Biphone

At the moment I have two phones. One of them is totally busted and is missing 12 keys and the navigational joystick. It’s a Sony Ericsson K800i. The new phone is a Skypephone S2. It has all its keys and is far more advanced than the K800i. Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a dilemma. As you can tell, my tech life is never absolutely perfect. Roll on the day I get converted to Apple.

My dilemma is that I still have some uses for my old phone even though my new phone has more advantages. Also, there have been some communication problems between my new phone and the phone of my girlfriend, who lives in France. She can’t seem to text the Skypephone.Nevertheless, she has no problem texting the Sony Ericsson, which is rather bothersome.

I tried carrying both phones around but that led to two problems:

• 
  
  I looked like a right idiot pulling a phone out of each pocket and using both simultaneously. It was as if I was texting myself or something like that. So not the best thing for your street rep.
  
  
  
• 
  
  I hardly had any room for anything else in my pockets. I couldn’t take my camera so I ended up missing out on a picture of a sunset that would have been absolutely gorgeous. I also couldn’t take my memory stick.
  
  
  

The advantages of my old phone:

• 
  
  Calls to France are much, much cheaper.
  
  
  
• 
  
  I can receive tweets through it but I can’t seem to set up mobile Twitter on my phone so I have to use the web browser. I therefore must resort to using up valuable Internet allowance.
  
  
  

The advantages of my new phone:

• 
  
  Unlimited calls to my girlfriend in France absolutely free via Skype. That means I can communicate with her with voice or instant messaging anywhere with a decent connection. It lasts forever as well.
  
  
  
• 
  
  300 free texts per top-up.
  
  
  
• 
  
  150MB of free Internet access per month for three months. This is enough for approximately 1,600 tweets a day. I may be the world’s biggest Twitter addict but that’s even enough for me! I’m on it all the time to be honest.
  
  
  

I would include having all my keys in that list but that would just be odd.

So I’m stuck with using two phones which both have their advantages and both have their disadvantages. In a moment I’m going to call 3’s hotline and check out some of the add-ons.

Maybe there’ll be something that’ll make international calls cheaper…

Interval (50-year-old, horrible, cheesy, foul interval music plays)

Okay, I’m back. Unfortunately, the add-ons only consisted of a list of text packages and nothing more. So there’s no cheaper option to call France. That means I can only call when she’s online. Texting will remain just as expensive.

Next, I’ll have a go at topping up £10…

Interval (The kind of cheesy music only acceptable on a Rick Roll’d video)

Well, at least I have some positive news. I still have 3,000 free 3-3 voice minutes available. That £10 top-up also earned me another 300 free texts and 100MB of free Internet data allowance.

I’m still a little bit gutted that this will all end on the 9th of April, due to the fact that the free stuff lasts 3 months. Nevertheless, I’ll still be able to make free Skype calls whenever I wish, even after the deal’s termination.

Whenever a mobile phone network promises ‘unlimited’ stuff, you can never believe it, because there always turns out to be a limitation of some sort. But 3 tells the truth. I think that’s one of the many reasons I prefer my new carrier to the likes of Vodafone.

Enough said.