Has O2 given up on Imode?

Doctor DooM

There only seems to be one imode phone left on the website.

Has O2 given up on them? When I was in the biz, Imode was their great white hope. Any reprecussions if they have given up on it?

Random

Never really was a huge fan of imode myself. I found imail very handy for a while by ultimitly blackberry did the job better for me.

I found the service very restrictive in terms of things like java and viewing non imode websites (my experience was with a k610im). I wish they'd drop it completely or make it more like Vodafone Live .. where it's got all the subscriptions but it's all browser side rather than handset side. Seems like a simple idea which 3 and Vodafone both seem to have done pretty well.

Blaster99

O2 UK has ditched it, O2 Germany never even launched, and I guess it's on its way out in O2 IRL also. They have supposedly done a new subscription interface for xhtml devices so maybe they're hoping to keep doing it across all devices. I would have thought the whole subscription model is stone dead as a concept, but who knows.

Random

When you say O2 UK has ditched it, you mean they've just gone ahead and turned it off or?

As for this new xhtml O2 IRL interface - any more info?

neilled

I think what killed Imode was the fact that the price of actually browsing was way to high at 1 cent per kilobyte so trying to explain to a customer that every page they were browsing was costing them money was never a good thing. if they'ed open up the imode portal as being free and then the content with slightly higher subscription they may have had a commercially viable product.

Ardent

There's a school of thought that the only reason O2 adopted imode was to shape their profile when Telefonica showed interest in purchasing them - helped grease the wheels of the subsequent take-over (Telefonica are/were big exponents of imode).

Bluefrog

Could this be the beginning of the end of this pricing by KB nonsense. It's like trying to flog a bag of sugar one grain at a time these days. O2 just don't seem to get the idea of mobile data at all, Vodafone is making token gestures and only Three seem to be showing any vision here though by times grasping beyond their reach.

Also making iMode a dead duck are the increased capabilities of devices that can run the latest Nokia browser based on Safari or the Opera Mobile browser. Both browsers can handle content not specifically designed for phone interfaces reasonably well at this point and are improving all the time. Creating and maintaining content displayed in a special subset of XHTML must be looking like a sillier and sillier prospect for content providers.

Blaster99

I don't know. Sites designed for small screens are always superior to the various attempts at fitting large pages onto a small screen. Even my ipod touch is annoying for web browsing and it does the best job of it that I've seen.

Bluefrog

Undoubtedly smaller screens have to be accommodated but maintaining a specific subset of XHTML solely for this purpose with it's own quirks and features beyond the XHTML standard I don't think is really practical long term.

Basically what I'm saying is that the standard that governs markup that creates the interface on small screens should be the same as the standard that creates large screen content. The difference is solely a layout and formatting consideration.

Blaster99

The problem is not so much the standard as the fact that the same manufacturer can't even implement it consistently, never mind different manufacturers. This was something that i-mode tried to sort out with very similar browsers. I think they're all certified by NEC or something.

Solair

When WAP 2.0 arrived, iMode was really a dead duck. WAP now uses XHMTL and can support a range of features very similar to and even better than those offered by iMode and there is no requirement for a restrictive license.

The new browsers in most mobiles can handle WAP 1.0, WAP 2.0 as well as crunching through standard HTML, so you get full mobile backwards compatibility along with access to feature-rich web pages.

iMode is a proprietary protocol developed by DoCoMo of Japan. Operators and handset manufacturers have to license it from them to use it. O2 Ireland has an exclusive license to use iMode in Ireland for example.

The technology was vastly superior to WAP 1.0, but it's really irrelevant now.

If you consider that Three's portal and Vodafone Live! both operate using WAP 2.0 rather than iMode, you can really see that there no longer any advantage to using it.

The range of iMode handsets is very restricted and costs of using the technology are not really sensible.

I'd say you'll see O2 Ireland ditch it too in the short term. Many of their newer handsets don't even seem to support it!

iMode is to the mobile industry, what Minitel or Compuserve were to the fixed line business i.e. closed, restrictive and dated business models that people only have dim and distant memories of. I'd say iMode will be consigned to the technology history books too as an "interesting" technology that was used by a limited group of operators en route to something better.

O2's approach to mobile data is absolutely ridiculous too. The whole reason that mobile data never took off was because of the insane charging policies that operators insisted on using. Only when flat rate data became a reality did we start to see a major upsurge in the use of mobile data. Three have certainly had a major impact in that regard.

Vodafone's not TOO bad, but is certainly more reactive than innovative.
O2 is stuck in the mid 90s somewhere
and Meteor's yet to really take on data in any serious way, their lack of a 3G network may have something to do with it, but at this stage I'd have expected them to have done something more interesting with EDGE. I'm surprised at them to be honest, as they're usually the ones who jump in with the cut price products... They could do some decent flat rate browsing packages to let users access applications like Gmail, facebook etc etc.. Perhaps their network simply wouldn't be up to the demand at this stage?

Bluefrog

My difficulty with current models of broadband for mobiles is this approach of differentiating a 'mobile internet' from the 'regular Internet' you enjoy when you sit down in front of a PC. I think in general consumers are going to have to push telcos into abandoning their fatuous 'mobile Internet' concept and the tarrifs such a distinction enables them to apply. The problem with this is that if consumers don't know what they could be doing with their phones then there is no incentive for them to push.

Doctor DooM

When I think about it, when I was with O2, they made out like imode was the first step in trying to replace standard broadband suppliers... now they have their modem business, maybe they just thought its time had come.

Apparently it is still a successful model in Japan!

Sam Vimes

SDooM wrote: »

When I think about it, when I was with O2, they made out like imode was the first step in trying to replace standard broadband suppliers... now they have their modem business, maybe they just thought its time had come.

Apparently it is still a successful model in Japan!

but they're all loaded in japan. i'd rather not pay a euro to browse to a page that offered a ringtone that i don't want thank you very much. and i don't think that charging 1c per kb is necessarily a requirement of imode, its just a software platform. maybe its cheaper in japan?

MartMax

i've been on prepay plan for many years and it is almost one year now using availing imode. it is handy and free but imode phones are limited for internet sites browsing.

now considering to move to a bill plan and also getting a new phone, i'm not really sure what is the best alternative to imode. i can only think of blackberry service.

ciaranfo, by any chance are u still on imode or switch to blackberry instead?

Marty

Random

mart_max wrote: »

i've been on prepay plan for many years and it is almost one year now using availing imode. it is handy and free but imode phones are limited for internet sites browsing.

now considering to move to a bill plan and also getting a new phone, i'm not really sure what is the best alternative to imode. i can only think of blackberry service.

ciaranfo, by any chance are u still on imode or switch to blackberry instead?

Marty

Switched to Blackberry Connect on a Nokia e65. imode made the phone too restrictive and didn't really cater for my outgoing email needs. The k610im was the only imode phone I liked, and even this wasn't great

I was going to buy an imode phone mainly for i-mail...do you think they will ditch it?

Doctor DooM

They will prob keep it going for a couple of years for existing subscribers. If you wish to use existing email accounts, blackberry is better, although it requires a contract.

Gillo

ciaranfo wrote: »

Switched to Blackberry Connect on a Nokia e65. imode made the phone too restrictive and didn't really cater for my outgoing email needs.

How easy was it to set up Blackberry connect on the E65? I've heard (but never tried) that it can be a nightmare.

AFAIK, the new O2 online services are still powered by imode, but imode interface itself has been dropped. It's definetly a great scoop for O2 to get Bebo on board, it's a massive selling point for them to the teenage market.

Random

1. make sure you're on an o2 contract
2. ring 1850 601740 and ask them to add the blackberry package to your account
3. download the bb connect software to your phone (it's already on most o2 ones, you just need to install)
4. choose the "register now" option within the bb connect software
5. register on www.o2mail.ie using the imei of your phone and the pin listed within the bb software
6. add your accounts via www.o2mail.ie and each one should be setup within about 20 mins
7. ring 1850 601740 if you have any problems, I've always found them great

dublin16

I've been working in IT for 10 years and have never been able to satisfactorily use the web on a mobile phone.

I mean i've just tried to use my ( newish ) NEC phone on O2 to go to the website www.ryanair.com
I get the error message " page contains too much data "

I'm gonna use all my years of technical know how to try to explain this :

My phone is small - the webpage is "big" = it ain't gonna work

Also pricing per kilobyte = how the feck do you work out how much its costing you ?

Rant over.

Sam Vimes

http://www.operamini.com/


http://www.o2online.ie/wps/wcm/connect/O2/Home/Personal/Price+plans/Pay+monthly/Data+pricing/

billbond4

O2 now let you get broadband as a data add-on, (30e per month)
so you have 10GB for wapping on your phone, thats about 1,000,000 wap pages you can surf.