Available only in the UK

Selkies

I was looking at a mobile phone review site in the hopes that I would find a phone that suits me when I came across the Samsung Omnia, all the things I like about the iphone with none of the negative features.
So I go to carphonewarehouse and look for the phone, excellent its there.. wait a second, wrong country, everything is in pounds, its the UK.
Right I'll just go to the Irish website, wait.. where did the phone go?

Turns out that we get the left overs from the UK market, we'll get the new phones in a year or so maybe if we're very good and buy all the current stock at 3 times the price you'd pay in the UK.

Ireland is the only country in the world that charges for the iPhone data, O2 had to get special permission from apple to do so.

If you check the rates on calls, we pay a massive amount more.

What can I do about this?
Not buy anymore phones?

I'm on bill pay and I get my phones massively subsidised by the phone company because I spend a lot of money on it, its too expensive for me to buy a phone sim free.

My current phone is falling apart but it still does pretty much everything the current batch do...

Should I move to a first world country?

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: (because 1 or even 12 wasn't enough)

godskitchen

Get the Omnia if you like sluggish responding interfaces, like having something that looks like a lipstick attached to your phone by a bit of string that holds your stylus, which in turn looks like a fat marker pen. Get it if you like having to bitch tap everything twice to make it work. Get it if you like having to scroll through pages of stuff by grabbing the scroll bar at the side of a page (its a lot more simple with a mouse than a finger.stylus, trust me)

All in all its a rubbish phone based on a crappy OS, its not samsungs fault, they didnt have a lot to work with in WinMo 6.1.

I 100% agree about the phone selection in this country and the pricing, its past being funny now.

Ron DMC

I've been buying sim-free for my last few phones, and I agree, the cost is fairly excessive, but bear in mind that most phones sold on adverts are sim-free and a lot cheaper than their retail prices.

I've had nothing but good experiences from adverts and I'm sure others feel the same. The only problem is that it's rare to find a brand new phone that's only been released.

godskitchen

+1 for adverts

Selkies

adverts??

OK What iPhone killer would you recommend?

Ron DMC

Selkies wrote: »

adverts??

OK What iPhone killer would you recommend?

Boards' sister site for classifieds ---> www.adverts.ie

And as for an iphone killer, why exactly would it need to have anything to do with the iphone? Touchscreens in general are a bit dodgy, so I'd steer clear of all htcs, omnias etc, and most people have an ipod or music player already, so no need for ipod functionality, basic mp3 playback and maybe an fm radio and you're laughing.

If I were going for a new phone (which I am soon), it'd have to be the nokia e66.

drunkmonkey

Sony C905 should be out here shortly, it might do the trick for you...

Selkies

Ronny Mitchell wrote: »

Boards' sister site for classifieds ---> www.adverts.ie

And as for an iphone killer, why exactly would it need to have anything to do with the iphone? Touchscreens in general are a bit dodgy, so I'd steer clear of all htcs, omnias etc, and most people have an ipod or music player already, so no need for ipod functionality, basic mp3 playback and maybe an fm radio and you're laughing.

If I were going for a new phone (which I am soon), it'd have to be the nokia e66.

Hmm sounds reasonable... what attracts you to the e66?

budweiserfrogie

I have my omnia about a month now and am very happy with it.
I just wondered have the above negative comments come from having personally tried the Omnia for a few weeks or from opinions after reading reviews.
I am very happy with it. I at first attached the stylus on it's string but after a week removed it as it is all but unneeded. I much prefer to use the touch sensitive centre pad/button to control the mouse function when needed.
Maybe if you want to use the handwriting recognition features you could hang onto it but i didn't.
Touch screen is great, camera is great, size and feel are spot on.
Only thing a bit slow to respond sometimes is the auto screen rotate.
All i can say is after a month of use i wouldn't change it for anything else.:)

Deep Thought

Anyone know when we will have the N96 ?...

Now there's a phone

Compton

we? i don't know maybe in 2 or 3 years...

it's release date is 1/10/08 AFAIK

chrislad

Selkies wrote: »

Ireland is the only country in the world that charges for the iPhone data, O2 had to get special permission from apple to do so.

If you check the rates on calls, we pay a massive amount more.

Nonsense.

With very little effort, I provide the following link.

http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/iphone_voice_data_packages

400 megs of data on the lower package, and 50c per MB after that for 60megs, followed by 3c per meg.

I'm not going to argue the economics of prices for phone service to 4million people to one for 30 million people, as it's really common sense.

Soundman

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Sony C905 should be out here shortly, it might do the trick for you...

Is there an official release date yet? Any idea of networks it'll be released for? Had a search around before but couldn't find much.

ardmacha

I'm not going to argue the economics of prices for phone service to 4million people to one for 30 million people, as it's really common sense.

This is spurious economics, phone services are not necessarily more expensive in places like Singapore or Finland that have populations closer to the 4m mark than the 60m mark.

godskitchen

budweiserfrogie wrote: »

I have my omnia about a month now and am very happy with it.
I just wondered have the above negative comments come from having personally tried the Omnia for a few weeks or from opinions after reading reviews.
I am very happy with it. I at first attached the stylus on it's string but after a week removed it as it is all but unneeded. I much prefer to use the touch sensitive centre pad/button to control the mouse function when needed.
Maybe if you want to use the handwriting recognition features you could hang onto it but i didn't.
Touch screen is great, camera is great, size and feel are spot on.
Only thing a bit slow to respond sometimes is the auto screen rotate.
All i can say is after a month of use i wouldn't change it for anything else.:)

I tried 3 different handsets, two in different vodafone shops in london and one unlocked one also in London. In fairness I did not try them for weeks, although I could have done seeing as it takes them that long to respond to commands. Each one was sluggish and clunky and just felt wrong to use with a touch screen.

Its just my point of view, but it is that at least, my view, not from some review site. I dont normally take much notice of reviews but if they are saying the same as I am then fair play to them for telling the truth.

I am glad yours seems to be working well, its just not my experience with any WinMo based phone.

strecker

godskitchen wrote: »

Get the Omnia if you like sluggish responding interfaces, like having something that looks like a lipstick attached to your phone by a bit of string that holds your stylus, which in turn looks like a fat marker pen. Get it if you like having to bitch tap everything twice to make it work. Get it if you like having to scroll through pages of stuff by grabbing the scroll bar at the side of a page (its a lot more simple with a mouse than a finger.stylus, trust me)

All in all its a rubbish phone based on a crappy OS, its not samsungs fault, they didnt have a lot to work with in WinMo 6.1.

I 100% agree about the phone selection in this country and the pricing, its past being funny now.

true about the omnia, wrong about wm6.1
try it on another phone, maybe with spb's mobile shell?
In this case, don't blame MS for the hardware maker's mistakes! The same sluggishness, and repeated tapping-to-get-anything-going apply to the tTocco which doesn't run wm! It's samsungs fault!

Fratton Fred

I think you are being a bit harsh on the irish market. There are some phones that come to market quicker in the UK, but not many.

The UK market is a bit of an oddity in that you have Voda, 3, Orange, T-Mobile and Telefonica (O2) all in the same playing field. i think this is the only market in the world where the big five go head to head like this.

T-mobile and orange will have lots of exclusives that don't appear here (Although i think you'll find that these are available through meteor first as T-Mobile and Orange don't mind them having them, such as the purple U600.

There is also two levels of testing for handsets, a global test by the networks to see if they will range them, then a local test in country. Maybe the Irish networks are slower at this.

Again, Meteor will only do one test as they do not have a global presence which is why they can also get phones to market quicker, such as the Nokia 6300. Meteor never actually had an exclusive on that in Ireland, but were selling it two months before the competition.