Strike a pose, but not with your Camera Phone

So how many mega pixels does your camera have? Well if we are talking phones that number is ever increasing. But despite this rapid increase in pixels, one area where the manufacturers have guaranteed that we still have a need for the compact digi cam, is the lack of phones where a Xenon flash is implemented. The camera phone is used for evenings, indoor pics, low light conditions etc as well as day shots. Instead we are given a useless LED flash, or if we are lucky a duel LED flash. Although the likes of Sony Ericsson, Nokia and LG have flirted with the technology, none have made it a permanent feature even for their flagship models. The disspointing SE Satio, has a great camera with Xenon flash but is let down by over compressed photos and an awful operating systen called Symbian. Previous Sony Ericsson attempts include the awesome K800 and the C905 both which really took the camera phone to a different level. Likewise Nokia had the bulky but great N82 and the everso cheap plastic feeling 6220 classic which was a cheaper version of the N82. Both these had a great camera 5 megapixels and a decent video output. But 2 years since those, nothing from the Finnish giants.
The list of attempts can go on, but now nearly 8 years since the first camera phones started to arrive on these shores, there hasn't been too much to shout home about. Nokia and Samsung also had brief interests with the optical zooms but nothing further developed. Again a shame as it's another chance to leave the compact cam at home missed. I have had conflicting news from industry experts and one of the manufacterers about the line up for 2010. I am not sure as to why the rollout of the xenon flash is slow. Also, if space or cost are issues why can't the manufacterers commission the various accessories companies to produce an attachment that the enthusiasts can use like the one SE had available for the K750, W800 and W900. This little attachment transformed the photos those phones took and produced fantastic results. Sony Ericsson have just this week releases the Vivaz a HD video recording phone using the nasty Symbian operating system. Although the phone sports an 8 megapixel camera you have an LED flash. Even the long awaited X10 series only sports the poor LED flash. What is surprising is that Nokia whose top handsets have had the services of Carl Zeiss lenses still fail to make the most of it's capabilities. I suppose the excitment of Google's Android Operating system may bring out some future gems. But in the meantime unless you use one a K800 or a N82 etc there isn't a need to pack away your trusty digi cam just yet.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Hill Rd,Harrow,United Kingdom

Another day another shop

Well it's been a long time coming this next installment of my blog. Due to having no net connection between moving back home to our place in Ealing to moving lock stock to Pinner and again having to wait for Internet connection to be re connected. To top it off, my beloved Dell laptop gets infected with a virus, so whilst I'm rebuiliding the application list on that it's down to the trusty iPhone to blog away. December till February was a strange period. We looked at 3 shops in 3 different areas and all 3 fell through. Although I have found another site I'm going to have to get the ball rolling again. What is surprising in this current economic climate landlords are still holding out for the silly rental and lease lengths. This is dispite the fact a lot of the shops remain closed for long periods of time. I saw a lovely shop on Ruislip, Middlesex which has a mobile number in the window with big sign saying To Let. I rang up the number and was told on 3 occassions to call back in 2 weeks time so after 8 weeks of waiting I tried again and guess what? The same answer call back in 2 weeks time! Then I saw a shop/unit in Stanmore which looked promising but that I have been told after pestering the agent has been taken by a company with stores all over the country again 6 weeks later the shop is still empty and has the sign saying All Enquiries. The third store is in another secondary high street, the landlord is refusing to even negotiate on the lease not ideal for me or anyone else that is interested. With a lot of financial experts predicting a W recession the amount of empty shops is frightening. A lot of secondary high streets are looking quite bare and very run down even in affluent areas like Stanmore and Pinner.

One blessing for sure is that there isn't a surge of £1 shops which although might add value to the locals, too many can also ruin a high street. Look at the once very good Hounslow High Street, for example which had once boasted the likes of Waitros,Next, and The United Colours of Beneton as it's tenants. A good high street improves the local area too by attracting better house prices which then reduces the ASBO effect.

With expenses increasing on a daily basis only crazy folks would give up cushty well paid jobs to run a business. I suppose I'm one of those crazy types. Or I will be once the first shop is on full swing. My target is to quit the IT contracting stint once my business is bringing in 70% of my IT income. Hopefully my next blog entry won't be as long time in coming. In the meantime whilst I'm being crushed by a rather large woman who doesn't seem to understand that my space is my space on the tube into work I'm going to sign off. The crazy one has left the building or atleast the tube station

Location:Canfield Pl,Camden Town,United Kingdom

T-Orange? A history of 2 very average networks

With the merger of the original GSM 1800 networks both of which launched in the UK in the early 1990's one has to ask what now?
When Mercury one2one launched in late 1993 in the London area initially before it expanded the network was slated for its poor reception and poor choice of handsets. Yet it still attracted thousands of customers, why? It offered something fresh to the market - the word FREE. Free calls to local land line numbers between 7pm and 7am Monday to Friday and all weekends and Bank holidays. The network also gave the option of cheap calls to your own Postal code area on a subscription basis. I still know of many individuals who have kept the personal tariff although rarely use it now. Cable and Wireless who then owned Mercury one2one's launch in the mobile market was at a time when GSM was new, Voda and Cellnet were still connecting the majority on the now defunct Analogue network with per minute billing, and little in the way of creature comforts we now expect from our networks.
The following spring Hutchison launched Orange a new network which went in straight to lock heads with Vodafone and Cellnet as an alternative business network. They offered 2hour replacement insurance on their handsets, had SMS, inclusive minute bundles and per second billing and oh yeah 12 month contracts!
Both one2one and Orange continued in offering something different to the norm and slowly started to become major players in the market. That is until C&W sold off one2one and Hutchsion sold off Orange. The innovative Orange was now just moving along with the flow, rarely doing anything interesting and becoming more and more like the network we all moan about today. One2one was sold to Deutch Telecom and then became rebranded to T-Mobile. Offering not much new but aiming at the low end market with tariffs for those on a budget. Although T-Mobile have introduced new functionality to its network they have also taken away things too. Like Voicemail being chargeable at outside your bundle minutes or charging 40p per minute for 0800 calls. On the plus side the Flext Tariffs were a real hit when they first came out, offering the the consumer the choice of minutes and text usage as they wished. MMS not included! Then in the last few years T-Mobile have blown all their budget on acquisitions and poor customers who want to negotiate their expiring contracts are told to wait till the new year.

So what happens when 2 quite average/poor networks merge? do they become a good network? or just a big mess? I personally believe it is the latter. I for some reason cannot see that the networks merging will improve their perception in consumer eyes. Only Hutchison 3 has a worse reputation it seems! I heard that T-Mobile will become the equivalent to the Tesco Extra Value products, cheap sometimes cheerful and the Orange brand will become the posher of the two.
As a dealer i don't really care, as long as they stop poaching our customers, offering silly online deals for direct sales only and keep us in the loop for things I wouldn't care if they renamed themselves as Piss up in a Brewery!

Direct Channel Woes!

When the direct channel, was opened shops it was purely as a brand marketing exercise, now days its a major stream of income. I personally don't have too much of an issue with that. What i do have an issue is with the crazy offerings they offer the customers, making our lives a lot harder. Then the networks have the cheek and say the independent dealer market is very important to us! Bollocks it is! The worst offenders have to be 3 and T-Mobile, crazy deals silly line rentals discounts it makes one wonder why we don't have that flexibility. I pop into various phone stores now and then and have a chin wag with them get a kind of low down but also to network with them. A retailer in West London gets a huge amount of their unlocking referrals from the direct channel stores and even the CPW guys. Is the Independent Dealer soon going to be extinct? Well i see it happening in the next few years. Reading on the Mobile News website about a B2B dealer pulling the plug sent shivers down my spine. There he is, a well established dealer who has pulled the plug and there is me new to the game, struggling to get the connections, struggling to find a site for my shop, struggling full stop. Do i carry on or shall i call it quits and look at something else?

The futures bright the futures so not IPhone!

Ok i knew there wouldn't be a price war but hey did Orange really think they could copy and paste the O2 tariffs for the IPhone modify it slightly and get away without debate? Muppets! Let me make it clear, i don't think that the O2 tariffs are really that bad, OK the £30 a month tariff giving the customer a measly 75 mins is a piss take but lets be honest unless you are seriously short of £90 over 18 months and only use the IPhone to call your favourite take away on Friday nights then you wouldn't sign up to that bundle and pay a lot for the IPhone. 200 minutes would be the bench mark for the low tariff. What Orange have essentially done, is opened the IPhone to the public by saying if you don't like O2 come to us and we will take your money instead. But apart from apparently having the highest 3G coverage they don't have anything else to offer. They even cap the data to 750mb. What Vodafone will offer is something to wait for.