Category: Apple

T-Mobile UK: no early upgrade to iPhone. You must cancel contract and start from scratch.

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 20, 2010

Regarding my earlier post about upgrading mid-contract to an iPhone (4 or 3GS), what the T-Mobile UK operator was telling me at the time (and also neglected to pass on the full details) was that I would have to completely terminate my existing contract, including my current phone number, and start entirely from scratch.

I have now been told that it is not possible to do early upgrades on T-Mobile to the iPhone due to the cost of the handsets. Normally you’d be able to upgrade your phone early (presumably without penalty) three months prior to your contract renewal. I’ve been told I could do this in November as my contract renewal is, apparently, due in December 2010.

What?!

I have now been told that my contract runs out in December 2010, not March 2011 as mentioned on the web site, not June 2011 as mentioned by the operator last week.

I’m not blaming the operators here, I don’t think they’re at fault as such. If anything it’s a complete lack of training and new upgrade policy regarding the iPhone. And everybody seems to be confused – least of all me.

I will most certainly be writing to T-Mobile customer service now and asking them, in writing, my exact date of contract expiry because I will will most definitely be cancelling and moving to another operator come December this year. I’m not surprised T-Mobile hasn’t had the iPhone yet – it seems absolutely incompetent as to what it’s going to do with them and is not going to be rewarding or helping long term customers as a consequence. If you’re thinking of T-Mobile as a new customer and wanting a iPhone – pick O2,3 or Vodaphone instead. Anyone else but T-Mobile.

Update: going back and tagging some of these posts, I’ve discovered that I last renewed in December 2009. This should mean that I am due for an early renewal in March. But I have no idea what that means as to cancelling the contract itself. The operator I spoke to today was most insistent that I could renew in November. I am still very confused and I don’t have anything in writing other than what’s on the T-Mobile web site as to what package and what my renewal options come into play. Argh.

Funniest unintentional tweet of the day: Reuters iPad Flash..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 19, 2010

I found this most amusing given Apple and Adobe’s spat over Adobe’s Flash product. Perhaps Reuters should have rephrased it a little better. In the mean time: NO FLASH for iPad.

This week, I’m hoping to get an iPhone 3GS – not the iPhone 4 – from T-Mobile..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 19, 2010

Update: Oh no I’m not! T-Mobile FAIL – see all posts relating to T-Mobile – click on link below article to get ‘em.

I’m caving in (I’m doing that a lot lately..) and, missus permitting, will hopefully selling my soul to T-Mobile for another two years in order to get a free iPhone 3GS 8Gb. I made the decision on the following accounts:

- Unlocked iPhone 4 (16Gb) is £499 direct from Apple, £189 from T-Mobile
- Unlocked iPhone 3GS is £419 direct from Apple, Free from T-Mobile
- iPhone 4 has a design flaw that requires Apple to give away free cases, and potentially dodgy gyro issues
- iPhone 3GS has been out a year – has been tried and tested, and most people I know are very happy with it
- iPhone 3GS runs iOS 4.x
- iPhone 3GS may have 8Gb storage, but I have a iPod Touch (3rd) gen with 64Gb for heavy multimedia doodads
- No need for 5 megapixel camera, 720p video (colour reproduction is meant to be quite a bit out from reviews I’ve been reading anyway), Facetime or even the higher resolution screen. I’m perfectly happy with the iPod Touch’s res.
- iPhone 4 is expensive for what it is
- iPhone 3GS is now being offered as the best ever value for money iPhone under contract

I’m happy to skip a generation of iPhone while Apple fix the iPhone 4 with new hardware – and providing T-Mobile would allow me to upgrade to the iPhone X as and when I am at a reasonable point in my contract to do so (and barring any further design faux pas) and at a reasonable price, I’d be happy to commit the two years with them and the cost of buying out my existing contract (£148 from what I’ve been told last week). An iPhone for £148? Bargin in my opinion.

Film directors: don’t bother with multi-million dollar camera systems..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 19, 2010

.. because Apple and similar device manufacturer’s are, at this time, never going to make your films look as good on tiny screens (I’m awaiting the iWatch in which for the best movie experience, you’ll have to put your wrist right up to your preferred eye – for 3D films, two watches and both wrists to your eyes – just don’t walk along the pavement watching your film!) – especially when you have to do tricks to fit a 16:9 (or better) movie onto a device that does not naturally support such a resolution. And has the screen size of 9.7 inches or smaller. Good to know that studios have invested in the best camera kit available, eh?

Which strikes me as odd that Apple are only offering some movies on it’s UK store as HD for the iPad and Apple TV (which, fair enough, might mean that you do have a screen which is better suited to 16:9 or better ratio). Oh hum. Roll on the iGlasses which can project images the right size and ratio that filmmakers intended for you to see in front of your nose..

No wonder this man who has only been directing movies for a while now has this to say about it:

Also see this amusing take on the iPad’s video playback. Indirectly this also bitchslaps Apple’s PR for photoshopping because if that is the case that Star Trek is displayed as seen in the iPad adverts then something is a bit wrong somewhere..

So I say this to directors – shoot everything for 4:3, keeping all the action dead centre of the screen – but at the same time use the natural resolution of the camera to shoot amusing and secret stuff at the left and right ends of the screen so that iPod, iPad and other devices can’t display them naturally and everybody watching it on small screens will miss out. Oh, people will chuckle at those jolly japes, and pan and scan companies will curse you forever more! People will say, “Did you see that pigeon giving that walrus a passionate kiss in the IMAX remake of Hitchcocks’ The Birds? No? Ah, you must have seen that on an iWrist – they were doing it at the corner of the screen when we saw it in the cinema..”

Apple to hold iPhone 4 Conference tomorrow..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 15, 2010

Well, hopefully they’ll hold it the RIGHT way and not the WRONG way most people are doing so. Perhaps they might give their address from expensive BUMPER cars.

Jobs suggests Blu-Ray ain’t coming to Apple any time soon..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 1, 2010

.. according to this MacRumors report. He says:

Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD – like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.

and

No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.

I think you may be wrong – we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.

But tell me, Mr. Jobs, why Mac and PC owners cannot buy or rent films (at least here in the UK) to watch HD quality films (even if they are 720p) via iTunes UNLESS you currently own an iPad (minimum of £429 spend) or an Apple TV (minimum spend of £223)? Oh, I did try to ask you that and never got an answer – and was told that Apple considered the matter closed. References relating to my conversations with Apple to date are:

I’m sticking with Blu-Ray, I think – although I DO see what Mr. Jobs is getting at. It’s enveitable that HD resolutions are going to improve beyond 1080, and that will mean that the Blu-Ray format will have to change and a new disc system being brought in to replace it. Whereas with a downloadable/distribution system like iTunes, one can get (and possibly even replace) older HD formats – providing one’s current hardware is capable of going higher and better than 1080 resolution, of course. And yes, there is the instant gratification of downloading a movie you want to see. But if I do that, I want it to be made available in the best possible quality possible. iTunes is failing miserably to do that for me right now.

What stopped me having Memset buying me a tricked-out 17″ Macbook Pro or iMac 1.5 years ago was that it was not capable of native Blu-Ray recording or playback. While this can be achieved through external programs such as Roxio’s excellent Toast (although it’s bloody expensive!) and an external Blu-Ray recorder – OS X still does not have native support for these drives. It certainly can’t playback Blu-Ray movies. I also had concerns over the Macbook Pro’s graphics capabilities. The Dell laptop we eventually went with had dual SLI NVIDIA cards which outshone that offered by the Mac. It had two dual hard drives in RAID configuration and all this was considerably less than the most expensive MacBook offered.

As somebody mentioned on the MacRumor’s forum: “There’s nothing wrong with Blu-Ray, Steve – you’re just holding it wrong..”!