orangeuk
Latest
Orange bringing Comes With Music-equipped Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to UK
What a difference a year and a half makes, eh? It was August of 2007 when Orange first got all weird on Nokia over the then-wild concept of a manufacturer-owned and operated music store -- bear in mind the iPhone hadn't launched very widely at that time -- and look how far we've come. The two companies have just announced that the venerable Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be available starting May 29 loaded up with Comes With Music, Nokia's all-you-can-eat service that brings endless downloadable tracks through its Music Store. In Orange's case, Comes With Music will be available on any of five special plans starting at £25 a month (about $38), meaning that you'll be able to nab music for the duration of your two-year contract. As long as DRM's in the mix, you're basically locked into your contract for as long as you want the definitive Bryan Adams collection that you've downloaded -- so we're hoping Nokia nixes that nightmare sooner rather than later. And hey, congrats, Orange customers -- you're the first Brits to officially be offered this through a carrier, and you'll be getting it in an "exclusive" black / silver color combo.
Keepin' it real fake, part CCI: dirty Vegas plays Orange UK
Attention, Orange and the random supplier who's manufacturing these ripoffs: the world has moved on from the original HTC Touch's design language. Hell, we've actually moved on twice now; once to the Touch Diamond, and once to the Touch Diamond2. On that note, we're not sure what's possessing a Western European carrier to release a cheesy rip of a such a well-known late model phone -- whose manufacturer Orange has a great relationship with, no less -- other than the fact that they're looking to give entry-level customers a really inexpensive way to get into the touchscreen game. Indeed, the prepaid device will apparently run just £48.50 (about $71) when it launches, but in return, you're only getting a 1.3 megapixel camera, presumably EDGE data, and the mocking of everyone you've ever known -- including your own mother, who we understand uses an actual HTC Touch.[Via mobile-review]Update: If T-Mobile UK is more your style, turns out they're offering the very same device as the Vairy Touch. Thanks, everyone!
Orange UK gets pay-as-you-go BlackBerry Pearl 8120
Orange UK has chosen to Launch RIM's BlackBerry Pearl 8120 as a PAYG number for all the would be messengers out there who prefer to remain sans plan. Price for this exclusive indigo set seems set at £145 (roughly $200) and should be landing in a shop near you in early February. Price of admission -- handset aside -- includes needing to grab an Animal package (Dolphin, Canary, Racoon, or Camel) and taking out a £5 BlackBerry internet service deal as well. Enjoy! At this point, pay-as-you-go is about where this set should be in terms of its age, you listening, Fido?
Orange's HTC Touch Dual gets unboxed, strikes a pose
Orange UK seems set to begin shipping this lovingly branded handset and CoolSmartPhone was kind enough to introduce us all by way of some fresh unboxing pics. As we'd already heard, the Orange version of the outrageously popular Touch device will ship with a 16-key keypad, and not the painful SureType 20 key jobby we've also seen. Orange has also chosen to pack in a 1 GB microSD card for your expansion pleasure and has priced it anywhere from £99 (roughly $200) to £free (roughly $free). We're pretty confident that this set combined with a dash of holiday enthusiasm will most definitely help HTC reach its sales goals for the year.[Via CoolSmartPhone]
Nokia N95 sees crippling by UK carriers
Are you one of those Windows Mobile handset VoIP hackboys / hackgirls (wireless Skype, anyone)? How about that voice minute-less wireless VoIP on that Orange or Vodafone Nokia N95 handset? Wait, let's go back a bit -- right back to that Nokia S60 flagship handset in Europe. It appears that Vodafone and Orange in the UK have removed an important feature from carrier-branded N95s there. In what can be considered one extreme example of handset crippling, the two carriers have apparently stripped the N95 on store shelves of is VoIP capability in an attempt to preserve voice revenue. The solution -- as always with GSM carriers -- is to buy the more expensive, unlocked N95 and install your Symbian VoIP client of choice. Did we say we can't stand carrier-branded madness like this?
Orange SPV E650 set to hit the shelves
Orange has rolled out the SPV E650 (alias HTC S710, alias Vox) in its mobile shop in the UK, giving Brits their first taste of Orange-flavored Windows Mobile 6 love. The Vox is set to be a kickin' handset in both its CDMA and GSM flavors, though we still wish HSDPA was part of its feature set. We have been waiting for this since HTC made the announcement at 3GSM, and we're sure that many will rejoice upon seeing it in the Orange mobile shop -- only to just as quickly deflate at the label: "Coming Soon." No word on exact shipping date or cost yet, but we hope to turn that frown upside down with something a bit more concrete, real soon.[Via Geekzone]
European mobile carriers plot against Google and Yahoo!
Apparently the Brits and other European wireless telco carriers want to drop the bomb on Yank mobile search engines like Yahoo! and Google -- so much that Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and, gasp, America's Cingular are plotting to try and supplant the mobile search services of Google and Yahoo! from their customer's handsets. You know you're performing more Google searches from your wireless 10-key than from your ultra-fast PC, right? Those Europeans are a tad more mobile-focused compared to us here across the pond, so it comes as no surprise really that the big European wireless carriers want to capture all those mobile searches using...their own search service. We're not quite sure how they'll index the mobile (and real) web for all those customers to compete with the years-ahead services from Google and Yahoo!, but we wish them well at 3GSM next week when they pitch this to, well, whoever will listen.
