A common experience with many mobile phone buyers – you spend weeks researching the various phones on offer, make your choice and place the order. The phone arrives and it looks and feels every bit as good as you thought it would. Savour this moment – because you know what’s going to happen next....?
That’s right, after giving it just a quick charge you fire it up and an all too familiar symbol on the screen makes your heart sink once more – just one lousy bar of signal! No matter how hard you try to convince yourself, you just know that you have bought yet another phone that will be difficult or impossible to use at home!

It's a sad fact that the walls of your home or office will absorb a lot of the energy that modern mobile signals are made of - not so much of a problem where you have perfect coverage, but for those of us not so fortunate it can be a real pain! To get around the problem would involve the networks erecting a lot more base stations and we all know that this just isn't going to happen.

Well, this inevitable disappointment may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the new Access Gateway from Vodafone, you can have the equivalent of your very own personal base station in your own home or office. The Access Gateway works by using your existing home broadband connection to route your mobile voice and data calls, as well as texts via the internet. The device can handle 4 simultaneous calls and takes up no more space than a conventional router. Even if you have no signal at all where you live the Access Gateway will provide a means of making and receiving mobile calls with perfect clarity and maximum efficiency. No more wandering to the end of the garden or leaning out of windows – you’ll wonder how you ever managed without this little box of tricks before?

The Gateway, which uses Femtocell technology, will work with any Vodafone 3G handset and in any location - provided you have a broadband connection of over 1Mbps. Vodafone have tested the Gateway for over 6 months and claim that the technology works perfectly, even when the broadband line is in heavy use.

The downside is that it isn’t free, the device will be offered as either an outright purchase or as part of a monthly calling plan. However, anyone who’s struggled to make a call from home may well think that the convenience this device offers is well worth the initial cost? There are plans to develop the service further by offering the equivalent of Wi-Fi in your home, which may appeal to some, particularly when you consider that many people experience some difficulty with traditional Wi-Fi equipment. It remains to be seen, however, whether this idea will take off - but it could herald a  whole new way of connecting to the mobile networks inside buildings and that has to be a welcome advance?

The Vodafone Access Gateway is available to buy on-line or from Vodafone stores and is expected to cost around £160. Monthly rental plans will also be offered for around £5 a month on its own, or as part of a mobile airtime contract.

Author Helen Davies

Mobile Phones these days come with all sorts of features and applications that make mobiles in the day of ‘Del Boy’, and his 1980’s brick phone pail in to comparison. Back then, apart from scientists and boffins, who could have imagined that camera phones would be used by nearly 90% of people between the ages of 15 and 34 in under 20 years time? The development of the Camera Phone has brought about the dawn of a new age in Telecommunications. As quick as you were able to take a picture of you and your mates, you could also send it off via SMS for others to see, this meant life would never be the same.

Virtually every Mobile Phone on the market has a Camera built in, which varies in its capabilities. The main two things to note are the digital zoom, specifically how many x 2, 4, 6 or 8x zoom, and is it a Mega pixel or VGA camera. Some mobile phones on the market these days have excellent quality Camera lenses from well known manufacturers, such as Carl Zeiss. This has made people no longer need to carry the disposable or indeed the digital camera that has been a mainstay of gifts at Christmas in the past.

The most important thing when you choose a Camera Phone is to decide exactly what you are going to do with it. Are you buying the Mobile just to use as a Camera, or are you buying the Mobile Phone to use as its original intended purpose, to make Phone Calls. Whatever you decide to buy, make sure that you check out all the mobiles specifications very carefully, so that you can get specifications you require.

Apparently, there are a number of mobiles on the market with an 8 Mega Pixel camera and indeed there will be a new Sony Ericsson on the market which will have a 12 Mega Pixel camera, it may be available later in 2009 just in time for Christmas.

It beggars’ belief just how quickly this little handheld gadget has become such an integral part of everyday life. I often wonder whether the camera phone is the future of mobile photography, or if it will be around in another 20 years? I suppose only the boffins will know.

Author: Phil Chesters

Recently we received the following question from one of our Twitter Followers.

Please could you assist me? I have just bought an O2 pay as you go phone.  I have some questions about O2 unlimited.

• If I join O2 unlimited and then at some time in the future miss topping up by a minimum of £10 what happens. Will I need to re-register for O2 unlimited or do the unlimited text/calls just recommence once I top-up again?
• Do I need to register other O2 numbers that I would like to send unlimited texts/calls to or does this apply to any O2 number.
• I have a friend who is currently on a different tariff providing them with 500 free texts to any network. If they transfer to O2 unlimited and find that this tariff does not suit their usage profile, will they be able to switch back to their original tariff.

 

We allways try and give a full detailed response for any questions we receive, below is our response.

 

Thank you for emailing Pre-pay-as-you-go with your questions.

We will definitely be able to advise you regarding your query.

The free allowances that you receive are always added on your anniversary date and not every time you Top-Up your phone. If it happens that you forgot to Top-Up your account then you won't receive your free allowances, so next when you Top-Up that will be your new anniversary date.

On O2 Pay & Go you don't have to Top-Up every month to keep your account active. If you do want to get one of the free allowances every month, then you'll need to Top-Up every month. However if you just want to use your phone when you need it, you can do that. You would simply just Top-Up the phone when you needed too.

You will still be on your same O2 Unlimited tariff and don't need to re-register, if you don't Top-Up your account. In the meantime you won't receive your free allowances. To receive these free minutes you'll need to Top-Up your account.

In the O2 Unlimited tariff, you receive unlimited calls and texts to O2 numbers when topped-up with £15. To receive only unlimited texts to O2 numbers then you need to Top-Up with £10. You don't need to register any O2 numbers, it is for all the O2 numbers.

If your friend changes to the O2 Unlimited tariff then he/she can always change back to their original tariff, provided they are on the new updated tariffs. Darren, this is because we no longer offer old tariffs.

O2 recently updated their tariffs so they all offer a greater flexibility in the amount of allowance you can receive each month.

You can view all o2 PayG tariffs here, or alternatively if your looking for click here to view The latest o2 PayG phones

I hope these answers help!

Thanks to Russell siddorn for asking the question.