Robert Hampton

I was in a mobile phone shop yesterday with a salesman, sorting out the details of my new iPhone contract, when an irritable older gentleman marched in off the street and interrupted us.

“What’s your name?” he barked at the salesman, “I need it for Trading Standards.”
“It’s Chris,” came the reply. The expression on Chris’s face suggested that he had seen it all before.
“Chris WHAT?”
“I’m the only Chris in this store so it makes no difference.”

I feel sorry for the 3 Store staff on Church Street. Not only do they have people like that barging in, but three days a week a group of Christian fundamentalists set up shop outside, complete with a fire and brimstone preacher who yells continuously from 10am until 4pm about how we’re all going to hell. It’s not an environment that’s conducive for selling Blackberries.

I will point out that I have no beef with Chris – he was very polite and helpful. Although, after the aforementioned encounter, he did seem extra keen to make sure I understood how many inclusive minutes I was getting.

1. Send lots of text messages
2. Run out of credit
3. Buy top-up
4. Receive message from 3 stating: “as a thank you for topping up, you now have 600 free texts”

I really didn’t think that through beforehand.

Well, Orange customer services for once were very helpful, which is ironic as I was phoning up to tell them that I’m moving to 3 and want a PAC so I can keep my number. Not even any hard sell trying to convince me to stay — I think the computer at the call centre must have flashed up “CHEAPSKATE – NOT WORTH IT” when the operator called up my account details.

New 3G phone (with undamaged screen and non-broken keypad that doesn’t require three tries for a button press to register) is on its way. Hurrah!

My phone has just popped up a message, “Alien Battery”. What’s that all about then?

Mother has discovered that T.J. Hughes is flogging Orange pay-as-you-go mobile phones for a fiver each. Word has gotten round my family and various far-flung relatives have been availing themselves of this offer, and also availing themselves of the mobile-phone-setting-up services of muggins here. They didn’t even ask, they just ASSUMED I’d be happy to do it. How about that?

Yesterday was my third “job”. The two previous phones have been Sagem models (and actually fairly decent to boot), but the one I got today was a Motorola F3. It took some time to figure out, not helped by the fact that the only instructions in the box were written in what appeared to be Arabic (I assume that is a one-off problem and not endemic to the whole batch).

Now, see where it says “oRANGE”? Yep, this phone uses an old-style LED display as might be found on a digital clock. WhAt thIS MEAnS oF CoURSE IS ThAt ALL tEXt GEtS dISPLAyEd In tHAt Odd MIX oF UPPER And LOWER CASE ChARACtERS WhICh IS QUItE hARD tO REAd.

It’s also where SMS text messages are displayed — six characters at a time.

Now
can
you
imagin
e
having
to
read
a
senten
ce
just
six
letter
s
at a
time?
It
would
get
annoyi
ng
quite
quickl
y,
no?

I’m certainly no technological snob; in fact, I’m generally suspicious of all-singing all dancing phones (ringtones! MP3s! Pictures! Happy slapping!), but really, even for a budget model, 6 characters at a time is a BIT impractical. As CNET’s review states: “It’s like trying to read a text message on a calculator”. The only advantage being you don’t have to turn it upside down to spell out BOOBIES — although the word won’t actually fit on the phone’s display all at once.