Posts by Adam W 13 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2009
See, I had the Pixel (1) XL and and am now on the 3 XL, and I've had no issues whatsoever with mine - indeed the phone that has frustrated me is the One Plus 6T I got for my new job recently, which feels more sluggish, and going back from gestures to switch apps using the "button" onscreen at the bottom is driving me nuts.
Another long-term SE user here - I got a T68i back in 2002, and went through a T610, K800i, C905 and finally an X10i before making the jump to HTC (for a Sensation) this year.
Unlike others, my phones just worked and worked (my T610 lasted about three years), and the only reason I moved to HTC was simply that the X10i wasn't powerful enough (and SE dragged their feet) to upgrade to future Android versions.
I'll happily consider another SE (Sony) phone in future, though. if a dual-core smartphone ever actually arrives...
I used Chomp for a while last year, but after coughing up to remove ads, the ads then reappeared after a while. Go is better featured, and appears upon first use to be better in every single way than Chomp. And it's ad-free.
Also the pop-up notification on the standby screen, that allows you to reply directly without opening the whole app, is what the android messaging app should have had in the first place (at least on my X10i, anyway).
Never mind this firmware release, we VF users are still waiting for the *previous* release.
This has been an epic fail on behalf of VF here, and judging on the silence - or stonewalling - by anyone you speak to at VF, and not just on the e-forum, it's not something that they appear to care about rectifying.
So, El Reg, any chance of doing some asking on our behalf and getting some press about it?
I upgraded to an Xperia X10i on Vodafone recently, and despite heavy usage on e-mail/internet/etc, I'm still not even coming close to my 500MB bundle (which is included in my tariff - I pay £40/month, and got the X10i for free when I upgraded). And that was even the case before I got issued my work Blackberry, too, and was using my personal phone for work use too in the meantime.
Android ain't as expensive as some make out, especially as most of the Apps are free, too.
Not attempted tethering with this yet, but not sure I need to. The networks have all been fussy over tethering for some time, and indeed Vodafone have only just realised that it might be worth offering it as an add-on for Business tariffs...
I've had one of these beasts for a couple of weeks now, and other than the poor battery life, I couldn't be happier with it. Surprisingly it does most things pretty well, and provided it has a decent 3G or WiFi signal everything is a joy to use - and the screen is outstanding.
Onto "But while I tried, I couldn't get it to splice my Facebook friends info into the phone's contacts book.": you need an App for that - "FB Sync" has been brilliant, if a little time-consuming for ones that it doesn't recognise as an instant match.
I'll be interested to see what changes will come when SE finally release the 2.1 update.
I've been with all of the networks (other than 3) over the past twelve years or so, and came to Vodafone last. No broad complaints from me in terms of customer service - at times it's "ok", other times world-beating. But that is certainly better than o2 and T-Mobile, and about on a par with Orange about seven years back.
And what is certainly clear is that the VF network is more reliable and robust than others I've used - and other than the odd blackspot 3G services are considerably better.
As for forum threads being closed - when there are usually existing threads open, morons opening another thread asking the same thing as before (all it takes is a search to see what is there already) deserve all they get.
(And yes, I've worked in mobile telecoms. For the past nine years, although not at present)
The reason 0800/etc numbers are charged for on mobiles is reasonably simple. You may remember a good few years ago that there were a lot of "international calling" services that you could dial to get better international rates... on 0800 numbers. You would then get forwarded onto the call you wanted, for a much lower rate.
Needless to say the networks didn't like this, as they were being "cheated" out of revenue. So to nip it in the bud, they all charged for 0800 numbers. Needless to say I can't recall any of these services being advertised in recent times.
Of course, the networks could have simply reduced their international calling rates, but clearly that would have been too simple...
These suggestions of using the operator websites would be all well and good if their pages bore any relation to reality, too. I work in the industry, and in the city I live in (Sheffield) there are various 3G blackspots on Vodafone - including the road I live on. Funny how the Vodafone coverage map suggests blanket 3G coverage in our area, when this is - from personal experience, with two different handsets - most certainly not the case.
I'm all for an open-source map, and will happily supply info. I've always thought a Google Earth overlay for coverage would be fantastic - why can't one of the networks take the plunge and try it? It might actually gain them some respect from customers for being honest about it.
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