Lost Nokia's fate in the lap of the cods

JCB’s handsets sell themselves as the most robust on the market. Nicknamed ‘Bricks’, they’re constructed from diamond-hard materials and by all accounts are tougher than a Russian Mafioso. But for all their manufacturers’ nails-hard posturing, it seems that a new challenger has emerged for their crown.

Enter Nokia, whose handsets have, in truth, enjoyed a rep for durability for years. In today’s Sun, you’ll find a decidedly fishy tale of how Glen Kerley mislaid his Nokia handset while walking his dog on a beach and was in the process of buying a new one when his girlfriend received a call from the missing mobile. Turns out that the phone had been found by a fishmonger in the belly of a 25lb fish and had defied seawater and the fish’s gastric juices to keep on working.

Relating the story Andrew told how his girlfriend looked askance at him and said: “Your old mobile number is calling my phone.”

He added: “She said some guy was going on about my phone and a cod so she handed it over to me and he told me where he had found it. I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it - a bit worse for wear.”

From Nokia’s point of view this is surely the kind of PR that money cannot buy. And couldn’t have come at a better time. Not least because this week it’s fending off reports that its Nokia 5800 handset is hamstrung by defective speakers. The latter in particular is embarrassing for a handset that is spearheading Nokia’s XpressMusic range and upon which so many of the company’s hopes are pinned this year.

In the meantime, I expect the Finnish mobile phone giants to make much of this story. As far as they're concerned, if ever there was a good day to bury bad news this is surely it.

Orange's future looks less bright after consumer victory

Ever felt like suing your mobile phone provider? Sure you have. Was your bugbear with unclear roaming charges? Or maybe it was unheralded and unfair changes to the terms of your contract? Perhaps it was atrocious customer service, or appalling network coverage.

Most likely if you’re a 3 customer it was all of the above. That’s certainly the case if this torrent of abuse is anything to go by. As a 3 customer myself I can only relate. I live in the urbanised locale in north London where you’d have thought a clear reception would be a given. Not so. I can actually barely get a reception in my house. There are even problems when I’m in town, with Soho’s high buildings leaving me out of range and unreachable for the duration of shopping trips for discs of shiny black plastic. This is more often than my GF would approve of.

But this week it seems there’s something to cheer about - for Orange customers at least. Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that Tom Prescott of Richmond has won a case against his mobile phone network. According to the report, Orange attempted to keep him in his contract despite his failure to get coverage in his office or home in Richmond. Mr Prescott is now £500 richer after damages were awarded and is free of Orange’s attention.

He told the paper: "It has taken me three months in court to get it cancelled. I felt bullied by the company, and dealing with Orange was awful. I hope people who have the same problem now realise they can do something about it."

If we're to believe the responses to the outcome, this is a seismic event and opens up the prospect of hordes of disgruntled network customers launching legal action. You can almost hear the sound of 3 customers drafting legal correspondence across the land. And that other sound? That’s the swearing as the same people once again try to make a phone call only to be denied

Whether this results in Orange improving its network or in mass migration and payouts, this little victory for consumers is something worth celebrating. The future for consumers with mobile phones might not be Orange. But after today, it’s certainly brighter.

Samsung new phone is Well Weapon

Have you ever used the phrase “Well Mexico”? Or even “Well Weapon”? Have you? If you have it’s odds-on you’re a fan of the much lamented Channel 4 show Nathan Barley. If you haven’t you need to know that it was a coruscating study of east London fashion victims. Or as they were dubbed by creator Charlie Brooker "self-facilitating media nodes", with the programme destroying with extreme prejudice this crap coterie's excruciating and pig-thick attempts to be cool and edgy.

The show didn’t run for long, with poor ratings ensuring that a second series never arrived. For those who keep the faith however one of its highlights was the souped-up Wasp phone that the series' super villain Nathan Barley favoured. Here it is in all its gaudy glory:


What a monstrosity. But someone, somewhere didn’t get the joke. And that someone appears to be Samsung. At the Mobile World Congress this week it unveiled its Beat phones, which in their laboured attempts at cool seem to be aimed at Nathan Barleys the world over.

The phones feature a scratch mode that lets you move your fingers over the handset and in theory cut up the records like you’re Terminator X. Of course in reality this is nothing more than a shonky sound effect that you’re bored of trying out after about five minutes

It’s less a function and more akin to those novelty presents that you get from unimaginative friends that feature Mr T saying six fun phrases. The difference is Mr T saying “Quit Your Jibba Jabba” will never get old.

LG confirms status as the one to watch

Let it be known, I’m a big fan of classic sci-fi. Actually let’s amend I’m a big fan of the set design and the optimistic worldview of genre staples like Star Trek and Space 1999. They speak of a world where in the near future anything was possible. And better yet, where domestic robots would do the hard work, so we don’t have to.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that I’m putting my name down for LG’s retro-modern watch handset. Dubbed the LG Touch watch phone, judged on looks alone it appears to be a truly wondrous thing indeed.

But I don’t think that the admittedly small demographic of fans of retro-modernism will be only the takers for the phone. Its standout design is likely to be a hit with anyone who is bored of the same old same old approach to the appearance of mobile phones. And given that we’re served a near-constant diet of candybars and sliders, that’s got to be quite a few disgruntled consumers hungry for something new.

The phone is no slouch in the specifications department either. HSDPA connectivity means fast downloads, while video calling, media playback and web browsing ought to seal the deal.

There’s no official release date yet, with LG stating only that it’ll be out “later this year”. I can’t wait.

Music industry discovers marketing power of iPhone apps

The early White Stripes releases were on a label called Sympathy for the Record Industry. The name was a canny little dig at major label practices. But in truth sympathy for record companies has been in short supply of late. Not least because their failure to foresee the growth of MP3s over physical formats left them with an outmoded business model and at the mercy of pirates until Spotify offered some form of salvation.

But not all companies are quite so techno-phobic. This week XL, home of the Prodigy the Stripes and Lemon Jelly, came up with a fantastic marketing wheeze that harnesses the exponential growth of iPhone applications.

Visitors to the iTunes store can currently download a free Tetris-style game with the twist being that players are loading a tour van with musical instruments. The app is even equipped with an online high score table.

It’s all in aid of promoting newish signings and disciples of the shoegaze movement Titus Andronicus. Two tracks from their Airing of Grievances album play throughout the game, one of which called My Time Outside The Womb is set to be their next single.

You can only applaud this kind of marketing verve, which if it doesn’t give them a hit will raise their profile far more effectively than any number of gigs on the toilet circuit or wearisome interviews with T4 types.

If you’ve any doubt about this, cast your mind back to the dark days of the original Gameboy, which used Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy as its backing music. A cash-in single which remixed the ancient classical piece was a top ten hit, purely off the back of kids recognising it as the Tetris theme.

With any luck, as companies wake up to the marketing possibilities that the iPhone app store offers we’ll get a deluge of free diversionary software in months to come. One thing is for certain, though, is that XL’s rivals will be checking the apps download numbers very closely in months to come.

Auto-tune and Bob Marley game on the way as iPhone gets I-rie

Auto-tune has been all over Hip-Hop records in the last six months. Kanye West’s last album was slavered in it - rather pointlessly obscuring the flow of one of the few rappers left with anything to say. Lil Wayne also revealed himself a heavy user on the meta-irritating Lollipop. But the award for most grating use of the software goes to T-Pain in the dance craze-tastic Low. So smothered in Auto Tune’s effects was his novelty hit, that it’s unlikely there’d be any record left it you took it out.

Here he is in a titfer that's unlikely to get past the bouncers at Royal Ascot's Ladies Day:



However, clearly not satisfied with sullying Hip-Hop with his own shonky records today it has emerged he wants everyone to get in on the act. According to reports, T-Pain is working with engineers at Antares to develop a lite version of Auto-Tune for the iPhone. Up and down, the country we’ll be forced to listen to amateur rap producers playing their erm latest shit on their iPhones. It will be utterly inescapable. What horrors.

Still on a musical tip and frankly just as frightening is the news that a Bob Marley iPhone application could be on the way. It seems that along with a beer tie- in - that a Rastafarian would never drink, incidentally, alcohol being banned under the creed’s strictures – his money-grabbing family figure this will be fitting tribute to the man credited by many as Reggae’s greatest ever artist.

Apparently, it’s likely that the game will be a Guitar Hero-style arrangement. I can already picture hordes of white men doing an embarrassing skank as they play along. Alas we all know they’ll look about as irie as William Hague did when he rocked a baseball cap at Notting Hill Carnival.

Mobile broadband bandwagon leaves Sky and TalkTalk trailing

Over recent weeks TalkTalk has been the ISP that has dominated the headlines. And unlike say Virgin Media, whose brushes with the ASA continue to mount up, it’s mostly been for the right reasons. Its offer to waive charges for a six-month period for customers in particular was an inspired piece of pr.

But as bit of canny maths from Top 10 Broadband showed, recently they’ve not always been so quick to react to shifting moods in the UK broadband market. Over the last 12 months, TalkTalk and Sky have been notable absentees from the mobile broadband market. And the site calculates that as a result they are missing out on £36 million of potential revenue every month by failing to do so.

Jessica McArdle, marketing manager at the site, however predicted that it’s only a matter of time before this happens. She said: “TalkTalk and Sky must be looking into ways of offering mobile broadband either as a standalone product or as part of a bundled deal – failing to do so would amount to commercial suicide”

It’s hard to disagree with her. The worry is that in the meantime, rivals such as O2, Vodafone, 3 and Virgin Media are carving the market up for themselves. Thus by the time that TalkTalk and Sky have readied a mobile broadband service, they’ll have to work twice as hard and offer deals three times as eye-catching in order to capture a share of the sector.

Henry Holland and O2 go dutch on dongle

Just after Christmas, we predicted that mobile broadband dongles would follow mobile phones by becoming more of a fashion item than a purely functional device for getting online. We also forecasted that limited edition exclusive dongles would become commonplace, as ISPs look to distinguish themselves from the competition.

Today, we’re awarding ourselves prescience points a-plenty with the news that Henry Holland has designed a dongle for O2, which will be available for a limited time until February 27.

You’ll know said cove from appearances on Channel 4’s fashion programme Frock Me, where he often talks more than a little inanely about matters of the day with his childhood friend Agyness Deyn. Typically they’ll conclude that like the war in Iraq is REALLY BAD.

But judge not before you’ve seen the fruits of his labour:



Admit it, you want one. With any luck though, the House of Holland polka-dot number will be the first of a slew of dongles with eye-catching looks. We’ve already discussed the prospect of Star Wars dongles and how fanboys would snap them up in a trice. So what else is on our wishlist?

I’d like to see a collaboration with Bathing Ape. Imagine some natty camouflage numbers along the lines of Nigo’s work with Pepsi:



Can you picture them? Nice eh? Or better yet how about some designed by Futura 3000 who did the Unkle sleeves? Or even Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame?

MacAce offers Apple apostles 24Mb broadband

This week the UK's Mac-only ISP MacAce announced a new service offering 24Mb broadband. The reponse from some quarters has been a raised eyebrow. Why do Mac owners need an ISP of their own? Why can't they just use the same service as the rest of us? Isn't this just Mac owners being snobbish again?

This impression is compounded because as any fule kno Mac owners can in fact already get 24Mb by opting for Be Broadband. But in fact the idea that a Mac-only broadband service is a pointless frippery could not be wider of the mark.

If owners are to be believed even the best ISPs customer service is targeted at PC owners. This leaves Mac types tearing their hair out in frustration, especially since Macs are generally a more difficult proposition to configure for internet access.

Success for MacAce seems assured, no? Even priced at £16.46 pounds per month for the cheapest deal with a peak download period of 10GB, it looks like an easy sell. And the one-month rolling contract and lack of migration fee means that cost-conscious types won’t be discouraged. Meanwhile, the fact that Mac folk tend to be early adopters suggests that they'll be pliant market for faster broadband.

One thing is for sure, though, a bit of competition in the market for faster Mac broadband is long overdue. And with any luck, prices will drop in time, too.

ASA rap for Virgin Media

UK internet service providers are no strangers to raps over the knuckles from the Advertising Standards Agency. Over the last couple of years, it’s been the disparity between actual connection speeds and those being delivered that has been at the root of most of complaints that were upheld.

And we've had some splendidly spiteful spats, that's for sure, as broadband companies traded body blows in their ads. But that looked to have come to an end with a pledge before Christmas that they would clean up their act. It seemed to be the broadband industry equivalent of the Hays Code that cleaned up Hollywood with tough censorship rules in the 1930s.

A few months down the track, has it changed them any? Has it hell. This week it emerged that prime offender Virgin Media was in the dock again. The complaints centred on claims that the copper wire network used by other providers is struggling to cope with demand as well as Virgin Media’s loudly trumpeting that its network was a fibre optic. As this ad attests, they've been far from shy about their 50Mb service:



In the end the ASA eventually upheld no fewer than four complaints against them. This brings Virgin Media total to 13 complaints in total since the start of 2007 – a rap sheet to rival even that of supercrim and lifetime lag Charles Bronson.

I can understand Virgin Media doing its upmost to market its 50Mb service. It’s a tough sell at the moment, after all. But unless their campaigns are cleaned up, it won’t just be their public perception that is tainted. Rather it’ll be the whole industry that suffers.

Just say no to voice activated Zumbaphone

Another day, another mobile phone company claims it’s going to revolutionise the industry. This time it’s the turn of UK company IA Technologies. Their handset the Zumbaphone’s USP is that it is fully voice activated. And if we’re to believe their claims is the most accurate voice recognition system yet created. Owners will be able to speak texts into the phone and have messages they receive read back at them.

And if that wasn’t innovation enough for one day, the Zumbaphone is apparently also the world’s first ‘back-up replacement mobile”. This means that instead of information being stored on internal memory, instead it is kept on a remote server. Thus should the phone ever get purloined by sticky-fingered imps, all your gen is safe.

Top marks for innovation, IA Technology. And doubly so making said device look so brilliantly otherworldly. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the Zumbaphone being anything other than a niche product. One obvious market is dyslexic phone users, who’ll appreciate being freed of the tyrannies of spelling. But apart from that minority, who else was crying for a fully voice-activated phone. In fact, voice-activated services seem to be one of the least used functions on phones, so basing a handset entirely on this seems something of a folly. Ultimately, the Zumbaphone looks like joining the lineage of Great British Tech failures like the Sinclair C5 or Colin Pilger’s ill-fated intergalactic lunar mission. It’s a tradition that I for one am inversely hugely proud of.

TalkTalk trash talks BT

Boxing experts will tell you that their favoured sport is a noble art that owes its appeal chiefly to skill and has very little to do with ultraviolence. This is patently untrue. We watch boxing for the same nasty, mean-spirited reason that we watched playground scraps. That is, for the sheer bloody excitement of seeing people batter one another. A spat is inherently fascinating. And I’d just as soon watch two irate football mascots in animal suits going at it as I would Ali and Foreman.

Truth be told I’m just as entertained when broadband companies take to the ring for 12 rounds. And as previous contretemps have shown, this happens more often than you’d expect. This week it’s the turn of BT and TalkTalk’s subsidiary Opal to duke it out. And as you can see here, TalkTalk, which in playground logic is to blame since they started it, have not pulled any punches.

I’m especially taken with TalkTalk’s claim that their £10 business broadband offering is so goddamn cheap that it could force rivals to go under and prompt a wave of consolidation in the broadband sector. Equal parts hugely hubristic and insulting to competitors, it’s the sort of trash-talking that even Ali, who once famously rattled Joe Frazier by calling him an Uncle Tom, might baulk at.

Whether BT’s offerings will indeed suffer as a result of the new Opal deal remains to be seen. I’d like to think that the market could be shaken up further and God knows UK-based small to medium-sized businesses could do with a break right now. One thing we can say for sure is that as the broadband sector gets more cut-throat in months to come, we’ll get more of these set-tos. And best of all we’ll get see who the real contenders are. For now, it’s round one to TalkTalk.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know on: digitalmanblog@hotmail.com