This is a 2D-barcode containing the address of our
I’ve already covered many of the key benefits to the new 3 MiFi unit (in my first looks), although I will restate that it’s a joy to use now it’s a single power button to set everything up, and the wireless encryption key being only numbers makes it easier to quote to people to share the connection. For the full review, click on the full article below.
One of the more popular SIM Only packages that 3UK offer, SIM 15, is back available on special offer in the 3Store again. This offers 300 cross network minutes, 3000 texts, 2000 3UK-3UK minutes, 1GB Internet data, free voicemail, Skype and Windows Live Messenger, and all for £15 per month with a 1 month rolling contract.
Of course, the One Plan is still available as another option; at £25 per month it offers 2000 cross network minutes, 5000 texts, 5000 3UK-3UK minutes, 1GB Internet data, and the free voicemail, Skype and WLM, and although at first glance it’s offering much more value, it’s also a 12 month contract, which shows how good value the SIM 15 option is if you don’t want to commit to a contract.
As we commented a couple of weeks back, it’s nice to see 3UK formally drop the use of the word “unlimited”, and also nice to see the SIM 15 offering the 1GB Internet data which is common to their higher tariffs, and well worthy of promotion compared to the other networks who are mainly aiming at 500MB as the data limit.
Yesterday 3UK launched an updated website. Although this new site has received mixed comments with some people liking it, and others not, there are a couple of things to be said about it. Firstly, 3UK have kept all the information you need handy, such as coverage checkers. Secondly, and this won’t be obvious from the site, but internally within the company there were champions requesting (and ultimately succeeding) that the website was not Flash based (and with it the potential to not allow direct links to product pages). Overall, I’ve had a few visits to the website, and I’m happy with the redesign.
However…
At the same time, 3UK have removed the Mix and Match tariffs and removed the Texter tariffs (and the old Internet Texter tariffs). Now, there is 3 choices:
(*) It seems there is an inconsistency on the 3UK website; although both the Internet Texter and Internet Talker tariffs have a headline of “unlimited internet”, when you look at the detail the Internet Texter tariffs are shown as “unlimited internet”, whereas the Internet Talker tariff are shown as “500MB data”. This either means 3UK has dropped it’s “unlimited” cap from 1Gb to 500MB, or there is a difference between these 2 tariffs of an additional 500MB. Either way, some clarify is definitely required over how much internet is or isn’t included with these tariffs, and equally why has the limit dropped…
So, if you were after something like a Nokia 6700 Slide, to get it with 300 cross network minutes (24 month contract) will cost you:
therefore a total of £16 per month. To add those “unlimited” 3000 texts as well would cost an additional £5 per month, so the Handset with the Internet Texter 300 tariff would be £21 per month.
On one hand, I have to offer 3UK the greatest support for taking the initiative and including Internet access with every tariff (apart from SIM only), and that can be as little as £10 per month (it looks like this was the plan 3UK were talking to me about a month or so back), however, on the other hand, making all contracts 24 months may backfire for the many people who don’t want to be tied in for that long. I’m also not happy with the lack of clarity over what “unlimited” internet means, and why it’s now dropped from the old 1GB limit to the new 500MB limit (in fact, you’ll actually get your first warning at 400MB, whereas with the old limits your first warning was when you hit 1GB, and you could actually keep going for some while before being charged).
Having said all that; looking at the Internet Talker 300 tariff, it means you could have a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for £10 per month (24 month contract) a Nokia E71 (Refurbished) for £13 per month (24 month contract), or if you fancy Android an HTC Hero for £19 per month (24 month contract, 2 months Spotify Premium) or even the HTC Desire for £20 per month (24 month contract, 2 months Spotify Premium); that’s an impressive range of handsets at impressive prices as long as you can accept the 24 month contract, and are happy with the 500MB per month data limit.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that the majority of the prices I have quoted regarding these new tariffs are the online prices, which have an online exclusive £2 per month reduction over store prices, so to get many of these deals, you will have to visit the 3Store as opposed to going to your local High Street.
A day or two ago, I got a nice SMS from 3UK:
From 3: On Apr 22 some prices change. You still get free texts, internet & 3-to-3 calls. New: free Twitter & 0.facebook.com
It finishes with a 3UK web page for more details.
Wow, I thought; 3UK are just making the existing free twitter browsing permanent, and adding support for the new 0.facebook.com website (which provides a mobile text only interface to Facebook; ie access to news and information, but no photos, keeping the data usage down); what a nice bunch of people, providing these extra services for all their customers.
However, curiosity got the better of me, so off I went to the website to see the finer details of the changes, and boy did I get a shock…
So, here are the full details of the PAYG changes coming next month:
“Some prices change” really doesn’t seem to cover it, and I think 3UK should be making more of these changes before people wonder where all their credit has gone.
I do note that 3UK are promoting both Twitter and 0.facebook.com being free and don’t need a TopUp, which implies (maybe incorrectly), that these, like Skype and Windows Live Messenger, continue to work even if your credit runs out, which is one small positive to come out of all these changes.
In other news, Sylvia Chind has confirmed the following handset information (see here for full details):
This is generally good news for 3UK in terms of their handsets, and it’s unfortunate it’s come at the same time as all these PAYG price increases, but for many 3UK customers, now might be the right time for a new phone, and a move to a contract to soften the impact of these PAYG price changes.
When I met up with 3UK last month, they were explaining that generally the main reason they take longer to get phones is that as a company they will purchase a much smaller quantity of any particular phone than the larger networks, and hence their requests for stock and customisations will always take second place. They also commented that in terms of phones like the iPhone, they felt the costs were too high, both to them and to the consumer. Well, I think this is about to change…
The day before I met 3UK I heard rumours that their Customer Services staff had been saying they would be carrying the iPhone within 3 months, and both that and a direct question on whether 3UK would be stocking the iPhone were, looking back, not actually answered on the night.
This week I’ve heard more Customer Services staff saying the iPhone will come next month (although personally I suspect it’ll be announced in the next month or so, as opposed to being on sale), and 3UK have put out a statement today saying that they don’t have a commercial relationship with Apple, but that they hope to resolve that in 2010. That post also states that the Nokia E71 was their best selling phone of 2009, but what it doesn’t say is that the HTC Hero, costing £35 per month, is their current best selling phone. This shows that buyers are willing to spend £35 per month on a 3UK contract, something that may not have been so apparent a year ago when PAYG and £15-£20 per month contracts were much more common.
Combine all these thoughts with statements by 3UK last month that they felt they should advertise their “Coming Soon” phones better and I think the iPhone is going to be announced fairly soon; in my opinion it’s rare for networks to talk about phones before they are pretty much ready. With the experiences of the HTC Hero, 3UK know their customers will happily pay more for high spec smartphones, and with the comments from their own Customer Services staff I think this all shows it’s coming to the network.
Now, I might be wrong of course, and I suspect it’s possible they’ll only pick up the iPhone 3G, although I suspect they’ll be able to sell the iPhone 3GS too. I also suspect that if / when a new iPhone 4th Generation model is announced in June / July, it won’t be seen on 3UK for a little longer than the other networks (due to the commercial points in the first paragraph), but we may well see some form of iPhone on sale on 3UK before too long.
Interestingly, unlike some Nokia phones, it appears that people aren’t having problems getting their 3UK SIMs to work in unlocked iPhones, so that bodes well. Of course, I would expect 3UK to ship it with their own Skype on 3 and Email on 3 solution, which may take a little while to get ready and released into the App Store. In fact, I wonder if this is the only thing stopping the announcement happening today, hence why 3UK are happy to start talking about the device…
We’ve received confirmation from 3UK that they will also be selling the HTC Desire (along with Orange and T-Mobile who have already announced their plans to sell the phone). This is good news for 3UK as part of their plans to expand their Android range to over 6 devices by June, although at this stage it’s not clear if they will only be selling the HTC Desire, or whether they will be carrying the HTC Legend too.
As with all other 3UK devices, it will feature Skype on 3 (Free Skype Forever), Email on 3, Free Windows Live Messenger, and will also have the Spotify client installed too.
Although 3UK have only formally stated “Spring 2010″, we understand it should be available in April 2010.
3UK announced on Friday that they are now selling the Nokia 5230 on their network. As it’s a Symbian S60 5th Edition phone, it allows 3UK to promote more than just the basic phone features; as well as the typical Skype on 3, Windows Live Messenger, and Email on 3, 3UK have said the phone will ship with a Twitter client (it will be interesting to see which client they have selected for this), an integrated Facebook application, and it also supports the Spotify Symbian client allowing the use of Spotify (in case you want to use Spotify Premium on your 3UK mobile phone, you can add the £9.99 Spotify Premium to your mobile phone bill; see here for more details, although a minimum 6 month subscription will be required). Oh, and if you are using Spotify on your Symbian phone, Spotify have recently released a minor upgrade for their client, which you will want to download from here.
Although it’s available on a contract, it’s also available on PAYG for £150, which sounds like a good deal…
Except, as raised by others (see Abul’s post here), you can buy the same phone SIM-free and network unlocked for £100 direct from Carphone Warehouse! 3UK have explained that Carphone Warehouse simply have better buying power (with their ability to buy the phones for sale across the whole of Europe), and hence can afford to sell the phone cheaper.
Either way, if you are looking for a nice Symbian phone (albeit without WiFi) which includes a GPS (and hence the new free Ovi Maps), in either Black or White, then head to 3UK or Carphone Warehouse.
A billion minutes may not sound a lot to most telecoms companies, but 3UK have just passed a billion minutes of Skype calls on their network! That’s an impressive figure. The billionth minute was made by Stephen Timms (Minister for Digital Britain) to the CEO of Merlin (a medical charity). It’s nice to see that 3UK have donated a small number of 3 SkypePhones to Merlin to allow them to communicate whilst they are out in Haiti.
This is an impressive figure, and in fact, 3UK have said that they are handled over 3 million minutes of Skype calls are handled every day!
3UK want to promote the use of Twitter, and so for the whole of February and March, access to Twitter will be free! What exactly is and isn’t included? Well, 3UK have stated that access to Twitter for tweeting messages and pictures will be free of charge, whether you are accessing Twitter via the mobile browser, or using the integrated client on devices such as the INQ Mini 3G, Sony Ericsson T715, or even the INQ Chat 3G. If you already pay for Internet access on your mobile phone, then accessing twitter will not come out of your internet data allowance.
Although this is only a 2 month period, this means that right now you can use Skype, Twitter and Windows Live Messenger for free on your device. As always, 3UK seem to be pushing the boundaries on what could and should be included within the contract, and we hope this promotion can be extended in the long term.
In terms of the majority of the software on the phone, it’s very similar to the INQ Mini 3G that I covered here and here, so what’s different about the Chat, what’s good, and what’s bad?
Well, that QWERTY keyboard is the main physical difference, and it is a very nice keyboard. It’s similar to the Symbian QWERTY layout, and just slightly different to the BlackBerry layout (the Symbol and Shift keys are reversed compared to a BlackBerry, which makes it a challenge to get used to if you are a long term BlackBerry user).
A GPS is the other key difference to the INQ Mini 3G, and to be honest, it sometimes took it’s time to get a fix, but generally worked ok. The included Google Maps worked well with the GPS. Unlike Symbian devices, there is no configuration control over the GPS settings, so no facility for changing the Positioning Server over to Google to help speed up the initial fix. One downside of Google Maps was it was expecting numeric key input, and that meant pressing the Symbol and the relevant key to emulate a number; it was a shame it wasn’t aware of the QWERTY and mapped keys allowing a single key press for functions. As with all Brew OS devices, there is no cell ID location function within Google Maps, which limits you to waiting for the GPS to find a fix; if you are used to a device that can also use cell ID location information, then this seems to impact the fast “locate me” type functions when you know roughly where you are and just want to seatch for something local to your position…
In general terms, the integration of the Social Networking apps remains a key selling point of this phone, bringing together Skype, Facebook and Twitter, and linking the first two into the Contact List too. Personally, it felt like the Twitter app was more of an add-on, with less integration than the other two, and no facilities for downloading contacts or avatars like the Facebook and Skype apps offer.
It’s nice to see the INQ Hub included as standard on the INQ Chat 3G (see here for how to access from the INQ Mini 3G), and overall the phone seemed a nice device. For a device which can be described as a smartphone (although only just, given it’s limited to Java apps) the battery lasted well over a day, and unless you are using Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Skype constantly, should easily last two days. With all 3 apps turned on, it still managed to last over a full working day, which is certainly a key timeframe.
Compared to Symbian, the lack of worrying about Access Points and just letting the device go ahead and connect to the Internet for you was a nice refreshing change, although for many it may fell like a level of control has been taken away from you. Of course, with no WiFi support, the only option is 3G connectivity, which helps with the simplification.
So, overall, you may think my opinion is that this is a good, cheap phone worthy of consideration…? Well, I’m afraid it wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked… Firstly, start running all those Social Networking apps together, and the phone often freezes when one of them is performing an update in the background, which can leave the phone locked for a minute or two, and although it doesn’t come with the Social Networking support out of the box (yet), buying a Nokia E63 and adding Gravity (plus the 3UK specific Skype and WLM apps) gets you very close, with the additional benefit of a true multitasking OS, and WiFi support too (although no GPS). If it wasn’t for the device feeling so underpowered, then I would be supporting it as a worthy device, but it did occasionally leave me very frustrated.
So, if you don’t want to run all the Social Networking apps all the time,but want a device with a QWERTY keyboard, and the ability to use your favourite Social Networking sites out of the box, then certainly go and try out the INQ Chat 3G; you may be pleasantly surprised at the functionality on offer given the price, and hopefully a firmware update, or software updates will resolve the responsiveness issues I found.
As always, thanks to 3mobilebuzz for the loan of the device, and if you want more information, or to purchase an INQ Chat 3G, then head to the 3Store to see more.