Like the Wi-Fi model it has a 9.7 in IPS and scratch resistant screen with a resolution of 768x1024. An A5 dual core 1GHz processor with a dedicated GPU and 512 MB of RAM.  A front and rear camera with the rear camera capable of recording 720p at 30fps. Access to the Appstore and is available with either 16, 32 or 64GB of internal memory.

It also differs from the Wi-Fi model in the fact that it contains a GPS receiver allowing use of navigation software such as Google Maps. The primary reason for this addition is that Apple never envisioned the Wi-Fi model being used on the go.

Surprisingly just like the Wi-Fi model it is smaller than the original iPad models and even more surprisingly it is the same size as the iPad 2 Wi-Fi model being only 6g lighter!

The iPad 2 3G is available from Freedom Mobiles

Symbian was designed for phone’s before the iPhone revolution, Nokia needed an OS for the touchscreen smartphone era. Nokia developed an OS designed for touchscreen smartphones and tablets called Maemo. However users were still swayed by the appeal of the iPhone and Android was proving a far more popular open source derivate; Nokia’s market position was shrinking. They needed something fresh and they also needed help!

MeeGo was first brought to life by an aim to merge Maemo and Intel’s Moblin into one OS. Intel’s part in this project was stated to be due to Windows 7 lack of decent support for Intel’s Atom processor. It is also back by a number of large companies ranging from car and computer manufactures to software and gaming companies. Nokia are (or at least were) the only phone company backing MeeGo and for many MeeGo is synonymous with Nokia’s N9 and N9 only (with exception to the N950, a developerment version of the N9 which is only offered to developers).

Because of this MeeGo’s time on mobiles may be at a very early end since Nokia climbed into bed with Microsoft and now uses Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone OS. However it is still intended for use on Tablets, Notebooks, In-Car entertainment devices and other devices which may use ARM or low end x86 processors. However as time goes on and competition grows bigger it may be hard for MeeGo to carve a place within these technologies and may be relegated to specialist devices or dropped altogether.

It is a shame as MeeGo gave Nokia the uniqueness it needed to compete against iOS and Android in the smartphone world; although this uniqueness may still be achieved due to many phone manufacturers dropping Windows Phone 7 which may leave Nokia the only Company taking Windows Phone 7 seriously.

My superiors at Freedom Mobiles where gracious enough to give me a Nokia N9 to ‘play with’, with the condition that I fix it! Once fixed I was presented with an operating system with an intuitive and fun to use UI. Everything is swipe based and a joy to use. Swiping to exit an app or to access a previously opened app in its current state; it makes multitasking on a phone easier to use than Android. Many major services are built into the core of the phone. I accessed the accounts icon and entered my credentials for Facebook, Skype, Google and Twitter (support for Whatsapp is said to be coming in the next few weeks) and was amazed to be able to read all status updates from Facebook and Twitter in one feed, also all of my messages from Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Google where integrated alongside my SMS messages making keeping in touch such a breeze.

Such support for an operating system that is currently and probably going to only exist on one mobile device was such a surprise and this support will to continue in the short term at least. MeeGo 1.3 is due out at the end of May, however the update will be minor and will only concentrate on stability and bug-fixes.

However the idea of greater integration of communication services into the core of the OS and the general ease of the UI may hopefully filter onto other phones. MeeGo will survive due to its fully open sourced nature, but use of the name MeeGo may not continue due to trademark issues.

It will remain as Nokia’s ‘Plan B’

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Although Neil Papworth sent the first text message 20 years ago using the standards we use today, the birth of the idea is said to have come from a gentleman by the name of Raina Fortini who being financially broke at the time utilised a clever 2 way communication system using the pager. Pagers were a one-way communications device used in the 80s to send short digit only messages; this message was usually a number to which the receiver would then ring to speak to the sender. Raina realised that by turning the pager upside down he could send simple messages by using the upside down numbers as letters (I’m sure we’ve all written 5318008 on our calculators in maths!) For a year this was his only means of communication with a friend in Florida and they managed to create a crude language from upside down numbers. An amazing example of technology created through necessity.

Today we send around 8 billion text messages a day, it has become the biggest form of mobile phone communication used worldwide and its strict 160 character limit has given birth to micro-blogging services such as Twitter. Aside from one to one communication we use SMS to vote on TV shows, buy tickets for trains and receive alerts such as: sport scores, latest news, train timetables and hospital appointments. You can even contact the emergency services via SMS. Although not strictly SMS, images and video can be sent using a similar protocol.

It has also led to the growth of ‘sexting’ and ‘cyber bullying’ as it gives voice to those less confident over the phone or face to face. Although these are unwanted side effects, allowing for greater communication between people is an amazing side effect.

It has also caused a massive change in the way we write and communicate. Due to older phones not having full QWERTY keyboards and instead only have a 0-9 dial pad users in the past had to use slower forms of typing, usually pressing certain keys a number of times in order to get the correct letter. To speed this up users created a form of shorthand such as ‘ur’ meaning ‘you are’. Although this wasn’t the first time such shorthand had been used as teenagers developed acronyms in chat rooms such as LOL and ASL to speed up typing. However the limited keyboard on a phone made shorthand a necessity for many and has now entered into the lexicon of the language of today, annoying many teachers and purists.

The price of text messaging is regarded as extortionate by many. At around 10p a message and a message size of up to 160 bytes it costs the user approximately £655.36 per MB in data use! With most providers in the UK charging around £1 per MB outside of any allowance you can see why phone companies love SMS as 20% of their profit is generated from this service. You’d think that they’d earn more as the data price is over 600x what they’d charge for conventional data use. But as most people have text allowances ranging in the hundreds and even thousands, phone companies rely on customers who are not savvy and don’t take out text bundles as part of their plan and pay by the message. So make sure you’re using an adequate SMS allowance, even many Pay As You Go services give a SMS bundle as part of the plan.

For those using smartphones an alternative would be to use an instant messenger service. Whatsapp is a very popular service that allows you to send free messages to other phones with the Whatsapp application installed by utilising your phones data connection. Whatsapp can be installed on a number of devices and isn’t just limited to the big boys such as Android and iPhone. Windows Mobile, Blackberry and even Nokia’s aging Symbian can all join in the fun. Whatsapp also allows the user to send images, video and audio for free, something that carries a large premium when done via traditional methods. Another more traditional method is via email, but emails are not tied to a phone and people have many different email addresses.

With the advent of constant data connections and apps such as Whatsapp you would think that the future is nigh for SMS; why pay for a service you can get for free? Well the one big advantage SMS has over every other service available is the fact that virtually every mobile phone on the planet can send and receive SMS; it is built into the 2G specification and I have yet to see anyone use a 1G phone in this day and age. However SMS will need to compete if it is to remain relevant and with SMS being such a large part in a phone company’s profit they aren’t going to want to see it die anytime soon.

SMS has been a revolution in the way we communicate. From what gave birth to Twitter gave birth to the social uprisings of the Middle East in 2011. It has changed our language and the way we interact. It has also unfortunately led to deaths due to drivers giving more attention to their phone than to the road. It has been a World changer and without it our lives would be very different.

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The CPU is now a dual core 1GHz processor allowing almost double the performance for properly written apps. The RAM has also been double to 512 MB and the GPU has been rated as almost nine times as powerful. The screen remains the same size at 9.7in with the same resolution of 1024x768 (a 4:3 aspect ratio) and no other features have been removed from the original iPad such as Bluetooth, WiFi (a,b,g,n) and access to the Appstore to which there are now thousands of specially designed tablet apps.

What’s new though is the camera, two cameras in fact, one on the front and the other on the rear. The rear camera is only 0.7MP however it is capable of recording video at 720p. The front camera is for designed video phone calls, a technology that had tried to be a success when 3G phones first emerged. However Apple’s take on this has given new life to this technology thanks to Facetime which is an app that will allow you to speak and view any other Facetime user for free. Front facing cameras are now one again standard on high end phones an tablets and it’s all thanks to the iPad 2.

The most amazing thing about the iPad 2 is how they’ve managed to keep all the old features, add new features, double up on some of the specs yet still the size of the iPad 2 is slightly smaller than the iPad and is almost half as thin! It is also a good 15% lighter than the iPad. Don’t ask me how they’ve done that!

The Apple iPad 2 is available from Freedom Mobiles

Due to the large display some of you on the smaller side of life may find it hard to get your little mits around it, but at just 8.9mm thin you wont have trouble fitting it into your pocket.
As with many of the new HTCs we're treated to Dr Dre Beats Audio which is great and with the best battery life out
of the One range you should be able to get a full day out of your HTC One X even with heavy usage.

The packaging is a little strange - not quite as flash as some of the others out there, but that's due to the packaging being sourced from renewable materials, 100% recyclable and biodegradable and printed with soy ink!
An interesting move from HTC, albeit a little strange as the environmental offset from creating a mobile phone is huge compared to the packaging but maybe they have quotas to meet.

Check the Freedom Mobiles store for used HTC One X!

The iPad 3G contains the same specs as the iPad such as: -

• 1GHz A4 CPU and dedicated GPU
• 9.7in Display with a resolution of 768 x 1024
• 256MB RAM
• Available with 16/32/64GB of internal storage
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
• The slick iOS UI with access to the Appstore

Where is differs is of course in the name, this model can connect to 3G services allowing an internet connection on the go. For this you will need to sign up for a data only micro sim card. It’s a quad band device so it can be used virtually world wide

The iPad 3g also comes with GPS, something the iPad lacks. This will allow you to use navigation programs and also have fun with augmented reality apps.

Due to the extras the final difference is the weight of the device being 50g heavier than the iPad. But the size still remains exactly the same and is still well under 1KG.

Click to see iPad 3Gs available from Freedom Mobiles!

We will start with the specs. Being the way we are we would want the phone to be as beefy as possible so we would obviously want a quad core processor like the one found in the HTC One X or the upcoming Samsung Galaxy SIII (to be announced later today) we would also want at least 2GB of RAM in order to keep as many processes in memory as possible and of course a powerful GPU would power our games and also our UI which will have no slow down issues whatsoever. For us internal HD space is no longer a big issue due to cloud storage becoming the norm, this would cut costs significantly however 16GB would perhaps still be needed for local apps and anything else needed to be stored locally. Expandable memory would still need be an option.

For the screen you’d think we would want it as big as possible, but no, we have our dream tablet for that so our phone should be portable. Personally we feel that 4 in is more than big enough, however we would demand that this screen have a resolution of 720p. Having 1080p on a small screen would be a waste of money and battery as it would hardly be utilised; at the end of the day unless you’re using a magnifying glass, icons and options on your phone will still have to be as big as your finger tip. The screen should be virtually scratch resistant and can survive a drop of 6 ft onto a sharp object, anything else is wishful thinking! Corning Gorilla Glass is becoming more and more widespread offering a screen the same strength as sapphire crystal and is becoming thinner with every iteration.

Talking of visual options the phone should come equipped with a projector that works in moderate lighting conditions as opposed to only working in complete darkness; we may want to present our ideas in locations other than a dark room or when we’re sleeping! The Galaxy Beam comes with a projector, but at the moment is only useful in very dark conditions.

We were slow takers to the world of on-screen keyboards, maybe it’s our big fingers that can’t accurately touch the required keys! A physical QWERTY keyboard would be an option to overcome this; however we still find it difficult to work on these tiny keyboards due to our afore-mentioned big manly fingers. Fortunately on-screen keyboard technology has come a long way, some keyboards can predict what you may type next using advanced algorithms and looking at your previous conversations, some keyboards can be utilised by swiping your fingers across the desired keys as opposed to touching each individual key. Either way we would want these options available to us so the opportunity to change our input settings would be a must.

Speech recognition should be mature enough to use casually (much like they would in Star Trek when communicating with the ship’s computer). We would be able to perform any command or compose any message by voice with the phone being in our pockets. Obviously having our phone constantly in a state that can listen to us would be a huge battery drainer, so just like in Star Trek we would have a button (not necessarily on my shirt) that we would press in order to communicate. This could be utilised using NFC (as discussed earlier). We would wear a NFC ring, bracelet or even microchip that when 4cm away from my phone would switch the phone to a listen state, when more than 4cm away would put the phone back in standby. Maybe wishing for the maturity of speech recognition is still a far off dream, Siri is a milestone in the technology but many still have issues getting Siri to recognise their commands.

The camera should work in many different lighting conditions. Having an optical zoom would be amazing but we can see the difficulties in adding one onto our aesthetically pleasing dream case. We would like to see where Nokia is going with their Pure View technology as it may negate the need for an optical zoom (unless you want professional level photography, digital zoom will never replace optical zoom at this level). The video should record at 1080p at 60fps and we would be able to take pictures at the same time. The front facing camera should make us look slimmer and more attractive... wishful thinking.

An eternal battery would be a dream, but a more feasible and ideal battery would be one that could survive a full 24 hour day with heavy use. In our opinion full use would be a few hours talking, sending constant emails and SMS, is constantly connected to 3G services and Wi-Fi whenever possible, Bluetooth and NFC is always ready on standby, playing a couple of games and videos, listening to a few hours of music, etc. This should all be possible to throughout 24 hours with enough charge left to stick back on the charger. The phone should also be waterproof for at least a few seconds (the time it takes to yank it out of the toilet), this might be difficult unless your phone is a uni-body design and in this case would make battery replacement very difficult.

The OS of the phone would have a slick easy to use UI, but behind all this would be all the options we would ever need to change every setting possible. We would not be blocked from installing the apps we want based on carrier or country.

We would name the phone the Dream One. However by the time we reach our idea of the pinnacle of mobile technology, newer technology will have come and changed the way I use our phones. We would then have to write another article about what would be our new dream phone. We look forward to writing about the Dream Two in 2017!

If you have any ideas about the dream phone please leave your comments below. Also Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, please also follow us on Twitter @freedommobiles and like us on Facebook for further updates!

There is however another option, one that in the long run works out cheaper, gives you an unlocked phone, gives you freedom to choose any price plan you desire and very rarely locks you in for 24 months, in most cases in fact the contract is only a month!

Surely there must be a catch? If not then the Nobel Prize in economics should be swinging my way! I’m talking about sim-only contracts. Basically a carrier will give you a huge discount if you only buy the sim card. You are then free to buy any unlocked phone you desire. This of course is the catch, for a brand new high end phone the initial cost may be quite high, but in the long run you can save a huge amount.

Below are the cheapest monthly contracts for the iPhone 4S 16GB with the UK’s major networks:

The sim-free price of an iPhone 4S 16GB direct from Apple is £499. Ok a frightening initial cost for many but below is the sim-only cheapest contract (that includes Internet) that I could find in a matter of minutes on Google:

That is a saving of £60 next to the cheapest overall contract (T-Mobile) and a saving of over £250 next to the only similar contract (O2). I’m personally getting exactly the same bundle as above except I’m only paying £7.50 a month! This was due to me threatening to leave my carrier at the end of my contract.

Below is a quick guide to dealing with retentions:

OK so you’ve got an amazing sim only deal that’ll make your friends and work colleague jealous. But if you’re frightened about the initial cost (assuming you want the iPhone 4S) how will you get around that? Well does the phone have to be brand new?

Even if you buy a phone second hand, a high end phone like the iPhone 4S is usually just on the market and therefore likely be in very good condition even if it is second hand.

Of course I will now plug Freedom Mobiles here as this is after all our primary business. The main worry with second hand phones is usually that the phone may be blacklisted (will refuse to connect to any participating network which in the UK is all the major ones), this is usually the case if the phone is lost or stolen. Buying a blacklisted phone is not a nice experience, it has happened to me and I was lucky to get my money back! However Freedom Mobiles offer Blacklist Protection for 2 years so this isn’t a worry.

So to see the bigger picture the price Freedom Mobiles offer for the iPhone 4S 16GB is £410 unlocked. Apple doesn’t require original proof of purchase for their warranties, so for the sake of maybe 1 or 2 small scratches you’re saving £90 on top of the £60 or £250 saving from the sim only deal. So a potential £340 saving overall! Even more if you can find a similar sim only deal like I did!

The main beauty of sim free though is the idea that you’re free to choose whatever phone you want and whatever contract you want, and in the end you’ll be paying much less.  You really can’t argue with that can you?

Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed as I’ll be posting fantastic sim only deals that I may find (This is a personal venture, we will not be earning commission) along with further articles, guides and reviews! Please also follow us on Twitter @freedommobiles and like us on Facebook for further updates!

Running on the same OS that runs the hugely popular iPhone, the UI is not technically unique. However it does work so very very well; at the end of the day why change something that obviously works? The screen size is the obvious difference between the iPad and the iPhone, measuring in at 10 inches it has nearly 6 times the real estate space of an iPhone. This allows better use of multitouch interaction (literally using all our fingers) with properly designed apps (of which there are thousands). In our opinion at Freedom Mobiles this allows a greater level of interactivity and user experience than a laptop could provide. If a keyboard is required then a good sized onscreen keyboard can be used. However the iPad is Bluetooth enabled and is capable of connecting to a Bluetooth keyboard if long periods of typing is required. This Bluetooth connectivity along with physical connections allows for a modular design; with the right creative mind anything can be created to interact with the iPad.

Traditionally the specs of the iPad have usually been the same as a next gen iPhone which is usually quite hefty. The first generation iPad has a 1GHz CPU much like the iPhone 4 and a dedicated GPU allowing for the smooth UI we are all used to from using the iPhone and also helps boost 3D apps such as games and specialist applications. Internal memory starts at 16GB, but HD space is becoming less and less of a problem today due to the possibilities of cloud storage and a constant Internet connection. Speaking of Internet connectivity the iPad is WiFi enabled and more expensive models are able to take a sim card and connect to 3G services for Internet on the go. The only thing the original iPad is missing is a camera, however due to the iPads modular nature a compatible camera can be bought and easily connected if desired.

The iPad is an amazing device. We here at Freedom Mobiles feel like we’re living in some futuristic utopia. With the iPad we can read our daily newspaper, read our favourite books and magazines, watch videos, play games, listen to music and communicate worldwide using email and instant messaging. The key thing here is that working on the iPad is actually fun. There is nothing a laptop can do that an iPad can’t; also there is very little the New iPad can do that the original iPad can’t.

If you wish live in our futuristic utopia then iPads are available from Freedom Mobiles at yesterdays prices.

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AR in its basic form is a second layer to reality transposed on top of your normal view which interacts with the real world. Below is Nokia’s take on the technology:

As cool as having a pair of those glasses is, it’s basically having two transparent monitors slapped onto a pair of glasses; it isn’t truly augmented reality as it isn’t interacting with the real world. However it does look futuristic and you’ll be surprised to know you’ve been viewing it down the pub whilst watching live sporting events:

The yellow "first down" line seen in television broadcasts of American football games shows the line the offensive team must cross to receive a first down using the 1st & Ten system. The real-world elements are the football field and players, and the virtual element is the yellow line, which augments the image in real time. AR is also used in association football to show the result (or an advertisement) in the center circle. It is also used to display offside situations. Similarly, in ice hockey an AR colored trail shows location and direction of the puck. Sections of Rugby fields and cricket pitches display sponsored images. Swimming telecasts often add a line across the lanes to indicate the position of the current record holder as a race proceeds to allow viewers to compare the current race to the best performance. As an example of mediated (diminished) reality, the network may hide a real message or replace a real ad message with a virtual message.

Wikipedia 2012

Another current use allows fighter jet pilots to look ‘outside’ their aircraft; it may one day allow car drivers to not have the car’s chassis obscure their view.

What has this to do with phones? Well modern smartphones have all the ingredients to give you an augmented reality experience, ingredients such as: -

• GPS allowing the phone to know where you are to within a metre,
• Gyroscopes and accelerometers allow the phone to know your orientation and movements,
• An Internet connection give the phone the latest information required,
• A high resolution camera to view the real world
• And finally the processing power to create a secondary world and transpose it onto your camera image in real time.

Utilising all this would allow the user, for example, to search for an item whilst walking down the high street, the phone’s screen would then transpose directions to all shops that offer the item and at what price. Perhaps you enjoy stargazing but wonder what star, planet, constellation or even satellite you are looking at when looking at the heavens, augmented reality will tell you wat you are looking at, it will even tell you where a certain object is in the sky!

Software to do all of this is available right now. Layer browser is a search engine that gives you your results as information transposed onto where they would be in the real world. It is easier to watch this video to understand its possibilities:

Google released an app called ‘Google Sky’ which allows the user to name objects in the night time sky and find stars and planets by simply holding the phone to the sky. The phone’s screen then tells you what you are looking at or gives you directions to whatever star or planet to wish to view.

What you’re basically getting is how Arnold Schwarzenegger views the world as the Terminator, assessing his surroundings to decide whether your boots, clothes and motorcycle are indeed a perfect fit for his physique. An app for viewing your current kill count isn’t currently on the market nor do I think would pass Apple’s strict market rules!

Gaming is also beginning to make use of augmented reality. The Nintendo 3DS comes with AR games built in, utilising cards to determine its position in the real world. Enemies are then transposed onto the camera view and appear to move around within the confines of the real world. You are free to move around and shoot the enemies at any angle as if you had a gun in your hand.

There are plenty of similar games are available on mobiles by simply searching the markets for augmented reality games, but I feel that it was important to point out that both Nintendo, Google and Nokia are taking this technology seriously. This is still very early days and we here at Freedom Mobiles are pretty excited to see where this technology will go.

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