Be Excellent To Each Other

Seriously Goatboy,


Oh, never mind..

Why are Orange liars? I have only had a a handful of problems since I have been with them, that has been since 1994.

Personally, I've had no problems with Orange but our company recently switched all our mobiles to them and they've been utterly useless about the whole thing. Luckily I've not had to speak to them myself, but my boss has to phone up several times to get something done that was promised the first time, then the second time and then he gets through to someone who actually knows what they're doing who carries it out.

We had it the other way, when work changed our phones to Vodaphone, that was not smooth.

I had this. Delete all the internet settings from your phone and get them to resend them. Before that I was having crashes, connecting to the wrong service etc. Turned out there were about 5 sets of settings files that the phone was getting upset over.

But bloody hell, ditch the N95 man, and stump up for an Iphone. I've had mine a day and can't believe I lived in the dark ages for so long. The thing just works. Email, web, everything and it's fast. After a year of that shitty Sony, I'm loving it!

Another satisfied customer

Are there any decent feature to feature comparisons of the old iPhone to the new iPhone?

Because the old iPhone I had was not great for me, but out of the nifty things it did, they were very nifty.

I am glad you have walked down the enlightened path, oh chinned one.

I would love an Iphone, but it is on 02. If was on another vendor I would get it.

I've had no problems with O2, whatsoever.

If I MMS you a picture, can you put it into a Word document and SFTP it onto the web?
Ta.

(Aside - I hear you can now get a terminal client for the iPhone. True?)

Take the old one and add GPS and 3G. That's it, they are very similar.

Although, the software has also been massively upgraded since you (presuambly) used one, with all kinds of fixes and neat stuff -- and the App Store, which is increasingly looking like the iPhone's killer app.

There are a few VNC clients, at least one RDP one, and an official one from LogMeIn. Is that what you mean?

I meant a telnet one - sorry

Hmm, so you still can't forward texts, or copy and paste, or send MMS? Shame.

Me neither, they can shove their iPhones up their big sweaty bum bums though. Given that they'll give me the contract I have for nothing that would mean that the cost to me of an iPhone would be somewhere near to £600 for the year including the cost of the phone. Call me a tight-arse but it would need to do a lot more than "just work" for that. I've played about with one and they're lovely, but they're still just a phone. If someone invented the world's most usable tin opener I still wouldn't pay more than a fiver for it.

Oh yeah, there's a few in Cydia and (I think) at least one in the App Store.

As for "my provider is shit"/"I've had no problems" stories, these firms are huge. You don't have to dig very hard to find a horror story or a tale of excellence about each one, but the plural of anecdote is not data. Whenever Which? or someone do a proper large-scale survey, they don't come out all that different from each other. I think O2 led in the last Which? survey I saw, but the positions seem to reshuffle with each new survey anyway.

You can send MMS now, albeit via a third party app and it costs 35p. Other than that you are sadly correct. I still wouldn't trade my iPhone for two of anything else though.

Mrs. Grim... also seems to be able to make it lose texts she's half-way through typing, but she seems to be the only person in the world to achieve that.

I'd like to think I played a part in that

Of course, we are fellow soldiers in the Jobsian iPhone Groupthink army. Join us... Join us....

Yep, I've got one.

I didn't fancy O2 because it doesn't work very well in the wilds. Orange, surprisingly, does better and that's why I've stuck with them. Plus 30 quid a month can get to flipping flip.

I am not saying O2 is any better than orange. Just both me and the wife are on Orange, and we can phone each other for free. I have always had good service, other than with the Nokia 7110 but that was the phone more than anything else.

For me it made sense. I was already on O2 and my existing contract cost the same, but without unlimited data transfer.

I was on a cheap SIM-only deal when I got my iPhone, but I was using Windows Mobile and sooner or later I would have thrown it as hard as I could against a wall. Probably the fifteenth time it deleted a contact instead of loading the web browser, or the twenty seventh time I pushed "answer call" and the phone took so long to react the caller had hung up before it reacted to the button push, at which point the "answer call" button had transformed into the handy single-press "fuck your life up" button. This sends pleading SMSs to all your ex partners, a sweary email to your boss, and googles for fifteen donkey pr0n images, photoshops your face onto them, hacks into the servers that control the big screens on Times Square in New York, and plasters a picture of you fifty feet across being anally violated by a particularly well-endowed member of the Equus asinus family.

So yes, Windows Mobile. I didn't like it. And when that donkey called me back the next day the phone crashed and I lost his number.

Yeah I can see how if you have friends and stuff and like to speak to them on the phone a lot, it's actually not a bad deal.
If like me you don't, or only imaginary ones, PAYG is more sensible.

I very rarely use my iPhone for calls. However, I use it as a web browser lots and lots.

I tried sending a text when out of signal on the old iPhone.

On a normal phone, it would try a couple of times, and then store it until the phone was in network range. The iPhone just deleted the message.

Hope they fixed that as well.

I did see that the Iphone is on PAYG now

If you're not going to use it for data though, there's no point getting one really - and PAYG data is a rip-off.

Well, quite. If you're just after a phone then it's not for you.

The "official" PAYG apparently comes with a year's free data, I don't know what you do after that.

I just use Orange World as and when needed: it's £1 for a day, so if I'm going to be on the road or somewhere I can't get wifi I use that.

Even if I activate it every day of the month it's not really working out more expensive than the subscription though. And in practice I normally only need 3 or 4 days worth.

The funny thing about data transfer over mobile networks is that they have no really accurate ways of measuring how much you're using, anyway. If you queried data costs on your bill, more often than not they'll write it off.

I think it continues to be free provided you top up with at least £10 credit per month.

I did not know that..

I used to work as an engineer for a company who provided revenue assurance software to telephony providers. Data was the one area where they just didn't have a clue, and more often than not pulled prices out of thin air. I rang one unnamed provider to discuss their data charges, only to be passed up from 1st line to 2nd line to 3rd line. No one could give me hard and fast information on how they measured their data usage.

No, it actually costs £10 per month. I think you have to opt in or out, and if you opt in, your first £10 top-up each month is eaten by the data charge.

You are useful to know

Heh, I know about mobile operator pricings and internet domain names. I'm not exactly the person everyone wants to speak to at a party.

Found a nice little addon through Cydia last night called Safari Addon Plugins, which adds* several scripts to your bookmarks which add a few bits of extra functionality, most notably:

Tabulate — Load this script in a page, and any link you click on will pop up a small popup box giving you the option to load it as an inline link or in a new tab, or flag the link for later viewing (not sure how that works yet). I've been waiting for a way to open links in new tabs for ages now; I don't visit external links from this forum on my phone, because it's so annoying having to find my way back. Link here.

iTransmogrify — Converts some Flash content on pages to a format the iPhone can understand. iPhone still can't run Flash, but this helps a bit in some situations. See an example here.

It also has a Copy and a Paste script, allowing you to copy and paste from web sites into your Mail client, apparently, but I haven't tried it. Tabulate really is the star there for me.

edit: I'm also trying an SMS-replacement application called iRealSMS which adds several new features (most notably landscape keyboards and a quick-reply function to the SMS notification popup). It's a 10-day trial with the full version costing a tenner, though.


*I say 'add', but it actually replaces all of your bookmarks, unfortunately, so you'll have to add them again.

MMS? Hate the things! Grotty reduced quality pictures that eat memory. I've seen a Nokia literally jam up solid because someone sent a MMS when the text memory was a tad full.

The last two phones I've had (the first of which was a bog standard Sony W810i) had the ability to send MMS's as emails instead. Far more useful.

So I recommend you send your picture at full quality via email. It'll come down far quicker and there will be no quality reduction.

And then you'll...

Fire up google docs?
Email the changed doc back to yourself?
Save a local copy?
open an ftp session in the terminal and transfer it?

I haven't actually tried all of those steps myself but it might be possible... if you really had to..

I asked the retentions woman whether there was any means of getting an iPhone for free at all, she said no. Never mentioned a 24 month contract. I've just gone into the online upgrades thing again,. lookad at the tariffs - no 24 month tariffs are coming up for iphone.

What is this mystical 24 month contract, did you ask for it specifically? Which iphone is free?

I'd have taken such a contract had one been offered or mentioned anywhere on their upgrades page. Of course with the three calls I've made ot them since Saturday, I've enough bile to put me off having a contract that ties me to them for twelve months, let alone twenty four.

Might call retentions back and get them to sort this out. The irony is I whave been adamant for some time now that I'll always renew with O2.

Give me chance! Only had it a day?

Any apps that let you edit Word documents on the beast?

It was 80 odd quid with a 12 month business contract, 24 month was free.

I obviously have no idea what the consumer division are offering!

My early adopting mate nearly had a heart attack when I told him I got it for free and was paying less than him a month. As well as my one being 3G, natch.

Ah, business. Not to worry then. I think all private contracts are 18.

Er, no. That was kind of the point.

Also: 18 month contracts are the work of the devil

Well someone is bound to sort that out as there is an obvious need.

Still, I can always VNC into the office! (nb I haven't tried this yet!)

Aye, the logmein stuff looks super-good (assuming it works well, of course).