devices.

Understanding that the phones potential is considerable, Rob runs down the specs and the possibilities before stumbling on what he sees as the only real snag, “I’ve not been able to find out what constitutes reasonable use of your 3 “unlimited” internet connection. Voice shouldn’t take up too much bandwidth, and it should allow for reasonable levels of use, but I wouldn’t expect completely unlimited talk time.” The danger here is that I have misunderstood Rob’s confusion, but the fair usage policy relating to Skype use is 10,000 chats and 4,000 minutes a month. For browsing on the PAYG setup, you are charged per MB though there are internet add-on options detailed in this Tamebay article, how the 3 Skypephone pays for itself.

Also Rob we managed to get your hallowed blog up on our 3 Skypephone… It was a manual process of entering the url, but it was functioning fine. ;-)

Rob also offers his devices up for others to give their reaction to, we look forward to the responses.

UK Mobile Report were recently invited to a bloggers update session that included news on portal redesign and PAYG USB modems. Also, there was some discussion regarding the 3 Skypephone.

The dialogue was positive and led by Communication Director Guy Middleton, whom the UK Mobile Report quote before giving their own brief analysis of his comments. Maybe most intriguing is the news from Adam Davies, the Head of Product Development, that the forthcoming year will be focused mainly on improving the 3 Skypephone. “The important thing next year is improvements to the phone. The problem is different things are wanted in different territories but we are looking at things like improving the camera, HSDPA, SkypeIN/OUT. But the bottom line is the price must not increase.”

For more on the topics that were discussed, head to UK Mobile Report and read the full article.

Daily ACK’s Alasdair Allen has unboxed his pair of 3 Skypephone’s, taken a couple of pictures of the event and offered some first impressions on the phone.

Immediately impressed by the light, pocket sized handset that is a nice change to the bulkier generation of smart phones, he threw the 3 Skypephones on to charge and left us to await his second post.

Which took hardly anytime at all and can be read here. Titled ‘3 Skypephone but no Skype?’ the omens weren’t good as Alasdair had some trouble signing in to Skype. A quick update to the piece later and the problem had been rectified, leaving him to dwell on the difficulty he found locating the power button, due to what Alasdair describes as ‘it’s quaint location on the keypad’.

With these teething issues out of the way we look forward to hearing more on the 3 Skypephone from The Daily ACK.

The 3 Skypephone 2 Mega Pixel camera has been put to use by Tamebay and Nechbi, with the results available on flickr for all to see - Tamebay’s here and Nechbi’s here.

You my have seen Sue of Tamebay’s images slip through the 3mobilebuzz Flickr feed, a delightful collection of test images involving the obligatory cat photo and a selection of historical figures including Cleopatra and Blue Beard, homaged in playmobil. Sue has also recently added a sparkling eBay logo from an eBay live t-shirt.

Nechbi has opted to snap away whilst on a country walk in the drizzle, filling his frame with rural delights such as trees, fallen leaves, logs, puddles and sheep. 3mobilebuzz’s favourite however is this marvelous snap of Harvey, a photo friendly Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Here boy…

You can read about Nechbi’s ramble with the funky new 3 Skypephone over at iGadget Life.

Chris Dawson of Tamebay has, like any true technophile, read the 3 Skypephone manual for the first time, almost a full month after receiving his device. And doing so has revealed to him that the phone can be used as a modem for his laptop.

This means that Chris, and anyone else making full use of the software included with the phone, can access the World Wide Web via their laptop and the 3 Skypephone wherever there is a 3G signal. Being able to do this is seen by Chris as “possibly the biggest benefit of the Skypephone yet.” This advantage is explained in more detail in his article, as he discusses the cost and access gains.

As far as he is concerned, the only downside was that the software isn’t XP approved, but apart from that he believes it is ‘fantastic’. If you’ve already utilised the 3 Skypephone as a modem, then add to the accumulating comments here.

The ENN full review is in, courtesy of Deirdre McArdle and, as many before them, they are singing the 3 Skypephone praises.

Part excited, part apprehensive, the arrival of the 3 Skypephone box left Deirdre somewhat betwixt pillar and post. Skeptical, the Skyping commenced to South Korea (no reason to do things by half) leaving her to exclaim “Sound quality was excellent at both ends … and it wasn’t costing a dime. Subsequent Skype calls, made from different areas around Cork, all offered the same high-quality and ease of connection.” This experience left Dierdre ‘pleasantly surprised’ as the trend continued with all the Skype calls she made.

The review continues in a similar vein of positivity - for the full account disappear the other side of this link.

We’ve already talked about Twitter on the 3 Skypephone, but Rob Evans now allows us to talk about the 3 Skypephone on Twitter, what a topsy-turvy world we live in.

If you jump to here you can forage through his tweets and pick out some of the 3 Skypephone related ones or anything else you prefer, reading about his family’s ‘D&V bug’?! Maybe, maybe not? Even more convenient however is the option of landing on his blog, Rob’s Digital Life, and viewing his twitter archive.

At Banzi Banzo the contributors have posted on the 3 Skypephone and make a point of mentioning each feature for those still unsure of what the device contains, out of the box-wise.

The blog covers anything, everything and nothing (their own words, see above) as the Banzi Banzo guys discuss whatever takes their fancy. Thankfully for us their fancy has been taken by the 3 Skypephone, and they see it as ‘a pretty slick bit of kit’ and ‘pretty awesome’. So it’s pretty then?!

If it wasn’t cool enough owning the latest in mobile Skype technology, Gerrymoth can turn your hip factor up to eleven by turning the 3 Skypephone into an extremely useful guitar assistant with Chord Finder v1.0.

Simply download the software, as Gerrymoth says, and away you go as Chord Finder shows you all the chords and their variations in tablature format. It also provides an audition feature so you can tell what each chord should sound like, making it almost impossible for you not to become Clapton, Slash and Hendrix in one body - plus, you know what they say about guitarists…