So, when is Unlimited ceased to be Unlimited?  It’s when we say it’s not of course :)
Last month we heard from O2′s CEO Ronan Dunne about ‘Offering fair and transparent access to mobile data‘, which led to the ‘abolishment‘ of the term Unlimited.  This followed with O2′s announcement of their new iPhone tariffs which cap the data allowance to 1GB mark.  Commenting on this big change, Dunne said

“Our new billing strategy is an important stepping stone to that future – a means to ensure that however it evolves, everyone has fair, transparent access to the mobile data they need.”

Coming from almost similar background, Three UK has launched their latest plan called The One Plan.  This change has been driven by Three UK’s involvement in the Terminate The Rate campaign, which is a campaign to lower the Mobile Termination Rate (or MTR, basically a fee that you have to pay when you call people from different mobile network).
Whilst Ofcom’s proposed changes might take a while to materilise (due to the opposition of other mobile networks), Three UK, through this One Plan, is realising it today.
Another thing that Three UK has changed on this plan is they are dropping the term ‘Unlimited‘ in relation to data allowance.  Now with this One Plan, customers will get a clear and transparent indication of what they will get, which in the case of this plan will be cap to 1GB per month (similar to what O2 is offering, but with much cheaper tariff).
At the launch event yesterday, Kevin Russell (3′s CEO) underlined

“Three was built to bring the mobile and the internet together as one.  With a clear direction from Ofcom on Mobile Termination Rates we believe, for the first time, that we can offer an inclusive package for smartphone users that covers all of their communications needs at a market-moving price point.”

So what do we get from The One Plan?  Essentially Three is offering 2 type of deals, one is for the Pay Monthly, the second one is for the SIM Only Plan.

As per usual, you will also get Free Skype to Skype call, Free Windows Live Messenger, and Free Twitter :)

If you remember, in my previous post, I wrote about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the original 3 MiFi Wireless Mobile device.  Last week, 3 has unveiled their shiny brand new MiFi to replace the original one.   And I am pleased to tell you that 3 has managed to turn the Bads into the Goods!

First let’s have a look how it looks like, compare to the original one:

Photo attribution: MyPocketOS.com

So what’s changed?

Noticeably, here are some of the big changes:

• The new MiFi now comes in Black and Gun Metal (smart!).
• The 5 ‘confusing’ indicator lights are now replaced with an OLED screen showing clear information about what’s going on in any given time.  This information includes: signal strength indicator, battery indicator, status indicator, information on how long the device has been connected and how much data has been used.  The light indicator on the original device was one of the Bad things I mentioned on my previous post.  Replacing these indicators with the OLED screen is not only making it less confusing and more useful, but also it’s resulting in an increase in battery life (another Bad turns into Good).  Awesome!
• The too-complicated 3 buttons (also one of the Bad things), is now replaced with … One Button!  YES!  This ‘simple’ change, in my opinion, counts a lot in the device’s usability.  As I said before, the simplest thing sometimes is the best solution.

OK, What Else?

Another change that is not immediately apparent is the Companion Software.  The original software was totally useless, but 3 said that they have overhauled the software and replaced it with a web-based dashboard application, which means no more platform dependent installation, and more importantly it’s finally Mac compatible! Woohoo!

What about that RSI-Inducing Buttons?

One of the things I was complaining about was the fact the the buttons were all on the right-hand side of the device.  On the original MiFi, with those 3 buttons, it was just too painful (I have RSI) for me to operate the buttons.  In the new MiFi, the button is still on the right-hand side, but because I need to care about ‘only’ one button, it feels so much better and less painful.

Anything Else?

Another ‘behind the scene’ improvement is, once the device is on, it will always be on, until you turn it off.  If during this time the device get disconnected, it will actively try to reconnect automatically.  This is a big change from the original one, which would just remain disconnected, forcing the user to reconnect the device manually.

Wait, and the Ugly part?

Ah, yes … the lack of Network Coverage?  Well, if you remember, I wrote that 3 has ‘merged’ its network with T-Mobile.  I quizzed a 3 representative about this, and he told me that the merging as well as the network improvement is well underway.  All nice and great, but for me, I will believe this when I experience it myself.

Great! I’m Sold! When Can I Get One?

According to 3, the new MiFi will be available from early July, and priced at £49.99 on Pay As You Go (the same as the existing one).

For more hands-on report, we will have to wait until I could get my hands on one :)

Final Thoughts

What made me feeling impressed was that 3 had really ‘listened’ to the users complaints and suggestions, and came out with a much better product. A product that reflects on what the users actually want and not what ‘they think’ the users want. The fact that they fixed most of my Bad points was clearly a testament for this. Well done 3!

Special thanks for @ThreeMobileBuzz for organizing the event, the rickshaw ride and especially for the cup-cake!

Last week I had an opportunity to meet with a bunch of guys (and girls) from 3 Mobile on their New Year Meet Up.  I went to a similar meet-up before in the past, but the difference this time was that we got to meet different people who responsible in different part of the business.  Some from PR, some from Product Development, others from Network.  The result was quite interesting, deep and insightful conversations, of which I would like to share with you.

First one was about Network, I’m talking about the mobile network.  If you read my previous post about the Wireless Mobile Broadband – MiFi, you would know that the worst thing that could render this device useless is indeed the lack of network coverage.  No signal, no 3G reception, no Internet, no WiFi, nothing!

The good news is, 3 recognized its failing and started a plan in motion to rectify it.  I was talking to one of the guy from Network department and he was telling me that from last year they’ve started to replace their Tower with Nokia’s branded device, which apparently better than what they had before. This replacement plan should be finish, he claimed, by the end of this year.

Moreover, and this is the interesting stuff, he revealed that they are going to ‘share’ their mobile bandwidth with T-Mobile :)  This definitely will help the problem with network coverage as I presume when this is done, 3 customers would be able to use 3G network owned by T-Mobile and vice versa.  Although with the news of Orange and T-Mobile possible merger looming on the horizon, it could disrupt this expansion plan.

Ok, enough with ‘techie’ things, let’s jump to the meaty stuff :)  I had a chance to have a chat with somebody from Product Development, and my first question was. of course, which mobile handsets that 3 have in the pipeline. What can we expect to see in a couple of months.  At which point he reached into his pocket and showed me a ‘couple’ of his ‘toys’.

The first one was the Samsung i5700 AKA Galaxy Portal.  It’s a touch-screen Android phone.  Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to get a shot of it, but you can read about it here.

The second phone I saw was the Sony Ericsson XPeria X10 ! X10 is the first Sony’s Android handset.  This time I had a chance to take a snapshot :)

I didn’t manage to play with it too much, but first impression was good.  Here is a bit of video clip from Sony website on X10.

The last handset I saw was making me ready to throw away my Nokia N97 :)  It was again from Sony Ericsson, and like N97, it’s got the same Symbian OS, and No it’s the crap Satio! It’s the Sony Ericsson Vivaz!

It was really nice on my hand, slimmer than N97.  Like the X10, it has also 8.1 Mp camera and smile Detection, but unlike its sibling, the 16:9 nHD Touchscreen is capable of producing 16 million colour :)  It seems to be a perfect mobile handset for an ‘avid’ video producer as you can upload your video straight to YouTube.  Check out in more details here.

As for me, I’m ready to exchange my N97 right now!

So, 2 Android Phones and one Symbian.  I think we could see a bit of hope (more choices, of good variety ones) in the UK handset market that has for me been dominated by iPhone for the last 2 years.

Thanks for 3 and 3mobilebuzz for the opportunity.

When I’ve heard the first time that our friends in the US got to play with a new Wireless Mobile Broadband device, I thought that it was a great advancement in mobile broadband arena.  Because not only that we can connect to the Internet anywhere, but also we don’t really need our laptop anymore.  Suddenly all our Internet ready gadgets (but which lack of USB connection) would magically gain access to the cyberspace, this includes most Smartphones, iPod Touch, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and many more.  The only thing was that, like many other new tech, it only available in the US … bummer!
So, imagine my surprise when a few months later I saw a similar device, called the MiFi, advertised on the window of my local 3 Mobile’s Store.  But the best thing was when I got contacted by 3 asking if I could review this MiFi :)

Now, I had helped 3 to review some of their handsets before, but this time they had different approach in trying to get a better feedback from reviewers.  Previously they would just send the unit to the reviewer, whom would keep the unit for a couple of weeks, and send it back when the trial finishes.
This time, we were being sent personally to our local highstreet stores, to try to get one while pretending to be a genuine customer (AKA mistery buyer).  Each of us designated to complete a list of tasks that we needed to do during the buying process, e.g. they would like to know how we had been treated in the store and how knowledgable the staff were.  Also, instead of being able to keep the unit for a couple of weeks, this time we could keep it for a couple of months.  Which means we had more time to experience the device in a more thourough way.  Lastly , the feedback session which used to be done only once toward the end of the trial, was done in several stages.  This potentially gave more details picture in how each reviewer ‘live’ through the experience of the device.
I must say it has been a very interesting experience being involved in this project, not just for the reviewer, but more importantly for 3 themselves in term of being able to get a more complete picture of how a product works in a real-life situation.  I’d like to thank 3 and 3MobileBuzz for the opportunity.

Now, of course, just like every other things, every person (reviewer) had experienced different things, and this was also true with MiFi which, you might’ve realised, is so dependent on the environment where you are using it.
So, here are my own experience, the good, the bad and the ugly ones :)

What is MiFi?

Before that though, let’s talk about what MiFi really is about:

If you were a Mobile Broadband veteran, you would’ve remembered the days before the 3G USB Stick became the default form-factor. It’s when all Mobile Broadband devices look like the following picture below.

I believe they were all produced by the same company, HUAWEI.

What about the MiFi? Well, surprise .. surprise, it also built by the same company.  As a matter of fact, it’s the Huawei E5830 Wireless Modem, according to 3′s website.

To operate the MiFi so that you can use it to connect your other wireless devices to the internet, you need go through stages of button kungfu :)

Working from the bottom up, we need to press the first button to turn the MiFi on, this will light the battery indicators showing how much power you have left, and another light that shows how much 3G network coverage you have.  Then pressing the second button will actually connect you to the 3G network. When the ‘connected’ light goes Green (yet another indicator), you can press the third button to activate the Wireless functionality. When the MiFi is ready to accept wireless connection, still another indicator should go Blue.
All these steps are all explained in the manual by the way :D

Connecting your wireless devices to MiFi is just as easy as finding the MiFi‘s SSID, connect to it and type the Wifi password (which is written on a small sticker paper on the manual).

You can see more or less how it feels like. Now, let’s see how it went with me.

The Good

Well the good news is, it worked exactly like what it said on the tin :)  It connected to the mobile 3G network, and immediately after that it was able to start receiving connection from other Wireless Devices.  I’ve tried it with 2 laptops and 2 mobiles, and it worked fine.
The unit has quite a small form factor that I could just put it in my pocket, forget that it’s there, and carry on surfing on my other gadget.

The Bad

Unfortunately, in my opinion, there are a few things that can be improved.

- Baterry Life sucks
You would’ve thought that for a specialised device like this, which only has one function, you would get a good battery life out of it.  At least, if I compare it to my mobile phone, it should be the same.
But for some reason, I could never squeezed in more than 4 hours out of it, even when I was not doing anything with it.
It’s either it doesn’t have a good battery, or it’s just doesn’t have a good power management.
Talking to 3, they said that this will be fixed on the next firmware update.

- Too many button, too many indicator lights
There are 3 buttons and 5 different lights on this device which essentially has one and one purpose only … to provide wireless internet access.  Why do we need these many buttons and lights?
While I can appreciate the designer’s good intention to make the device to be feedback-friendly, sometimes (and this is that time) the simplest one is the better.
In my opinion, all of these can be simplified into one on-off button, and maximum 2 indicator lights, one for battery indicator, the other to tell the avaibility of Internet Connection.
On the last feedback session with 3, all of the reviewers more or less had similar feeling on this matter.
3 themselves had actually acknowledged this problem and revealed that they had been working on a better solution for the next iteration (so there ‘will’ be a new version).

- The companion software was far from user-friendly, it looked very ‘raw’ as if it were made only for techie person.  Even I found it quite confusing as there is no clear description on what is which.
Unfortunately, this is the only way to ‘change’ the Wifi Password that came with the device.
Again, 3 said that they were working on a better version.

- No companion software for Mac!

Why I was not surprised :) So, basically if you have a Mac, you are stuck with whatever password that the device came.
Mind you, I dealt with Huawei dongle before and I had to a long way to be able to use it with my Mac.  Again, I wasn’t too surprised.
The good thing is, 3′s new version of the software is supposed to be a web-based, so technically it should work with any platform.

- The buttons were in the wrong side.

This was my personal grudge, and many people might not have agreed or even cared to notice.  My problem was that the buttons were positioned on the right hand of side of the device. So, imagine if you are holding it with your right hand, you would need to curve your thumb pretty low (or down?) to reach the first button from the bottom.  It was just too annoying for me that I gave up and either used my left-hand (using my other fingers to push the buttons) or just hold it with my two hands.  Better that than RSI :)
This is why I said above that 3 buttons were just too many, if it had been just one, I might have been willing to tolerate it.

The Ugly

If you think the above problems were bad, try this one, what’s the worst thing that can happen for a device like this?
The worst thing is when the device doesn’t work!  No, it’s not because the hardware was faulty, nor the software was buggy.  It’s simply because we didn’t get any Network Coverage!  Which basically rendered the MiFi as useful as a car with no petrol (or gas if you like).
I could live with the lack of juice or the myriad of buttons and lights, or the lack of Mac Software, but if the thing doesn’t connect to the Internet, it just became a nice paperweight with lights for me.

The good news is, this problem is exactly what 3 is working on at the moment as priority, according to what the CEO told us on their press release.
So, gradually we should see improvement on the Network coverage.

Final Thoughts
It’s been great to use the MiFi for this couple of months, though I had my ups and downs with it.
My recommendation is, if you can wait for the next hardware version, I suggest you do.
If you really need mobile broadband now, there are other options, such as the standard USB dongle, or if you are sure you will always get coverage, there is nothing to stop you to get it.

Following the announcement from both 3-UK and Spotify not long ago, yesterday 3-UK held a Launch Party to celebrate its new handset HTC Hero (a second generation Android phone from HTC), which includes a subscription to Spotify Premium account for a 24 months contract.

The party started with a private gathering at the Proud Gallery Central – London, some of us dressing-up like rock-star (that was the theme of the night). When most of us had gathered, Emma Wells, who is 3′s Product Manager, gave a brief speech on the new handset and the new Spotify service, which then followed by a few questions from us.

After that, we were given a chance to play with the new handset which loaded with Spotify app, ready to test our playlist.
So for a recap, here is the deal you get:

For £35 a month over 24 months, alongside an upfront fee of £99, the
package will include:

• Unlimited Spotify Premium for 24 months (worth £240)
• 750 minutes to other mobiles
• Unlimited texts
• Unlimited 3 to 3 calls
• Unlimited email, internet browsing and Facebook
• Free Skype to Skype calls

Then after having had some beers at a pub nearby, and more chance to talk to 3 peeps and to make more thorough inspection on what the HTC and Android had, we headed off our way to Bar Soho where the ‘real’ party took place :). We travelled together by by tube (though only one stop, we could’ve walked), along the way playing the playlist from the tiny speaker of the HTC :)

At Bar Soho we were greeted with 2 giant projections, one was showing a stream of Tweets that have #3UKSpotifyParty hashtag in it (people saw the opportunity and immediately started Tweeting). The other projection showed Spotify Desktop App playing our special Playlist that was setup earlier and to which people had been adding songs. The sound system on the bar was palying all the tunes from this playlist.

All in all, it was a good, fun and informative night. Check out the photos at Flickr:

www.flickr.com Mahadewa’s 3UK Spotify Party photoset

Thank you very much for 3 and 3MobileBuzz for organising this. I really had fun.

Sometimes in the midst of anger and frustration (in my case I installed an app the wasn’t compatible with my N97, ignoring the warning), your mind just suddenly blocked and all rationales go through the window. It happened to me, I went into every menu item (that I thought the most sensible place) for a few minutes trying to find where the bloody ‘application manager’, and I just couldn’t find it! A geek, like me, couldn’t find a simple menu item?! That’s just plain embarrassing! But since I really need to get rid off this app, I gave up and did the next logical thing, to look for it in Google :)

What do you know, the solution is the first item of the search result! Thanks Google!

So, if you ended up here trying to find the same thing as I did, the right path for the Application Manager is:

Settings -> Application mgr.

There you go!
I really should’ve listened to Yoda more :)

Earlier this week, I got invited on a meet-up by 3-UK.  The purpose of this meet-up was to kick-off a trial of their newest handset, the INQ Mini 3G.
In addition to being lent a review handset, the occasion was also an opportunity to meet with a couple of people whom together represented the team which involves in the INQ Mini Campaign, as well as some fellow geeks :)
Representing 3-UK were Sarah Bolwell (@sarahbolwell – Consumer PR) and David Moore (Product and Services), whereas from INQ Mobile, Martin Monteiro (@martinmonteiro – Product Marketing) was joining us.  And from 3MobileBuzz, which spearheaded this campaign, there came Phil and Cally.

INQ Mini is the second handset of the INQ series that 3 has offered.  The first INQ handset (pictured below), though wouldn’t probably hold itself against the iPhones, Blackberries or the N-Series of the mobile world, had proven to be a very good contender for the middle to low market, and the INQ Mini has promised to bring some improvement to its Big Brother.

One of the unique thing about 3, and one which I think continues to be its strength, is its constant commitment to bring innovation to consumer mobile internet.
It started with the Skypephone!  Now already the second generation, the 3 Skypephone was among the first mobile manufacture/provider which recognized the emerging consumer market for VOIP, especially with the nascent of the consumer friendly Skype. 3′s Skypephone has been providing an integrated Skype experience in a form of a full-fledged mobile handset (not one of those USB attachment phone), for FREE.

Next, 3 realized that many of its customers also using MSN Messenger to chat/communicate with their online friends.  So they integrated MSN Messenger, now MSN Live, as well into their service, and it is also FREE.

With INQ, 3 seems to want to pull the Social Networking market, these are the (young) generation who spend almost all their free time (or sometimes not so free) online, chatting away with their online friends and updating their status via Messaging Services, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, etc.
These are all reflected from the design of the handset, the look and feel of the mobile software, right down to the fresh, modern art look of the box in which the handset comes.

I’m going to have the INQ Mini to play around for the next 2 weeks, I will let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, here is what I said to 3 as my first impression.

It has been more than 6 months since Nokia launched its lates N-Series mobile phone N97 at Nokia World 2008.  Finally the wait is over, at least for us here in the UK.  The N97 was launched last Friday for almost all the major mobile Networks, except O2 !  And that for me was a ‘bummer‘, because I have been O2 customer for as long as I had my first mobile phone, and today I had to, very reluctantly, moved to Orange.  Luckily, the handset is Unlocked, so I can put any SIM card in it if I wish, and I’ve got also monthly allowance of 500 Mb Internet as well as the usual 1000 free minutes and unlimited text.  In addition, I could get free Home Broadband as long as I stay with Orange if I want to, although I am happy with my current Broadband Provider, but nevertheless it’s good to have choices.

So, today I took a little video of what I’ve got.  Later when I get a chance to play with it more, I might write more.