Digital Business - Ben HuntPerhaps the single biggest weakness of the data services packages available on mobile phones to this point has been the absence of a full internet service. The promise of one has been inherent in operator marketing since the turn of century, but reality has always been extremely disappointing.
Perhaps the worst example of this was the dreadfully deceptive campaign run in the UK by BT Cellnet – the forerunner to O2 – when it first began marketing its Wap services.
“Surf the ‘net, surf the BT Cellnet,” it said, accompanying images that conjured up a fantasy world where users could get a full desktop internet experience straight on their Motorola Timeport.
It was total nonsense of course – what you got was a sort of slow, black and white teletext service offering news, entertainment and other services from the operators walled content gardens.
And actually, that was fine. Wap is one of the most wronged technologies I can recall. Within its own limitations it worked fine, and I was certainly a pretty happy Vodafone customer when I first accessed it through the Nokia 7110 – even if neither the phone nor the service was perfect.
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But it was not the wireless internet, and it was about as multimedia as a tree. And with the greatest of respect to many of the much improved services that have followed since – Vodafone Live! T-Zones etc – none of these have been the mobile internet either.
So it was with great interest that I received a review unit of the MDA Vario from T Mobile yesterday.
This is part of T-Mobile’s Web’n’Walk catalogue – the mobile internet again! – and let’s just say I was a sceptic, having heard plenty of promises before.
Well, you can call me Mr Converted. It’s not perfect, in fact it’s a long way from there, but it is bloody good indeed.
There’s no point messing around when testing these things out – you’re only ever really going to work out if it’s any good by replicating tasks you do on the desktop.
And so, first up I made a slight alteration to my arrival at the office regime this morning. Usually the first thing I do – while waiting for my e-mail system to open up – is read the synopsis of last night’s Archers. (I apologise to overseas readers for yet another reference to this UK radio programme, if its any use to you here’s a link to the Wiki entry).
So this morning I fired up the MDA, turned on the stopwatch to see how long it would take me to find the synopsis. Answer: less than two minutes and very impressed I was too, despite a lot of scrolling and mucking about with big elongated content packages stuffed into the smallish screen. That is certainly something I can see myself do while waiting for the 7.52 to London St Pancras.
But perhaps it was too easy. For something more tricky, how about ordering a book from Amazon? Having finished Alexander Kent’s “Close-Signal Action” last night, I was in need of the next instalment in the Bolitho Napoleonic naval fiction series anyway so here was the perfect excuse. (BTW, does anyone know if these books are really supposed to be for kids, as a friend told me recently?)
This took a bit longer. Amazon doesn’t seem to compress to mobile size particularly easily and you have to wade through tons of tabs before getting to useful places. But still, I found search easily, and shortly afterwards the book I wanted for the princely sum of 20 pence.
The whole thing took less than five minutes – aided by the fact that by this time I had discovered that the Vario has a full qwerty that slides out from underneath. (All of this has been achieved without reference to the instruction manual).
Overall I would give the entire experience 8 out of 10. The Vario is well designed and the connection quick and easy (on a GPRS network, rather than 3G).
More than half a decade late it might be, but it seems the mobile internet has arrived.
