As a self-confessed phone addict I was one of those who got up early on 26 May to be among the first to experience Nokia’s new Ovi Store. As it turned out I needn’t have bothered, as the launch gremlins conspired to create a series of problems for the service. Nokia’s PR company distributed the [...]

Amid the gloom of the economic crisis, the issuance of 3G licences in China has caused many telecom executives’ eyes to light up with dollar signs, despite the challenges presented by the country’s three different 3G standards. The three Chinese network operators are slated to spend $20 billion on 3G infrastructure in 2009, so it’s [...]

Watching the Vodafone quarterly results Webcast this week, a few things fell into place for me. The announcement that Vodafone was to scrap roaming charges in some countries for three months started to make more sense.

Initially, I thought including roaming calls in ordinary bundled minutes was a smart reaction to regulators’ complaints about the cost [...]

On 21 April 2009, UK supermarket chain Tesco confirmed it would increase its Telecoms Centre outlets from 41 to 100 by January 2010. The centres are stand-alone departments within larger Tesco stores. They provide advice for the mobile buyer and process mobile contract subscriptions.

The decision to create about 60 more outlets is noteworthy, although the [...]

Last week I spent a few days in Italy catching up with friends and visiting relatives. As you’d expect, I ate and drank well. When I wasn’t at the dinner table, I walked into a few high-street retailers and checked out the mobile phone section.

I noticed that the Nokia 5800 is available in Italy with [...]

I’m off to a wedding this weekend, and it’s prompted me to think about hitching hardware and software.

Let’s rewind back to 1998. The Nokia 5110, shown on the right, had just been launched. It married great hardware — the groundbreaking Navi key, solid battery life and changeable covers — with fantastic software — a user [...]

I expected to see more Android devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, and was disappointed that Vodafone’s Magic phone was the only major announcement in this area. There were no other devices and no new members for Android’s guiding body, the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

But it seems the Android bandwagon is still [...]

I have to admit this won’t be the first — or last — blog post about a backlash against touch-screen phones. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve seen in recent months about the suitability of touch interfaces for particular applications and the extent to which the iPhone phenomenon will (or won’t) drive [...]

Over the weekend I picked up a Polaroid Pogo printer. In the UK, O2 is selling them for half price, making them much more attractive than when they cost almost £100.

It’s a neat little device. It’s about the size of a large mobile phone (the picture below left shows it next to a Nokia N81 [...]

Imagine a world where you were charged for every e-mail, voice call, every instant message, every Web page. Or a world where you had a set limit for these things, and each item counted against this limit. This is what happens with your mobile phone. You’re charged in one way or another for every action, [...]