Category - Computers & Tech

I’ve written before that getting DAB radio in my car was one of the best things I have done. At the time, that little Pure Highway served its purpose well. But like most new technology it was consigned to the gadget drawer when I decided to get the DAB radio option in my Ford Focus.

Well, an email has just come from Sandicliffe Ford advising Ford owners who don’t have DAB that they can have it retro fitted for just £199.99 ahead of the planned switch-off of AM/FM stations in the UK. Obviously, this is for people around the East Midlands, though I would imagine dealers in other parts of the country will be offering similar deals.

DAB is a must in a car if you drive more than a handful of miles a week.

I’ve got mine on pre-order from Amazon. This really is The One that I’ve been waiting for!

My last three or four phones have all been HTCs, and I have never had even the slightest cause for complaint. However, I am on Orange pay-monthly, and the annoying thing about that is that your contract runs independently of any new phones being introduced. As a result, if you upgrade you can bet your life that a month later a new and much-improved model will be released, so you’re stuck with 18-months or more of contract to deal with.

The last two upgrades I knew which phone I wanted – it had been sitting there smiling at me as the months ticked away to the point where I could renew without having to buy myself out of contract. Then, as soon as I’d got it, out came a better one soon after.

Since December last year I’ve been eyeing up 4G under the mistaken impression that as an Orange customer I would be allowed to skip contracts and move to EE. At that time, though, I didn’t like any of the phones on offer. Hell will have to freeze over before I buy any Apple hardware, and the problem with most current smartphones is that they’re trying too hard to be almost-but-not-quite tablets. They look ridiculous (anyone who holds one of those up in front of me at a gig is going to get a mouthful). Most are bigger than anything I have owned since 1994.

They’re just too bloody big.

But I’d been aware of this new HTC for a while. It’s nowhere near as big as, say, a Samsung, yet it is bigger than a standard smartphone. When it became available on EE I decided the time was right to make the jump. The HTC One has been getting the most incredible reviews – the only bad one I’ve seen is from iFixit, who complain that you can’t take it apart yourself to tinker with the electronics (an absolutely pointless exercise for 99.999% of people who own a smartphone). But all other reviews have been through the roof.

A word about Orange, here, who I’ve been with since around 1994. They merged with T-Mobile a while back, and this was pretty confusing since both brands remained separate. All Orange and T-Mobile customers had access to the same expanded infrastructure, and your phone might show either “Orange” or “T-Mobile” depending on which part of the network it had picked up in any given location. But things got a whole lot worse when the EE brand was introduced with 4G last year.

We were told in a letter that the company was rebranding to become “EE”, and when you turned on your phone it would say EE instead of Orange or T-Mobile. What happens now is that when you call 150 on your “Orange” EE phone, they are still branded as Orange, and you have a bloody nightmare conversation every time when they ask “is this an EE number?” The correct answer would appear to be “yes” (your phone says it is on the EE network), but it turns out that the proper answer is actually “no” unless you’re already on 4G! And no one explains this when they ask. To add to the confusion, there is still an Orange website, but now it has confusing outlinks to EE’s own website website for some Q&A or FAQs. And since Orange’s minimalist livery in black, white, and orange is light years away from EE’s gaudy cyan and yellow colour scheme, the overall effect is amateurish, nauseating… and damned confusing.

To cut a long story short, I “upgraded” to 4G and the HTC One, having been assured by the sales guy that I could switch and keep my own number. This turned out to be complete bollocks, as when I got the new phone and enabled it my old one didn’t deactivate. After some phone calls, in which the people at EE clearly hadn’t got a clue, it turned out that the idiots had given me a new number. And the reason for that was that I couldn’t switch to 4G after all unless I bought out my contract. So much for nearly 20 years of loyal custom.

Of course, I did have another option. I was told I could have had two contracts side-by-side. What the hell planet are these idiots on?

I should point out here that ever since I joined Orange in 1994 (they were Hutchison Telecom back then) every upgrade, every insurance replacement, and almost anything else has gone through smoothly and promptly. Admittedly, I’ve argued with them before about offering new phones and upgrades to non-Orange customers for less than it costs existing customers to upgrade, but this was appalling customer service right from the off.

In the short time I had the EE upgrade in my hands, transferring all my contacts and text messages from my old HTC Sensation XE was simple with the transfer tool installed on the One. The phone was beautiful – and extremely fast.

But the only option was to return the phone – there was no way I was going to run two numbers side-by-side or pay for two contracts.

The one major learning point here for both me and EE is that never – not in a million years – will I ever move to 4G through EE. And when my contract with Orange-or-whatever-they-are-now is up next year, and even if I choose not to go with 4G at that time, I don’t know if I am going to remain with them. The whole organisation is a shambles now.

Back to the phone, though, it’s made out of a single piece of aluminium and it feels fantastic in your hand. The screen is incredible, and at 4.5” it is just the right size. It’s got a quad-core Snapdragon processor and outperforms everything else on the market – even the Galaxy S4. I didn’t get to try it out much further before I sent it back, but it is seriously a top-end device. All I have to do now is wait until it is in stock with Amazon – it was supposed to be released today but this has been put back by HTC. The saving grace is that the phone will be unlocked and there will be no restrictions placed on it by Orange or anyone else.

And for once, I am in on the ground floor. A brand new phone at the time of release, and one which is likely to be top-end for at least the next 12 months.

Update: I have the unlocked phone now!