Omio News Blog

Omio Gets 5 Stars, Gold Award In Web User Magazine!

The fizzy pop is flowing in Omio Towers today, we’ve just found out that we snagged the Gold award for best mobile comparison site in the May 21st issue of Web User magazine!

The UK’s biggest internet mag took a particular shine to the patented Omio sliders (of course, they’re awesome!), our phone comparison tool (get one of your very own from here) and our thorough nature of scouring the web for the best mobile phone deals!

What’s that? 5 stars for ease of use? 5 for features? Our range of handsets and offers are top notch too, making for an overall of 5 stars for Omio!

Other strong contenders came close behind though, and our forums could indeed benefit from a tad more activity (speak your mind here, we listen!), but we are the still the best mobile phone comparison site around, now with the stripes to prove it!

So enjoy our sliders, check out our phone recycling section to see how much an old handset can bag you, even play with the phone finder and you’ll soon see why Omio is number one!

Welcome To The New And Improved Omio!

If you are a regular Omio visitor, you will notice that we have been slaving away to make some big upgrades to your favourite mobile comparison site. We hope that you’ll find our facelift to your liking, but the changes are far more than merely cosmetic!

Our code junkies behind the scenes have worked day and night to nip and tuck Omio where it counts, improved our algorithms to better show the best deals, and it has all gone into making the mobile phone comparison process silky smooth!

Omio:

- is 10x faster!

We’ve greased up the axles, stuck some go-faster stripes down the side, put some rims and neons on her and now have a site bringing back search results 10 times quicker than before! Now you can find for your perfect phone faster than ever on Omio!

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- has better navigation!

Our new sidebar navigation is designed to make it easy for you to decide what exactly you’d like to look at.

When you click on a phone category, you are catapulted straight to the relevant page to get your compare on for pay monthly, prepay, phone only and SIM free deals. As a result, we think that Omio is now much cleaner and easier to surf through.

However, it will still be as difficult as ever to find ‘straight jackets’ or ‘American teens’ on Omio, despite the crazy traffic we get for these things. Apologies if you have turned up here based on those search terms, why not purchase a new mobile phone instead?

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- has an improved ‘phones for cash’ page!

We’re big on the environment, so we have a better page for you to recycle mobile phones!

With loads of unused handsets gathering dust in drawers across the land, why not make some money by trading in yours for some cash? Omio’s phone valuation tool has been streamlined, letting you compare what your old mobile is worth on all the big recycling sites, instantly!

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- has revamped reviews!

Our mobile phone reviews pages have been given a lick of paint, making them easier to browse, and with more text and videos showing what we think of the latest and greatest handsets!

- has cake!

Sorry. The cake is still a lie, but we do have a really cool forum community to help you with any mobile phone questions and queries!

Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments page what you think, and also how we can make Omio even better!

Orange Vegas Touchscreen Phone

Orange are getting ready to sell one of the world’s most affordable touch screen smart phones, the Orange Vegas.

The handset is dual band GSM/GPRS and features a 2.4 inch TFT touchscreen display. The phone is retailing for only €69 on Pay As You Go, making it one of the cheapest touch-screen phones you can buy.

The phone also has:

• Bluetooth
• MP3 Player
• FM radio
• 1.3MP camera
• 64MB of internal memory
• 1GB MicroSD card
• Talk time: up to 3 hours
• Stand by time: up to 7 days
• 84 grams

The Orange Vegas is already available in black and pink on Orange’s UK website but isn’t available to buy quite yet. It’s expected to go on sale in European markets first of all.

Music-Centered Samsung M2710 and M2310 Pictures Leaked

Photos of two unannounced Samsung phones have been leaked online today and they’re both stylish music-orientated handsets.

As far as the styling is concerned both phones look like smaller versions of the Samsung M7610 Beat DISC phone, albeit with less of the features of the Beat DISC.

The Samsung M2710 is a slider, with a standard 3.5mm audio jack output, Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera and included is a memory card slot – a must for any respectable music phone.

The flip phone, the Samsung M2310 has media control buttons on the front panel, has edge and Bluetooth support, FM radio and a memory card slot. There’s no info about the camera pixel count yet.

Both phones are to be sold to the Brazilian market, those lucky Brazilians.

The Best Ways To Pimp Out Your Phone

Some phones are great for the music, some are all about the cameras, the touch screen or the games but things can always be improved upon. With some choice accessories you can pimp out your phone and take advantage of its best assets.

It sounds obvious but if you’re interested in upping the music quality on your phone, get yourself some wireless Bluetooth speakers. All you have to do is touch the phone to the speaker system and you’ll be able to stream music wirelessly from your phone. The equaliser, in the speaker, will amp up the base to create a surround-sound type effect. Not the best idea on the 57 bus though.

A TV-out cable for viewing pictures, videos and movies on a much bigger screen. It’s great that you can watch TV clips and full length movies on your phone but it’s even better if you can do it on a big screen. It works particularly well with movie-friendly phones like the Samsung Omnia HD or the LG Arena, both of which support high-quality DivX and Xvid video files.

What better way to show off the great pictures your phone can take that with a digital photo frame. Digital Photo Frames are now capable of receiving MMSs – very handy. The Parrot DF 7700 MMS Digital Photo Frame frame, for example, has a seven-inch LCD display, can store up to 400 photos and has an expandable memory of up to 32 GB. It also comes with its own number so all you have to do is send it a text with the photos you’ve just taken and hey presto everyone back home can see your holiday snaps on the mantle, seconds after you took them.

So if you’ve got a great camera phone like the LG KC910 or the Nokia N96, or even if you don’t, you can make the features on your phone really work with some clever extras.

Google Adds Voice Search and Location on BlackBerry

Google announced today that they’ll be adding two new features to their Google Mobile Application on all BlackBerry phones.

The first feature, Search By Voice, searches online for you and returns the results to your phone. All you need to do is hold down the green call button and speak into the handset.

Google have already made the software compatible with British English so it’ll be able to second guess colloquialisms and all those weird British accents, in theory anyway.

You can download the app from Google by pointing your web browser to http://m.google.com.

Sony Ericsson W595 Sakura: Latest In The Walkman Range

Sony have expanded their Walkman range to include a floral version of the Sony Ericsson W595, the “Sakura” edition.

The Sakura phone takes inspiration from the Japanese words for cherry blossom and good fortune. There are sketches of flowers on the front and rear of the phone and etched into the rear slider window. It has matching charms, a carrier pouch and ready-made floral themes that  react and change depending on the time of the day.

The Sakura phone joins the black, grey, pink and white handsets already available in the W595 range.

I’m not the girliest of girls so all this flowery stuff is a bit of an overkill but the big question for me is will it match the handbag?

Wooo..KDD brings out 3D phones

Japan are always one step ahead tech-wise.

They’ve had mobile phone wallets that let you pay for things with your phone for a while. It’s peculiar to see someone scanning a phone over a vending machine before they walk away with the contents. It’s a bit like stepping into the future or an episode of the Jetsons .

So, it makes sense that the stakes are always that bit higher with new gadget releases.

The new Ketai Hoo1 has an 3.1 inch hinged screen, named after it’s manufacturer Woo, that can display pictures and video content in 3D along with a button on the phone that takes you to a dedicated channel streaming 3D content over an integraetd 1Seg receiver.

Wooo for Woo.

Omio Post Featured On Carnival of The Mobilists!

Yay! Omio has managed to feature once again on the travelling show covering all that is good and great in the world of mobile phones, Carnival of the Mobilists!

Hosted this week by VoIP Survivor, our guest post from Electric Pig‘s James Holland about better mobility features in today’s social networks was rightly given pride of place!

Many thanks to James, Tsahi and the Mobilists!

Oh, and the picture? Has to be done, it’s a carnival!

Apple Defies Recession, Posts Record Q4 Profits Of $1.61bn

As the old Macintosh celebrates its 25th birthday this very week, it seems a fitting time for Apple’s quarterly earnings report to illustrate just how far they have come!

Posting revenues of $10.7 billion, record profits of $1.61 billion (£1.15bn) and sales of over 22.7 million iPods, they have shown themselves to be in the enviable position of a luxury retailer relatively unshaken by current economic woes.

The iPhone isn’t faring too badly either, moving 4.4 million units during the final quarter of 2008 – an 88% year on year improvement and quite a bitter pill for those who considered it to be a gimmick.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was suitably pleased: “Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history – surpassing $10bn in revenue for the first time ever.”

Congratulations, we just wonder what seismic shift in the industry Apple might come up with this year!

Source: Mobile Today