Living up to Skype hype You know that you’ve cracked it as a blogger when people pitch stories to you (mostly rubbish) and send you kit to review. A pair of PAYG 3 Skypephones from the gang at 3mobilebuzz loaded with £30 credit is the best bit of kit that I’ve been sent to date.

Two months on and 3mobilebuzz has done a good job. The blogosphere is awash with favourable reviews. And little wonder: the 3 Skypephone is a nice bit of kit. Here are five reasons that I’m going to keep using mine.

1. Mobile TV: this is the first time I have experienced mobile TV for more than 10 seconds without the picture breaking into black blocks and the audio failing. It works.

The screen may be tiny and the speaker audio poor (it’s a lot better with a headset) but it really is bloody amazing. £0.50 gets you access a dozen or so channels for a day including BBC1, BBC News 24, ITV1, Nickledon and FHM for £2.00 for a much as you can watch during a month.

2. Skype calls: VoIP has been available as a mobile application for GSM and 3G phones for 18 months or so. 3 has taken the pain from the consumer and pre-baked the Skype application on the handset.

Skype-to-Skype calls are free, but you can’t make low cost Skype out calls to non-Skype users. Instead you’ll have to dial out via the 3 network (12p per minute). Likewise, and perhaps the one failing of the device, calls to a Skype account won’t terminate on the phone. Expect to be connected to voicemail rather than the handset.

The audio quality on Skype calls is excellent. Either the Skype service has been hardened since eBay acquired it or the 3 service has yet to be loaded with users. Either way it’s persuaded me to dust down my Skype account and reload the client on my PC.

3. Mobile broadband: connect the phone to your PC (USB to mini-USB) or via bluetooth, load the drivers to configure the 3 Skypephone as a modem and you can access the Internet on your PC at 3G data speeds. It’s workable for email via a corporate VPN and excellent for regular web browsing.

4. Photos: the 3 Skypephone phone has a two mega pixel camera that takes great photos. The colour and contrast balance is spot-on and superior to the HPC or Nokia phones that I normally use. I’ve chucked a load up on Flickr if you want to check out the quality.

5. Design: the 3 Skypephone is a great piece of well thought out, almost elegant design. It’s slim and it’s sleek. The volume, camera and application buttons are all embedded in the side. The battery casing is fixed with a magnet. The menu is simple but functional. Maybe I’ve been using business mobile phones for too long.

Labels: blogger, technology

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