Retro Mobile Reminisces

This time of year is now pencilled in for Apple's iThing announcements, but it's also the time of year when I've bought the majority of my mobile phones.

The reason is simple: Back in the "golden era" of mobile phones (2005-2009), feature phones were churned out by handset manufacturers in their droves.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG were the main rivals, with many others coming and going over the years.

Feature phones were successful not because each one was only a minor upgrade of the last flagship model (Apple and Android - I mean you), but the fact that each model was different and customers were left with choice.
Mobile phones back then ranged from about £20-£500, and you could pick a phone to suit your budget, own it for a year before selling it on and buying another great (yet different) model.

Around this time of year some of the greatest feature phones had been announced at Mobile World Congress in February and had only just reached the shelves in the UK in Summer. A couple of months later, and the prices dropped. Add to this the handsets released around this time of year in time for Christmas, and there was a lot of choice available - and the prices were great, too!

After several years of mobile phone contracts, I decided that mobile phones were cheap enough to buy outright, and it was cheaper to go down the PAYG route to phone ownership and usage.

So, onto the retro mobile trip down memory lane...

2009: Nokia XpressMusic 5230 - My First Touchscreen Phone

This great phone was my first touchscreen device. (The Samsung Tocco Lite was the must-have touchscreen phone for many at the lower price point.) Ok, the screen was resistive, but the stylus that slid securely into the phone's housing was fast and accurate.

It had Nokia/Ovi Maps onboard, which was great, but I had to buy a separate Bluetooth GPS receiver to make use of this feature.

I loved this phone, and the camera was really great for it's time. The various themes that could be downloaded meant that I could change the appearance of the screen regularly.

2010: Samsung Galaxy Europa i5500 - My First Android Phone

What a shocker this thing was! I desperately wanted a phone which would sync my contacts and calendar, and GPS was something that I had to have, so this first foray into Google's new OS seemed like the perfect, affordable candidate. I did get this on a 12 month Talkmobile contract, but I'd been using Nokia's Series 60 smartphones for years and was used to their meagre data usage and week long battery life. This Samsung sapped data so quickly that I was alarmed that my 500MB allowance would be gone before the month's end. It's battery life barely made it through the day and I hated the tiny, sensitive capacitive touchscreen, so it went back to Carphone Warehouse a few days later to be exchanged for a Nokia XpressMusic 5530, which wiped the floor with this pile of poo.

2010: Nokia 5530 XpressMusic - Back to Symbian

Now that I was tied in to a Talkmobile contract, I may as well have made use of my 500MB data allowance, so rather than my previous Nokia 5230 which was WiFi only, this new model had 3G, which finally had a use in 2010.

This was a good phone, with built in GPS and great maps, but I was unable to sync my treasured contacts and calendar events, so ultimately I returned to Android in early 2011 with the Samsung Galaxy Apollo GT-5800.

2011: Samsung Galaxy Fit 5670 - A New Version of Android

This curvy little phone was great. My Samsung Galaxy Apollo suffered terribly when trying to get a GPS fix, the camera was really poor compared to my Nokia phones of two years previous, and to top things off the operating system was Android 2.2 (Froyo), whereas Gingerbread (2.3) was the new flavour that worked with most of the new apps. Little did I realise that I was being sucked into Android's OS upgrade cycle.

I was happy with this phone, especially the camera, but internal storage became a problem when it became filled with text messages.

2014: Moto G - Happy with Android Once More...

My final (for now) foray into Android came to a sticky end: Read my thoughts about this phone and Android in 2015 in my recent blog post HERE.

If this issues that I have with Android Lollipop aren't bad enough, the further fragmentation of Android almost makes me want to give iOS a go!

- And one last problem with the original Moto G: It might have an up to date version of Android, but it's an impossible phone to live with due to the lack of internal storage. Even with just the core apps installed (and these are non-removable!), the phone needs to be tinkered with and have its cache cleared each time an app needs updating. I'm sick of it.

Given that I was happy with this budget blower last year over my Samsung Galaxy S3, this clearly indicates to me that Android is constantly progressing and requiring ever more expensive hardware to run on.

Upgrading to Windows 10: Banging my Head Against a Wall

I'm still trying to upgrade an old Windows 7 laptop of mine to Windows 10.

Everything is ok with the drivers and things, but no matter what I try I cannot get the Media Creation Tool to install Windows 10.

I've even tried using the Media Creation Tool to try to create a USB stick drive but it's still not happy.

Microsoft, you expect the world to grow up with Windows 10!?

All I can say to you is this:

Something happened.

Moto G (2013) in 2015: Android Agony

Two years ago the original Motorola Moto G (2013) was released.
Damn, it was a good mobile phone, with the likes of HotUKDeals going into rapture over it's features and affordable price tag.

The Moto G 1st Generation (2013)

- How does it perform in 2015?

I commented recently about Apple's hypegasm iThing launch event, and how this time of year I get very nostalgic due to the number of great phones I've bought each August/September, which made me decide to write this article about how the original Moto G handles the world two years after its release.

I bought one of these great little phones this time last year for just over £100. I'd been using Windows Phones for about nine months, but was feeling the need to have something a bit more functional as I rarely had access to a PC last year.

I'd tried to go back to my Samsung Galaxy S3, but its awful battery life was really dogging me, so I decided to give Android a fair chance by buying this budget lovely.

The Moto G impressed me right from the start. The screen was very bright and crisp, the phone rarely lagged and the battery life was, by comparison with the S3, simply amazing.

I was very happy with my Moto G for several months until February this year when it upgraded to Android Lollipop 5.0.

Android Lollipop has completely turned me off the whole operating system.

Simple tasks such as checking notifications now require a range of taps, double taps and a series of swipes.

Android Lollipop now "thinks" for you and pushes certain notifications to you at the expense of others.

To make matters worse, Android Lollipop has also introduced a massive amount of lag to my Moto G - which I still hold onto as my only remaining Android device.

My affair with Android Lollipop was short lived. I was excited when my Moto G was first upgraded, but over the course of one torrid weekend this relationship turned very sour.

My once trusted Moto G now saw fit to wake me up in the middle of the night because an email had arrived, rather than dutifully letting me sleep by using the "Silent Hours" feature.

My phone was turning against me and making my life uncomfortable. The sporadic night-time notifications even started to make my wife suspicious, as the once previously silent mobile was now pushing "important" notifications to me 24 hours a day, keeping us both awake.

I couldn't trust my Moto G anymore.

Within two days of having the sickly new version of Android's sugary operating system on my Moto G, I relegated my Moto to the bedside drawer and returned to my trusty Nokia Lumia 620.

Why did it go so wrong for such a great mobile?

Google is keen to make every new version of Android more "compatible" with more devices, and Google keeps telling us that their OS will work on devices with less than 1GB of RAM, yet this is not the case. Android Lollipop slowed my previously swift Moto G to a crawl, and that doesn't even include the additional time it takes to navigate the now extensive and incomprehensible menu system!

The original Moto G has been updated to a modern version of Android, and is now more up to date than many (much cheaper) Android handsets that are still being sold by retailers, so this example proves, once more, that Android really is an arms race that you can't win: You constantly need to upgrade to a higher-specced handset on an annual basis.

Not a Fanboi

Today's iPhone and iThing announcements have left me feeling more indifferent than ever.


I haven't followed Apple's hypegasm at all, mainly because none of it interests me and the tech media have gone crazy over yet more incremental improvements to devices that should have had such features a year or more ago. FFS you pay enough for iThings, you'd expect them to lead the pack like they did in 2007.


Speaking of 2007, I've read with nostalgic whimsy the evolution of the iPhone, and it's made me look back on the other handsets which were around at this time, and around the time of other iPhone releases.
This trip down memory lane made me realise just how many phones I've bought at this time of year, and in a soon to be written blog post, I'll recap these phones and my very reason for building my own PAYG deals website: http://mobile-networks-uk.weebly.com/


I shan't write much tonight, as the next 48 hours are a waste of time due to so many people reading and writing about the new iPhones, so I'll sign off for now.


What you can be assured of it's that I'll never have any iPhone deals on my websites, blog or Twitter account as the iPhone becomes old hat so quickly and it is such a poor value device.

Giffgaff 4G For All: A Shaky Start

Mobile PAYG network giffgaff have recently whittled down their range of 30 day PAYG mobile bundles (aka "Goodybags") to reduce confusion and allow for 4G services for all customers at no extra cost.

Whilst I welcomed this news openly, giffgaff failed to deliver when the scheme went live: New customers and customers who had not previously purchased an "old" 4G Goodybag were unable to access 4G services for around five days.
In my recent post HERE, I went on to say that a "third party" was working on this problem on behalf of giffgaff.
Well, many existing giffgaff customers did find that their 4G services were finally activated on Sunday evening, but giffgaff were reluctant to step up and make any announcements regarding this service outage until things were moving in a positive direction.

In giffgaff's online "community", a member of staff eventually said that services would finally be enabled for most customers on Sunday, though there are still a few customers who have joined after the 2nd of September who may still be experiencing problems.
Don't get me wrong, giffgaff isn't awful, but the Community Managers have asked us, the customers what we would like to see. One of the main issues is that there is little to no community involvement with giffgaff's proper staff.
So, once again giffgaff experiences an outage and looks to a third party to fix it whilst leaving the members (sorry, customers) to deal with the questions and complaints in the online community forums.

Giffgaff, take responsibility. If you can't do that, don't run a mobile network and money laundering service (or whatever giffgaff money is).
It's just common courtesy to inform your customers if you are having a problem, or at least make this known to the people who work for peanuts in payback on your online help and support forums.

Now that I've got this off my chest, I can happily say that 4G for all on giffgaff is working for the vast majority of people.
I still use giffgaff as my main number, and there are many benefits including free same network calls and texts for three months if you top up by at least £10 (not £10 a month, like most networks who offer this perk).
If you would like a free giffgaff SIM with £5 of free credit (you can't get this if you order directly from giffgaff), just go through my own affiliate link HERE.

EE Finally Provide a Unlock Code. Customer Service at its Worst

Following on from my post last Friday regarding EE's absolutely abysmal customer service - or lack of it - I am glad to be finally able to put a lid on this debacle.

EE have - after nearly one month - provided me with a phone unlocking code. A "service" that they contract out badly and still manage to make a mess of.

To recap; EE have managed to create a catalogue of errors in providing me with a simple phone unlocking code. They incorrectly entered my IMEI code, made me wait weeks and promised to maintain good customer care skills by providing me with this service free of charge, and have since made me wait even longer and still charged me for it!

Last Friday's post is available HERE, and I let rip. Please do have a read, if you haven't done so already.

Anyhoo, I have finally received my code and successfully unlocked my mobile, but it shouldn't have been so hard or unpleasant.

EE are now bottom of my list as far as network recommendations go, and they are highly likely to remain at the bottom for a very long time.
If they sell their business to another company, I might try them again, but for the foreseable future, their customer service truly is every bit as bad as some people say it is.

In fact, this incident has made me more determined than ever to further build my PAYG mobile website (mobile-networks-uk.weebly.com) by adding network reviews.
I did say that I would add some network operator reviews to my site at some point, and I will probably start work on this aspect over this coming weekend.

Just in case anyone from EE does read this, I'm sorry but I can't be sweetened with a deal - I cannot use your network at home, work, or any of the places in-between.
You say that you are the "Biggest, fastest and most reliable network", but not anywhere within a 15-20 mile radius of here you're not.

Recruitment Agencies; My Daily Rant

I've been looking for a job on and off since 2007. During that time I've taken one new job, so I'm clearly very picky - or more likely there really aren't that many solid jobs out there.

However, the company that I work for is far less secure than it was when I joined in 2011. Therefore it pays to be a few steps ahead of the game and have my CV out there ready for when I need to make my next move.

Unfortunately, this isn't 2001. Head hunting doesn't happen anymore (those that say they've been head-hunted have actually been mugged into taking jobs that nobody else wanted).

Because my CV is out on the main job websites (Reed, Jobsite, etc.), it gets picked up by salespeople - sorry, recruitment agencies - and I get numerous phone calls and scattershot emails asking me if I'd be interested in some job which is clearly totally unsuitable for me for various obvious reasons.

The most obvious of these is the fact that I'm a permanent employee in my current job. In fact I've never contracted in my life, so why would I start now on an "amazing opportunity for a 6 month contract"?

I know that recruitment agencies want as many candidates on their books as possible, but they also want to shift vacancies fast, as well.
But, by sending out lots of shoddily-worded emails targeting candidates with no interest/experience in contract work, these agencies are making themselves known for peddling bad jobs. I'm also guessing that the candidates they put forward are also as clueless.
The thing is that candidates aren't all stupid.
I recognise phone numbers and email addresses that keep offering these "fantastic opportunities", and as a result I'd never go through any of these recruitment agencies.

If you are a such a recruitment agency, change your tactics now. Would be candidates such as myself are tired of your sales pitches and are now going directly to employers to cut out the middle man.

I will be writing more about the world of job hunting and recruitment in this blog soon, as it is something that I do spend a lot of time on and might even help you to understand what recruitment agencies need to do, what you need to do when looking for a job, and what employers should be doing - and in that final case I would recommend that you go back to recruiting the old fashioned way; recruitment agencies aren't the best option anymore.