The Phone

It was the first time I had seen the phone in the flesh and my first impressions were very good. It is considerably smaller than other 3 phones and well built. I started off by reading the instructions to find out how long the initial battery charge should be. To my surprise this was only 2 hours (first charge is normally 6 to 14 hours). I did as instructed and charged the phone for the recommended time, assuming that battery technology was moving on and a longer charge was not required. You’ll notice that phone came with two batteries, a slim line one that sits in the back of the phone and is flush with the case and a ‘fat’ extended battery that sits about 3 or 4mm proud of the case. This battery makes the phone look like it has a growth that would not be out of place in Ripleys musem.

The handset is a clam shell design and opens with a satisfying and solid Audi like clunk. The keys are nice and big just right for someone with my big digits. The screen is a good size, the resolution and the colours are quite vivid. Moving on to the user interface, one button takes you to the main menu which is done in a windows style, from there you can access, contacts, messaging, a file manger, Java applications (games and software accessories), settings and so on (9 windows all together). Each area you go into has numerous additional options. You also have a separate button denoted by three dots, this opens even further options in most of the sub menus. I can see that the amount of settings could be daunting to a new user, but you only need most of these items if you really want to play about with the phone. In particular I like the way that you could modify each individual phonebook contact to have their own ringtunes (that’s what Nec call ringtones), you can even set different text tones for them, it also goes in the detail of having the front light flashing different colours, probably completely useless but it was nice to see such attention to detail. Another thing which I found a pleasure to use was the text messaging system. The predictive text is T9 found on many mobile phones. 3 does not support cross network multi media messaging. As I have said the options on the phone are numerous, far too many to list here.

Problems

This carried on for the next couple of days. On the third day I left the phone out on my kitchen table with a full fresh charge (fat battery). I picked the phone up to make a call about an hour later and it was warm to the touch, in particular the battery. An hour after that the battery was flat and the phone was even warmer. This really began to worry me. The battery was recharged and the identical thing happened. This is when I phoned customer services but I’ll come back to that. I tried out the slimline battery and all this could give me was 12 hours on standby. All this means that if you leave the house for any length of time you will need both batteries fully charged and it would be wise to take a charger with you.

I only phoned customer services the once, that was enough for me. After a lengthy set of options I eventually got through to 3’s customer services. I noticed a sudden change is in the quality of the phone line it was then answered by a woman with a very strong Indian accent. Apparently I was through to 3’s customer services in India and it wasn’t the wrong number. I endeavoured to explain my problem at which point the lady told me I had come through to the wrong department. I was put through to someone else and had to start over. She asked me some questions, with the combination of a very poor phone line and the very strong accent I had to keep asking her to repeat the question. It left me feeling like I was being very rude. I was told that it was not 3’s problem and that I should return the handset to the supplier (at my own cost). I wanted to know what the problem was not what I could do with the handset.

Conclusion

I really think that the 3g network is not yet ready and 3 have, by getting in early, sold themselves short and provided a poor service. The big players are doing the right thing by waiting for the handset technology and network capability to be good enough to market.