iPhone 4S Rival Alert : Samsung Galaxy Note Drops To £422 - ITProPortal

 

Fancy the new Samsung N7000 Galaxy Note but dont want to spend a fortune on it? Then there's a deal from AffordableMobile (on O2) that will allow you to undercut its SIM Free, unlocked price significantly.

The phone is locked to O2 but works on Tesco Mobile and Giff Gaff. There is an upfront cost of £160 and the contract will last for two years with 250 texts, 50 minutes, free Wi-Fi and 1GB data per month.

The trick involves removing the Wi-Fi and data allowance in the first month, saving £10 per month, either online through your dashbard or calling O2 (although you will have to pay for the first month it seems).

This brings down the cost of ownership to £422. Not only do you get a few free minutes and texts, you also get the equivalent of an interest free loan for two years.

The N7000 has the biggest screen found on any smartphone on the market - a 5.3-inch model - and has a 1280x800 pixel resolution, higher than the other HD ready smartphone (like the Galaxy Nexus) and is on par with tablets.

It comes with 16GB onboard storage, 1GB RAM, a dual core chipset, an eight megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a whopping 810 minutes talk time on 3G and more than a day on 2G thanks to the biggest battery on any smartphone.

I have been musing and writing about technology since 1999 back in my native country Mauritius, dreaming back in 1997 of a world full of avatars...

How to Buy Cheap Iphone on The Internet

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Want a new iPhone? Just lease one from O2 - Mobot.net (blog)

Here's an interesting concept - O2 has launched a new leasing service for the iPhone where they own the phone and you just rent it from them for a 12-month period.

It's imaginatively called O2 Lease and here's how it works: You get a new iPhone (or something similar) with no up-front payment but have to shell out £55 a month. That gives you insurance (presumably compulsory), 750 mins, unlimited texts and 500MB. For that, you get a 16GB handset or you can bump your monthly payments up to £65GB and get a 32GB version.

The interesting point is that there's no mention of the word "iPhone" anywhere in O2's press release, but given the structure of the deals, that's surely what we're talking about here. Whether the non-commital wording means you're also free to go for a rival handset with similar specs, or is simply the result of Apple not having OK'd the copy ahead of the release being pushed out we're not sure, but we're not sure what to make of it all, to be honest.

Here's the main bit of the release: "O2 Lease puts the latest smartphone technology into the hands of the people who want it with minimal barriers, little long-term commitment, no upfront cost, no two-year contracts and crucially, at £55 with insurance, minutes, text and data an affordable price point.

"It provides certainty and predictability of costs for customers, a genuinely new way of engaging with those that want the latest smartphone and the latest technology every year, but either can't afford the relatively high upfront cost of a normal 12 month contract or don't want to be tied to a long contract. "

But our pessimistic juices are starting to flow here. First of all, quite what world O2 is living in where £55 a month for a mobile phone is classed as "affordable", it's clearly not Planet Earth circa the end of 2011. Plus, when you consider that if you go over your minutes or 500MB data limit (and the latter is pretty likely on the iPhone), the additional charges you'll pick up will make that "certainty and predictability of costs for customers" line seem pretty ridiculous.

Secondly, it sounds a bit like O2 is trying to reinvent the contract here just when progress is finally being made towards 12-month contracts gaining some sort of foothold despite the networks' preference for 18- and 24-month deals.

We can see the draw to people who don't want to pay for a phone up front, and it's obvious that O2 would push that side of things given the high cost of hopping on board the iPhone bandwagon in the first place. But there's another way of putting it: with O2 Lease you'll be paying a total of £660 over the 12-month period, with absolutely nothing to show for it at the end.

Nevertheless, O2 insists it is the future: "Innovation is not just about product, it is also about service, providing new ways for people to buy. We want to ensure that customers can pick and use the right option for them."

Well, if nothing else O2 certainly knows how to talk a good game. If you're interested, O2 Lease is available now in stores or on the blower.

Read more about: Apple iPhone 4S, O2

How to Buy Cheap Iphones on The Internet

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BBC launches iPhone iPlayer app - Know Your Mobile

The BBC has now launched its dedicated iPhone iPlayer app in the UK, allowing Apple users to stream radio and TV content from the Beeb’s recent programming direct to their mobile devices.

This official app also adds support for the iOS AirPlay feature, which enables streaming from the phone to a compatible Apple TV.

Not only that, but it includes HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), some clever tech wizardy which allows the app to alter streaming quality in-line with your data or Wi-Fi signal strength.

It’s pretty neat stuff and should mean that instead of your favourite programs dropping out completely you might just get a slightly fuzzier picture if you happen to wander into a dodgy signal area.

According to the BBC’s official blog post, the same functionality (presumably minus the exclusively Apple-based AirPlay stuff) will be coming to ‘all supported devices’ in dedicated app form soon enough, which includes at the very least Android and Symbian to name but a few.

Allegedly these new builds will be coming ‘shortly’ which we expect means early next year.

You can download the iPhone version of the BBC iPlayer app now for free from the iTunes App Store.

How to Buy Cheap Iphone on The Internet

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