Mobile Phones Blog

Yeah? Well, so do we. Unfortunately, the price is real, but this isn’t a car that’s up for sale - the Vertu division of Nokia have teamed up with the legendary Italian sports car manufacturer to create the Ascent Ferrari 60 handset, to commemorate Ferrari’s 60th birthday.

Based on Ferrari’s recent 612 Scaglietti, the phone retails for $18,000 ($25,400), which is roughly £12,700 in proper British money, and comes with the same leather finished used in the upholstery of the car interior.

Spiritually, this venture follows in the footsteps of LG’s creative partnership with fashion institution Prada, although unlike that phone, the Ascent Ferrari 60 is strangely devoid of any of them newfangled features such as a web browser, MP3 player or even a camera.

We’d like to see phone manufacturers teaming up with other third party developers to collaborate on future ideas - Hasbro and Samsung teaming up to make Transformers handsets, or perhaps a Motorola Ford Escort XR3 phone complete with oversized spoiler and glowing LEDs. If you see either of these ideas hitting the shelves in the next few months, you know where you heard it first.

The new Giorgio Armani Samsung Mobile has just flounced off of the production line and onto the high street. Following on from the equally cheekbone-centric LG Prada, the Giorgio Armani Samsung is a sleek etched black graphite tablet which looks more like a bottle of perfume than a mobile phone, and comes with a 2.6 inch QVGA TFT-enhanced touchscreen display.

The Giorgio Armani Samsung has been exclusively designed by Giorgio Armani, lending it an air of prestige. The Tri-Band EDGE/GPRS phone manages to pack an impressive roster of features in its 10.5mm waistline, including a 3 Megapixel camera, support for a wide range of audio file formats and Bluetooth 2.0 and USB, so it works as well as it looks good.

The Giorgio Armani Samsung, free on selected tariffs, launched early this year on O2, and is now also available on Orange.

;for that’s the date that Apple’s iPhone goes on sale in the UK. The 8GB version of the iPhone will retail for £269 and will be available on O2 for either £35 £45 and £55 a month with unlimited data usage as standard on all three pricing plans.

Naturally, punters will be able to get their hands on the iPhone through O2 and Apple stores, and at Carphone Warehouse outlets both in the high street and online - be sure to check here in the future.

Free Wi-Fi access provided by Cloud hotspots across the country will support the browsing functions of the handset.

November the 9th is the continent-wide launch date, so T-Mobile subscribers in Deutschland and Orange customers in La France can shell out for the iPhone at the same time.

LG have breathed some colour into their successful Shine range of mobiles; a pink version is due to arrive in the UK this October.

In a slightly contradictory statement, LG said the pink model would be “only aimed at European women” looking for a phone to represent their “individuality and style”.

Exactly how British ladies can represent their individuality and style buy buying into a massive stereotype remains a mystery, but a recently published ’scientific’ survey which recently made evening news headlines supposedly suggested that girls really do prefer pink - if it was on the telly then it must be true.

Research from ad magnate Saatchi & Saatchi suggests otherwise, with many female respondents stating that they find pink and sparkly merch marketed towards girls ‘patronising’.

Nevertheless, those for whom pink is the best colour on the planet will be delighted that they colour-coordinate their outfits with a rosy handset - pink haters can instead opt for the standard silver Shine, which is now available for free on most networks on some great money saving tariffs. Everyone’s a winner, except for me, I’ve been after a vermilion and gold handset for ages.

Another report outlining the obvious dangers of talking on a hands-free mobile whilst driving has been published.

Results compiled from data collected at Transport Research Laboratory in Berkshire here in the UK along with the University of Sydney and the University of Utah suggest that Motorists using mobile with hands-free devices, are four times more likely to crash and have slower reaction times than drinkers at the UK legal limit, according to studies from around the world.

A spokesman for yesinsurance.co.uk, said: “We would like to see the launch of a campaign that urges drivers to switch off their mobile phone before setting off on a trip so that messages can be received by voicemail.”

Critics of this have been quick to point out that not many customers are fond of leaving voicemail messages, due to the fact that there is usually a charge to listen to messages that have been left on your phone.

Leading car insurance co Direct Line launched their ‘Drive Safely’ campaign earlier this year, and have been lobbying for the ban currently in place to extend to include the use of hands-free kits as well.

Mobile phone users in the UK have the busiest thumbs in Europe when it comes to texting. Figures from a recent worldwide survey into global mobile habits showed that an average of 100 SMS (short message service, or normal texts to U and m3) messages are sent from mobiles in the UK every month, compared with the States, where an average of 32 texts are sent per month and 65 are sent in Germany.

The study, the results of which were published in the Guardian, suggests that UK users spend more time texting and taking pictures than they do talking (76 calls a month, compared with 137 calls made Greeks and Russians) and that hardly anyone has bothered with mobile TV (just 8%).

Built-in digital cameras were considered to be the most popular mobile accessory with 81% of Britons owning a camera phone - over 60% of users said that they used a portable MP3 player for music playing, and 45% used a laptop for remote email access.

Word on the street is that the version of the iPhone that will hit the European streets is set to be better than the one currently doing the rounds over in the States.

A leaked draft of an iPhone advert by T-Mobile in Germany appears to suggest that there will be a 16GB version available, with full 3G support which has sent Apple fanatics over here into a priapic froth, and US owners feeling more than a little cheated.

One of the biggest criticisms of the iPhone was its comparatively wimpy 8GB of memory, which although greater than what you get in most phones on the market, is less than what you get on most iPods these days - people are naturally going to compare the new Apple meisterwerk to the portable music player.

It’s possible that the advert, which first appeared on the interweb is a rather shrewd hoax knocked up on Photoshop. If that’s the case, then it’s a rumour which isn’t unbelievable - Apple have stated that they plan to release versions with more memory and 3G capabilities in the future. Lets hope that there’s some substance to this rumour and it’s not all a load of scheisse.

High street names Woolworths and Tesco are offering customers the chance to turn their old mobiles into £££ via online and postal recycling campaigns.

The Woolies campaign is run in partnership with mopay.co.uk - the website (recyclewithwoolworths.co.uk) excitedly exclaims that “You could be sitting on handsets worth over £70.00 each!”

Customers can enter the name and make of their model into a text box, or browse through a catalogue of images until they find their model. The amount of coin you can get per handset varies, and ultimately depends on how old the phone is and whether it is in working order - typically a working handset will be worth twice as much as a broken one.

Tesco Clubcard holders can turn their old phones into Green Clubcard Points - 300 points if the phone works, and 50 points if it doesn’t. Charitable customers also have the option of turning the Points value of their phone into a donation for the British Red Cross.

The Simplicity page on O2’s website also highlights the fact that: “Hanging onto your handset saves 7.5kg of CO2. That's enough to fill 34 beach balls!”

O2 also give £5 to the O2 Energy Saver Fund for every Simplicity connection made online.

Nokia have unveiled their new online Music Store. Branded ‘Ovi’, the Finnish word for ‘Door’, customers will be able to purchase legal downloads of audio and video files as well as games direct from Nokia’s website which will be able to be uploaded onto any Windows PC, phone, or portable playing device. Hardware such as mobile phones and other accessories can also be purchased through Nokia.

Nokia will be competing directly with Apple for the spot under customers Christmas trees this winter - the forthcoming Nokia N81 is touted as the sliding sequel to the popular N91 smartphone and like the iPhone, allows users to store up to 8GB’s worth of pictures, videos and audio files.

The N81 also features a pin-sharp touchscreen interface, which although impressive, is not quite the same as the glowing single key multi-function tool iPhone - the unique ‘pull and pinch’ system is unbelievably intuitive and light-years ahead of anything else out there - the N81’s numerical keypad plus other navigational keys are separate and not featured on the touchscreen.

It’s no secret that Apple and the church of have as many detractors as they do fervent supporters - there’s no denying, however, that with the iPod and iTunes, Apple have changed the face of the music world as we know it - whether they can maintain their market share in the face of fresh competition remains to be seen.

Vodafone are preparing to revamp their 3G services throughout the UK. The HSUPA upgrades, which are due to begin in October, will see download and upload speeds increasing, with speeds estimated to run at up to 7.2Mbps for downloads and 1.44Mbps for uploads, although Vodafone have said that most users can expect to achieve average speeds of around 5Mbps;

“The average download speed we're achieving today with HSDPA is around 1Mbit/s, but HSUPA should give us around 4-5Mbit/s,” said Nick Parbutt, Vodafone's head of enterprise products.

Vodafone currently offers a 3GB usage allowance for £30 a month - this connection speed boost will see Vodafone being able to compete on a more realistic level with 3, who currently offer the same amount for half the price - 3GB for £15. But with improved speeds, Vodafone customers will be getting better value for money then they were before as faster speeds generally = less bandwidth used.

The upgrades are due to begin in and around London - 3G services are typically bad in the capital due to many areas not having access to cable and the interference caused by aircraft.

Users wishing to access the new service will need to install new computer hardware, which is available in three versions: a plug ‘n’ play USB modem and two PC Card versions.