Omio News Blog

Three Launches Pre-Emptive January Smartphone Sale, Starts 22nd December

An early Xmas gift from mobile network Three as they’ve decided to start their January sale before we’ve even unwrapped our presents, launching from 22nd December.

Both pay monthly and prepay are up for grabs in this winter warmer, with a fiver per month being saved on Android contracts and as much as £70 coming off the Samsung Galaxy W and Facebook-friendly HTC ChaCha on Pay As You Go.

Sylvia Chind, head of devices at Three said, “Smartphones will continue to be the must-have gadget in 2012 so we’re keen to give customers a head start in the New Year with the best phones on the most affordable price plans.

“Our January sale has been launched ahead of Christmas this year to help people planning to jump feet first into the world of smartphones, or those seeking a last-minute Christmas gift, get hold of the best possible deal on the UK’s fastest growing mobile network.”

Other exciting savings include the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc S going down to just £25 per month and the HTC Sensation becoming sub-£30 for 500 minutes, 5,000 texts and Three’s ever popular all-you-can-eat data offer.

Go on, treat yourself…

Mobile Phone Review Round Up: Samsung Galaxy Pro, Nokia X7, Samsung Tocco Icon, Sony Ericsson XPERIA neo and HTC Salsa

TechRadar

Samsung Galaxy Pro review

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Pro is a slippery little fish. We want to praise it for its keyboard, but berate it for its screen. Samsung could have helped matters by offering a higher resolution on the screen.

If you want a handset of this design, take a look at the HTC ChaCha or Nokia E6. But don’t forget the Sony Ericsson Xperia 10 Mini Pro which, while it is a side-slider, is teeny – or, indeed, any of the larger side-sliders that offer a more desirable, larger screen.

- Check out all the Samsung Galaxy Pro deals at OMIO today!

Nokia X7 review

Verdict

There are nice things we can say about the Nokia X7. It has good hardware design, a basically pleasing screen and good battery life. And Symbian Anna is a step in the right direction.

But we just aren’t sure where Anna is headed in the long term, and that alone could make the Nokia X7 a blind alley. And it doesn’t do anything supremely well.

If you are a Nokia fan and want a top quality camera you should be looking at the Nokia N8.

If you want a superb physical keyboard, then the Nokia E7 is worth your attention.

Great social networking integration? Go Android instead, with something such as the HTC Sensation.

With those bases covered, it’s tricky to see precisely where the Nokia X7 fits in.

- Check out all the Nokia X7 deals at OMIO today!

Cnet.co.uk

LG Optimus Me P350 review

Conclusion
You might have expected LG to better the Optimus One with the LG Optimus Me. Sadly, the Me is inferior in all but a few areas. The screen is smaller, the processor isn’t any faster and the camera’s still mediocre. Check out the Samsung Galaxy Fit, HTC Wildfire S and Optimus One before laying down your moolah.

- Check out all the LG Optimus Me deals at OMIO today!

Orange Rio II review

Conclusion
The Orange Rio II improves over its predecessor with a neater design, 3G and an updated operating system. Issues such as poor battery life, no Wi-Fi, unresponsive touchscreen and a generally slow processor take the edge off its performance, but you have to remember it’s costing you well under £100.

If you’re considering a BlackBerry 8520, but begrudge spending over £100 for a phone that lacks 3G, we’d recommend you seriously consider the Rio II. It’s cheaper and in many ways provides a superior experience.

- Check out all the Orange RIO II deals at OMIO today!

Pocket Lint

Samsung Tocco Icon review

Verdict
Overall, the Samsung Tocco Icon isn’t a massive step up from the Tocco Lite, but the inclusion of a capacitive touchscreen is certainly a compelling reason to buy if you liked the original phone. The compact chassis, slick design and ease of use also add to the package, while the features such as the straightforward audio player and the sneaky fake call function may appeal to some.

While the screen is large, the resolution isn’t great and that combined with the fact that there’s no 3G connectivity means that web browsing isn’t brilliant, although it is just about usable. Likewise, the social networking offering is very basic. What you really miss out on, however, is all the fun that you’d get opting for an entry-level Android phone with much more potential.

If your budget is tight, then the Samsung Tocco Icon offers you a reasonable touchscreen experience for your cash.

- Check out all the Samsung Tocco Icon deals at OMIO today!

Trusted Reviews

LG Optimus 3D review

Verdict

There’s plenty to like about the Optimus 3D, including its fun 3D features, fast processor and beautifully bright and vivid screen. However, problems with displaying 3D images on the screen and the phone’s short battery life mean that it’s not the must-buy handset that many were expecting.

- Check out all the LG Optimus 3D deals at OMIO today!

Reghardware

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo Android smartphone review

Verdict
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo has much of the cool technology sported by Sony Ericsson’s top-notch Xperia Arc but at a fraction of the price. It’s not as slim, but if you can put up with the bulk, it’s really a bit of a bargain.

- Check out all the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo deals at OMIO today!

Vodafone Smart Android smartphone review

Verdict
Though it runs Froyo and has a capacitive screen, the Vodafone Smart has been ruthlessly built down to a price. Despite that, for talking, e-mailing, texting, navigating and social networking it’s up to the job. Yes it falls down when faced with more demanding tasks, but a £75 mobile will never be the gaming or multi-media platform that a £400 1GHz Snapdragon handset is. The Orange SF is a better phone but then it’s twice the price and still doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash player

- Check out all the Vodafone Smart deals at OMIO today!

HTC Salsa Android smartphone review

Verdict
The HTC Salsa is a solidly built smartphone with a good screen, reasonable camera, fine UI and an emphasis on social networking, thanks largely to its clever Facebook button. This latter will endear it to ’bookers, but otherwise it doesn’t stand out strongly from HTC’s ever-expanding range of handsets.

- Check out all the HTC Salsa deals at OMIO today!

Sony Ericsson Reveals Some New Phones, XPERIAs Mostly

Okay, not that many new handsets, but it saves me writing individual posts about every single one.

First up is a flagship device that seems to iterate on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc and XPERIA Neo – despite those phones being fresh out of the gate themselves, they are already seeing a strong stablemate in the Sony Ericsson XPERIA ray.

The XPERIA ray continues this new line of very slim yet completely capable all-rounders, in this Android handset’s case that means a 3.3-inch touchscreen, a Reality Display with a Mobile BRAVIA Engine (Translation? The screen looks nice, as do the colours on it), as well as an 8.1-megapixel camera.

The Gingerbread version of Google’s OS is on board in the XPERIA ray and allowing for a bit of future-proofing, whilst the new ‘Facebook inside XPERIA’ app lends an additional level of integration between contacts on the device and sharing media on the famed social network (pictured above)…a little more than HTC fans may be used to, but certainly a familiar concept.

With a 1GHz processor and scheduled for a Q3 2011 release, the XPERIA ray looks to keep Sony Ericsson’s high-end handset fires burning into the winter.

Next is the Sony Ericsson XPERIA active, a kickflipping, white water rafting, Mountain Dew-drinking beast of a handset, ready for totally extreme action.

A dust and water-resistant device, the XPERIA active isn’t far off the pace of the XPERIA ray when it comes to features (3-inch touch display with ‘wet finger tracking’, Gingerbread Android OS, 5MP camera with HD video recording, 1GHz processor) , but is definitely geared more towards those with an active lifestyle. Hence the name.

Three time grand slam winning tennis player Maria Sharapova added: “I love this smartphone because it perfectly fits both my professional and personal needs.  It keeps me in touch with my friends as I travel the world on the pro tour and tracks my fitness both on and off the court.”

I love to think Maria was just wandering around Sony Ericsson HQ, popped her head in the press office and decided to chuck her comment into the release!

With built-in fitness apps including an impressive on-screen heart rate and pulse monitor (powered by ANT+, which lets compact technological stuff talk to  each other wirelessly), the XPERIA active will be available from Q3 2011.

Lastly is the Sony Ericsson txt, BlackBerry-styled, QWERTY keyboard-toting brethren of the Sony Ericsson txt pro we’d talked about previously…

All about messaging and with a ‘friends’ application that shows status updates from your five nearest and dearest, the Sony Ericsson txt looks to be a concerted effort to muscle into the younger market that BlackBerry Curve 8520 and their ilk are running in the entry-level and prepay markets.

That doesn’t mean that it’s without some serious smartphone-aping credentials, with a 3.2MP snapper and wi-fi (short for wireless-fireless*) on board.

A smart move, but with savvier youngsters than ever and Android seeing sub-£50 devices introduced by the likes of Samsung, does the Sony Ericsson txt have the mixture of features and fun to stake a claim in a crowded market?

We’ll see in Q3 2011.

* – not true.

Sony Ericsson Launches TXT Pro And Mix Walkman Handsets

Sony Ericsson chose today to embrace the world of social networking, taking to their burgeoning online community to reveal 2 new handsets, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman and the Sony Ericsson txt pro.

The announcement came through their Facebook page where they have been running a competition for four super-fans to review the phones before they were announced to a global audience.

Lesser fans can now vote on their favourite review (lives here but beware, you have to 'like' it to proceed!), and the reviewer with the highest number of votes will be granted their life’s desires (ten Sony Ericsson phones, of course!)

The devices themselves are both feature phones that seem to run on a proprietary operating system. Neither of the handsets are 3G enabled, so users will have to rely on Wi-Fi or the good old EDGE network for accessing the web.

Fans of the XPERIA mini range will notice that both of the phones have inherited the quartet of active areas in the touch-driven user interface, allowing users to put apps in each of the corner of the display for easy access.

The Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is, as the name suggests, a phone aimed squarely at music lovers with comes with 100MB of internal memory, as well as the ability to add a microSD card (up to 32GB in size) for storing all your Bon Jovi and Duran Duran classics on.

The feature on this phone that has got us worried is the karaoke function, you would definitely understand if you’d been at the office Christmas party.

With one small click on the microphone key you can mute the dulcet tones of Lady Gaga and then sing along to the words on the screen to create your very own version of 'Poker Face'.

While this may not be our cup of tea in Omio Towers, it is sure to appeal to all those bedroom superstars singing into their hairbrushes (other pretend microphones are available). The phone also comes with two interchangeable bands that festoon the edge of the phone, that Sony Ericsson says users can use to “adapt the colour of your phone to your mood”...although we aren’t quite sure what mood a green hen is intended to reflect.

The txt pro (yes they really have spelt it 'txt,' just like cool kids) has a slide out QWERTY keyboard and has a pretty nifty feature that pulls together tweets, Facebook updates and SMS messages from up to five friends and displays them in a single stream...can you say 'social networking savvy'?

Both the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman and txt pro will be released in Q3 of this year, but unfortunately no pricing has yet been released.

Sign up to express your interest, or check out literally tons of other mobile phone deals here on Omio!

O2 Exclusive White Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play Arrives On UK Shores, With Three Free Games!

After numerous delays, Apple finally released the white iPhone 4 at the end of April, 11 months after the phone’s lighter hue was initially announced.

Luckily a certain Japanese/Swedish phone maker hasn’t had nearly as many problems with the white version of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play, and it is now available to order from O2 Direct a mere 2 months after the phone was let loose on the Great British public.

The phone is available for free on a 24 month contract for £34 per month and comes with 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 100MB data, with O2 is also throwing in 3 bonus games and a multimedia dock worth £29.99.

The dock charges the phone and can also be used to connect the handset to a home stereo system.

To claim the free games, players should visit www.sonyericsson.com/O2bonusgames and enter their mobile number, followed by their IMEI code (located on the label under the battery) to choose their 3 bonus games – courtesy of O2 and Gameloft – until the 31st of July.

With the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play getting an Android update to 2.3.3 earlier this week, now is the perfect time to pick up the definitive gaming handset.

Nokia Comes Top In O2 Eco Survey, Saving The Planet One Phone At a Time

Mobile network O2 revealed the latest scores in their planet-loving Eco rating scheme today and manufacturer Nokia has taken the top two spots, with the Nokia C6-01 and Nokia E7-00 both scoring 4.1 out of 5 (stars? wedges? rainbow wedges?).

The Nokia C7-02 scored came joint second with a respectable score of 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Mini, Samsung Galaxy Ace and Sony Ericsson X8 round out the selection, meaning three of the top six phones come from the Finnish manufacturer’s stable.

This will be welcome news for the handset giant who has dominated the headlines after shacking up with Microsoft for their future smartphones, has seen a slight slump in their share of the smartphone market, as well as recently announcing that their Symbian operating system will be no more come 2012.

O2 launched their Eco rating scheme in Aug 2010 and it currently covers 90% of the handsets ranged by the provider. It covers 3 broad areas including ‘the overall environmental impact of the device over its lifespan’, ‘;the functionality of handsets, highlighting devices which help people live more sustainable lives’, as well as ‘the ethical performance of manufacturers’.

With Nokia keeping costs low and quality high, as well as selling resilient mobiles to the furthest flung corners of the globe (where the brand name is still synonymous with the term ‘mobile phone’), it is all the more impressive that the Finnish phone maker is still great good at making devices in huge volumes, whilst still maintaining a relatively small impact on the planet at large.

MWC 2011: Sony Ericsson Booth Tour – Press Start To (XPERIA) Play

Sony Ericsson were smaller in presence but far larger in vision at this year’s Mobile World Congress, prepping only four phones with one clear goal – to leverage the Sony brand and push the XPERIA name even further. With a profitable 2010 and over 9 million Android-powered XPERIAs sold, Sony Ericsson certainly look to be on the comeback trail.

What’s in store for 2011? Well, from Playstation to BRAVIA, Sony Ericsson seems eager to elevate themselves and be mentioned in the same breath as their Japanese parent. Will these new handsets do the trick? Let’s find out.

Read more…

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Now Available for Preorder – Free From £35 Per Month

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play deals are now listed via BuyMobilePhones.net as being available for pre-order.

The UK’s big four carriers are listed – O2, Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile, but nothing for Three or Virgin as yet.  The prices for the handset range from FREE on a fairly steep £35 per month package, all the way up to a £249.99 handset cost on the various contracts available, too numerous to list here.

Meanwhile, Expansys.com lists the handset at £539.99 SIM-free and have pencilled in the availability date as the 31st March 2011, so a maximum of just over 6 weeks to wait!

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play has to be one of the most poorly kept secrets since, well the iPhone 4, and we wonder if testing the public reactions in some way is due to a little hesitancy or insecurity on behalf of Sony themselves.

Sony stopped short of allowing the subsidiary Sony Ericsson to call it the ‘PSP Phone’ or similar, settling for a slightly less commital ‘PlayStation Certified’ stamp of approval, which only covers the XPERIA Play’s hardware setup, rather than gaming credentials.

The jury’s still out on whether the XPERIA Play will really do justice to the PlayStation brand, although Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai was there to show support for the handset when he appeared onstage at the MWC 2011 on Sunday night during the official reveal.

The XPERIA Play packs a 1Ghz Qualcomm Scorpion ARMv7 processor (an interesting choice given the profusion of multi-core mobiles coming this year), has 400MB RAM, a 4″ capacitive touch screen running at 854 x 640 pixels, and runs on Android 2.3  or ‘Gingerbread’.

Onboard storage comes via an included 8GB MicroSD, expandable to 32GB.  The handset can also record 720p video and DLNA will stream it to compatible televisions.  In addition to a 5MP camera at the rear, a 2MP front facing camera is on hand to provide video calling functionality for all you Skype heads out there.

The controller itself has the familiar four button directional pad, triangle/circle/cross/square buttons as well as L and R shoulder buttons, instantly familiar to the Playstation range.  Some gamers earlier bemoaned the lack of analogue sticks, but it so happens that the slightly mysterious touch interface in the middle will be usable in lieu, giving fans of FPS games like genre stalwarts Call of Duty and Killzone something to sleep well on.

Oh yeah and before we forget, it’s also a phone! You know, to call people on, although we can’t imagine that serious gamers will want to be disturbed when they’re right in the middle of a serious multiplayer firefight.   Good luck making that call!

Check out Omio’s deals page where you can find the best offers on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play.

MWC 2011: Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play – Full Specs Revealed

Sony Ericsson’s earlier press conference was rather thin on the ground with the specifications of its new ‘Playstation Certified’ XPERIA Play gaming handset, but we can now reveal the full official feature list straight from the horse’s mouth…

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play

Available in Black or White

Specifications:

• Operating system: Google Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• Processor: 1 GHz Scorpion ARMv7
• 4″ capacitive touchscreen 480 x 854 pixels (FWVGA capable of 16,777,216 colours)

• Size: 119 x 62 x 16 mm
• Weight: 175 grams

• Phone memory: 400 MB
• Memory card support: microSD, up to 32 GB
• Memory card included: 8GB microSD
• 3.5 mm audio jack, aGPS, Bluetooth, DLNA streaming, Micro USB Connector
• Synchronisation via Facebook, Google Sync, Exchange ActiveSync, Sony Ericsson Sync
• 5.1 megapixel camera with Auto Focus, LED Flash, Geo tagging and Image Stabiliser, Touch focus, Video recording and Video light.
• Sony Ericsson Music player, Stereo Speakers, Bluetooth stereo (A2DP)

Talk time/Standby Time

• Talk time GSM/GPRS: Up to 8 hrs 25 min
• Standby time GSM/GPRS: Up to 425 hrs

• Talk time UMTS: Up to 6 hrs 25 min
• Standby time UMTS: Up to 413 hrs

• Talk time CDMA2000®: Up to 7 hrs 40 min
• Standby time CDMA2000®: Up to 405 hrs

• Game play time: Up to 5 hrs 35 min
• MP3 playback: Up to 30 hrs 35 min

The handset is due to be released in March, so check out Omio’s deals page as we get more details closer to launch.

Orange: Q2 2011 release for Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play, XPERIA Neo, exclusive Black XPERIA Arc

Orange have been confirmed in a press release to be ranging the eagerly awaited Android phones from Sony Ericsson. Due for release in the second quarter of 2011 are the impossibly thin Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc, the HD video-centric Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo and of course, the Playstation Certified XPERIA Play.

Orange also announced that they have exclusive rights to the black variant of the XPERIA Arc….they do like their colourways, as do we! We are currently at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona play testing the new handsets and will be posting up our impressions, pics and videos!

Prices and plans are not yet available, but as soon as we have them we’ll post them to the deals page.