UMTS-BLOG

I don’t know any more about where I read about Medion Akoya mini at first. I think it was an internet site, because I read about it before the official announcement was out. When I read about the details of the new netbook , it was immediately clear for me that the device is exactly what I waited so long for. I was initially skeptical because of the manufacturer. I heard a lot of negative things about computers of this manufacturer, but then I thought that it is has a 3-year warranty and more than 3 years I would not want to use it.
In addition, the market of alternatives are not very large. Although several manufacturers, such as Asus, Dell, Acer, HP and others announced devices of this class, there was only EEE PC that you could buy at the market in this time and it was already outdated. It has, in contrast to Akoya not a real hard drive, but a SSD (Solid State Disk). This SSD is very slow, it has a total capacity of 12 GB, which is not very much and it has an old Celeron M processor, not optimized for the saving of power. Medion Akoya Mini has, however, a 80 GB hard disk, a new Intel processor - Atom and 10 “display. That was enough for me to make my decision.
My choice was a Medion Akoya Mini and I wanted to have this device in any case. Finally, it was a birthday gift that I wanted to buy myself. I thought about to go to the shop one hour before the opening, but it would belittle too crazy for me. I was 15 minutes before the opening of the shop there and I was the first one. I bought a black Akoya. The color I like very well. The device itself looks expensive. Except for a few small quirks, I am satisfied with the quality. The display is very bright, Windows XP boots in less than 30 seconds, WIFI works great. Only Bluetooth was missing me at the device. This problem was also easy to solve. I bought a usb bluetooth adapter for 8 euros, which is very small and handy. Now I can use my mobile phone to surf with my Akoya Mini.
I am really satisfied with the device.

1 year ago I bought my last cell phone. My Sony Ericsson W300i still works without any problem, but this mobile phone, in my opinion, simply too old. I think I’m finally ready, to invest a large sum in a mobile phone to buy a modern device with HSPDA, as well as WLAN, Bluetooth, infrared and many other useful things. Why want I actually infrared? Many people would be surprised about this request. The answer is, I want to use my mobile phone as a remote control. I could use it for controlling my TV, but also with my digital camera too. My digital camera supports an infrared remote shutter button. This is something you need when you want to make sharp pictures. Moreover, it would be quite reasonable to buy a mobile phone, which runs on Windows Mobile 6.1. It is always desirable, to chose a device with the latest version of the available on the market operating system, as it often happens that the new programs will be written only for newer operating systems. The best thing would be if I had the opportunity to buy, a mobile phone with Google Android. There are no phones with Android on the market and it is not known when some of them will be released.

My budget 400 to 500 euros.
The main requirements are:

• HSPDA
• WLAN
• Bluetooth
• Infrared
• Lower SAR

Windows Mobile 6 or 6.1

My additional requests:

• Protection against splashes, dust and dirt (IP 54)
• GPS
• QWERTY keyboard
• No or very good digital camera

Currently, I see Asus P527 and HTC s730 as a possible compromise solutions. Of course it would be great, to buy Sony Ericsson to X1. The price for SE X1 is too high. I can not understand why I need to pay 999 € for a mobile phone. Only because of Windows Mobile 6.1? I would buy HTC Diamond in this case. It is much cheaper.

In the US the iPhone has been released without support for 3G / CDMA / UMTS. Rumors say that in Europe the iPhone will be released with UMTS support. This perfectly makes sense, since the multimedia functions will lead to a lot of over the air downloads and those can be really annoying if you don’t have a decent speed.

I would like to contract with BASE and that’s why I’m thinking about a new mobile phone with UMTS-support. The choice is not big. I don’t want to buy any subsidised cell phone, I will buy it myself and my budget is not really big. Sony Ericsson W300i a good candidate for that, because it costs “only” 179€ and it has many useful features. But if you know a better offer, I would like to know about it too

My old O2-contract expires shortly and I don’t have a wish to extend it for the next 2 years. I think about a contract with BASE with phone flat rate and UMTS flat rate.
Yes, I know, it is not a real flat rate, because I may not use VoIP, but currently it is the best offer in German market of mobile services that I know. I will use UMTS for reading of emails, icq chat and www.

TNS study tells us that the acceptance of mobile services and applications, based on UMTS-technology is very low.

The general reason of this result is the high costs of online services.

These results will not surprise anyone. If you take a look at price lists of your mobile provider, you will understand that the rates for GPRS and UMTS are very high. I’m really can’t understand the price politic of the mobile operators.
I can‘t imagine to order 30 megabytes pack of traffic for 9.86€. If you see the details, you understand that the price-politic is much blinder than you think, for example, the timing of these packs is approximately 100 Kb and there is no any preference if you traffic for one session will be 2Kb or 100Kb, you will pay for 100Kb.
The other problem is the abuse of such terms as “flat rate” or “unlimited”. These terms will be often abused by mobile operators and internet providers, because the rates that they call as “flat rate” or “unlimited” have often many limitations.

I know only 2 mobile operators, who offers “real” UMTS flat rate and moderate prices (E-Plus and BASE), but these prices are anyway too high for normal users and the speed of internet connection and coverage are too low.