Mobile Phones Blog

The Samsung Soul, featured on our site right now, has already been performing as well as was expected, and is all set to become one of the big sellers this summer. Samsung have just launched a new luxury Silver model of the Soul; this version comes encased in a sexy, highly reflective metallic jacket, and boasts all of the great features of the original (5 Megapixel camera, with autofocus and flash, MP3/WMA/AAC and eAAC+ support, and Bluetooth just for starters).

The powerful handset, which comes with 128MB of onboard memory (microSD expandable) HSDPA browsing, and an innovative touchscreen interface could only really be improved superficially.

The Silver Samsung Soul is currently only available through Mobiles.co.uk, and is available on all the main networks. Interested? Click here for more details.

A new set of the colourful ‘Animal’ characters that Orange launched to personalise their Pay Monthly contracts have now been assigned to their various PAYG pricing plans. There are now four new PAYG packages, Dolphin, Canary, Camel and Racoon, which will make it easier for customers to find the tariff that matches their needs.

As with their Pay Monthly equivalents, the Dolphin package includes additional texts, and the Canary, for those who like to talk, gives you extra minutes and free evening and weekend calls. The Racoon tariffs are all-rounders, providing low-flat rates for cross-network calls and texts.

The new Camel PAYG package, aimed at travellers provides low-rate calls to over 50 international destinations, as well as low rate texts to any network in the UK.

From today customers will be able to buy the new products online; a big promotional campaign is due to go live on the 1st of May, with big shiny orange balloon animals appearing on the telly and the interweb. Last month, Orange also upgraded their monthly contracts to include free access to social networking sites (Facebook, Bebo, Myspace etc).

O2 have finally caught up with the rest of the networks with the launch of their new O2 Mobile Broadband platform for their mobile customers.

As with, 3, T-Mobile, Vodafone et al, O2’s mobile surfing offer allows laptop users to connect to the net on the move by way of a plug and play USB dongle. The O2 packages offer customers 3GB worth of monthly surfing over the O2 network, and unlimited Wi-Fi access via The Cloud’s 7,500 UK hotspots.

O2 Mobile Broadband automatically hooks users up to the fastest connection available - GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA, or Wi-Fi, and the plug and play aspect of the USB dongle makes it super easy to use. The dongle also comes with a stylish LED display panel which indicates what network is being used, so you’ll be able to easily estimate what speed you should be getting.

Talking of which, for the moment broadband speeds of O2 Mobile Broadband will be around 1.8Mbps, which O2 plan to beef up to a faster average speed of 3.6Mbps this June.

There are two separate price plans available, a £20 a month 18 month contract, which includes the price of the USB dongle, or a rolling monthly package also costing £20 a month, plus a one-off charge for the dongle (£120).

More iPhone rumours doing the rounds concerning the forthcoming 3G-enhanced version of the touchscreen wunderkind include one that could potentially see sales of Apple-branded handsets shoot through the roof; a 9to5 Mac post reveals that Apple resellers in Australia have apparently been told the following:

• The 3G iPhone is due for release in the last week of June
• There will be more than one carrier
• There will be no contract lock ins.

Wow. This is pretty big news; even if it pertains exclusively to the Australian market, whats to say it won’t happen elsewhere in the world? Remember when O2 said they had no plans to follow T-Mobile’s German manoeuvre by slashing UK prices and then they unexpectedly did?

Apple have said in the past they’re, “not married to the current carrier lock in model,” so maybe this means that Vodafone might get a look in this time round. Last year, Voda chief Arun Sarin infamously pooh-poohed the iPhone, rating the user experience of the device as pretty poor.

As the handset will be 3G, it would make sense to include Vodafone, who, along with 3 and T-Mobile have extensive 3G coverage across the UK, which has allowed them to unroll mobile broadband services for laptops and PDAs. Also, Orange really ought to be allowed to sell iPhone in the UK; each one could come with a copy of Pink Floyd’s ‘Apples and Oranges’ pre loaded on the music player. Imagine;

Other reports say that overall performance of the phone will also be a cut above the run time of the original, and aesthetics freaks will be keen to note that Apple have succeeded in trimming a couple of millimetres here and there off the chassis, meaning that the new handset won’t cause such an unsightly bulge in the pocket of your skinny jeans.

This was bound to happen. Guitar Hero III, the third instalment proper of the ridiculously successful Guitar Hero franchise has been successfully ported to a mobile format.

The series of games, has tapped into the dormat rock god in people across the world, with quiz nights in pubs now featuring Guitar Duels events alongside regular events such as Name That Tune, and has seen complaints of nightmares in which conveyor belts of coloured discs ceaselessly move towards the eyes of dreamers rise to shocking new levels.

Guitar Hero III has just been released for BlackBerry handsets and Windows Mobile smartphones in the US. According to the screenshots that have filtered over here, the usual five coloured buttons (Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, and Orange) have been reduced to three (Green, Red, and Yellow) in order to compensate for the limitations of both the screen size and the numerical keypad.

Here at Mobile Phones, we’ve had a chilling premonition of a future Rock Band port, with people singing into their phones like a mic a la SingStar; we can see it now, flashmobs of Guitar Hero fanatics meeting up on tube stations, whipping out their handsets and breaking into impromptu guerrilla gig renditions of DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”. Stay at home n00bs, stay at home.

For now, the worst commuters can expect to have to put up with is the frantic tapping of fingers and thumbs issuing forth from behind a copy of the Metro on your train rides home in the summer; the official UK release of Guitar Hero III for mobiles is tentatively slated for the end of May/early June.

Still, I guess it beats Myst for mobiles, eh iPhone owners?

Today, O2 and Carphone Warehouse are slicing off a generous £100 from the current £269 cost of the original 8GB version of the iPhone.

The move comes just weeks after rival T-Mobile slashed prices in Germany for iPhones purchased on the most expensive tariff - UK customers are, however, able to benefit from the reduced handset price regardless of what tariff they purchase.

Customers who have only just recently purchased an iPhone may rightly be feeling a little peeved that they have missed out on such as saving, and so anyone who bought an 8GB iPhone in the last month will get an “Ultimate Price Promise” refund voucher worth £100.

Andrew Harrison from Carphone said, “Of course, significant price reductions can make people who have recently purchased feel like they missed out, so with our Ultimate Price Promise customers will get an unexpected bonus.”

All this news of price slashing has got the rumour mills churning again; 3G iPhone release may well be sooner than we think.

Word on the street is that Nokia are upping the stakes in the touchscreen arms race with their new highly powered touch UI handset, codenamed ‘Tube’.

Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia, said at a recent that the handset will have Java built in as standard, and is also likely to include support for the DVB-H mobile TV and mobile video, almost certainly where the idea for the Tube moniker came from. Wi-Fi and HSDPA support is unconfirmed by highly likely to be included; same goes for GPS, something which Nokia are keen on integrating into all future smartphone handsets.

Libretto also couldn’t resist a sneaky knife in the belly of Apple’s sacred cow. When it was mentioned that worldwide sales of the iPhone had achieved something around the 6 million mark, he quipped; “we’ve done that volume since we’ve had dinner on Friday.” Handbags at high noon.

Nokia might well be able to out manufacture Apple, but 6 million sales of their first ever product isn’t at all bad for a newcomer to the mobile phone market. The N96 is due to touch down here in August, just before the arrival of the new 3G iPhone, which is currently rumoured to hit the stores over here in September.

LG have announced a new addition to their ‘Black Label’ range, which includes previous winners such as Chocolate and Shine - the as of yet unnamed handset looks set to follow in the footsteps of its black label siblings.

The phone pictured below is said to boast a tough yet responsive 2.5 inch reinforced glass touchscreen interface, will be 3G compatible and comes with a 5 Megapixel camera, support for a range of audio and video file formats and Bluetooth support comes beefed up with EDR.

So, whilst none these features (possibly bar the EDR-enhanced Bluetooth) are especially new or revelatory, what is impressive is the overall dimensions of the thing; it weighs in at 100g and is razor-thin, possibly the slimmest 5 Megapixel camera currently doing the rounds. The handset is also apparently “enhanced by stylish materials such as carbon fiber and tempered glass,” which means it will be able to take its fair share of knocks and falls as well.

It has been said that the unnamed handset will come with a ‘name’ (Viewty, Prada, etc) rather than a number, but as we’ve said, it has not been named. We’ve come up with a few guesses of our own on what it might be called:

LG Carbon
LG Stealth
LG Kevlar

OK, so that last one was rubbish. The good news is that this third Black Label series handset will be available on the 24th of April, here in Europe before anywhere else in the world - the official name will be released then.

T-Mobile in Germany has cut the price of Apple’s iPhone to just $99, which equals about £78 in Sterling. The company’s cheapest 8GB iPhone was previously priced at $399, but T-Mobile chose to dramatically cut the price in order to boost sales. The price for the new 16GB handset is still $499, or £398.

Shelling out for an £80 iPhone in Germany sees customers locked into a two year T-Mobile price plan for the iPhone, which equates to $960 over the period of the contract.

Whilst German punters will be able to benefit from a bit of extra taschengeld, further evidence of Rip-Off Britain is apparent; an O2 spokesperson, which has exclusive iPhone rights in the UK along with Carphone Warehouse, said that the company has no plans for similar subsidy over here.

In January, Apple harmonised the prices of UK downloads from the iTunes store so that they fell in line with continental prices, at a detriment to them. At the time of the price change, Apple announced; “[We] currently must pay some record labels more to distribute their music in the UK than it pays them to distribute the same music elsewhere in Europe.”

As the Easter chocolate craze subsides, obliterating those new years healthy eating resolutions, E2Save have been left with a number of LG White Chocolate handsets they want to get rid of, and so they are flogging the lot on 12 month contracts for an ultra-low £2.99 a month.

The O2 contract, worth £30 a month, gives users 200 minutes and texts a month. Contract discount is attainable by redemption, so if you want to get some low calorie low cost chocolate calls in, hang on to those receipts. Contract details are as follows:

Network: O2
Tariff: £30 a month
Minutes: 200
Messages: 200
Data: N/A
Cost: £2.99 a month for 12 months via redemption

To order, please click here.