Is this a good mobile?

Looks bloody awful!! IPhone 5 £100 and your life becomes a joy OR Samsung Galaxy 3-4 £100.

Buy brand new at that price is like
Buying a brand new lada
 
Thanks gents,I will check with "3" to see if their sims allow tethering & if they do my intention is to buy one of those nokia 530's & maybe one of those Tesco Hudl tablets or even better a laptop running windows 8.1 so that it will connect effortlessly & seamlessly to the phone............I hope.
 
Humm no one has mentioned iPhones, and its worth suggesting. Navionics (chart plotting app) works really well on iPhone, they are very intuitive to use (my three year old is pretty awesome at using it), and 'tethering' to a tablet/laptop is a doddle.

You can get a second hand iPhone 4s for somewhere around the £60 budget these days off fleabay, which is bonkers as it still knocks spots off lots of newer devices.

Or, get a new iPhone 5c for £49 up front (or FREE for a refurbed one) and £21 a month (it will be a 24 month contract though)
http://www.three.co.uk/iPhone/iPhon...AY_MONTHLY&tab=Features.&memory=8&colour=Blue

As the fine gents of the forum suggest, go try em out in store
 
Get something with decent storage as well. I have just bought a Micro SD card for £7 to add 128gig of storage to my phone. To an old fool like me that is astonishing.

I remember a graphic designer friend was the first person in Hull to have a whole 1gB drive put in his Mac. I think it cost him about £300!
 
These phone people seem like a load of sharks.
I dropped into the 3 store yesterday to ask some questions: On their website they state in connexion to sims etc "rates & top ups that never expire" yet when I questioned the young man about this in relation to the one month stated time I never got a concrete reply.Tethering & using the full allowance for internet connection was also a bit vague unless I went for the more expensive plans.
It does appear though that the laptop dongle is the best deal for connection to the internet so I am back considering laptops.....or apparently there is a Samsung 8" tablet that you can make phone calls on & has a sim slot simplifying things but that looks very expensive. :ambivalence:
 
Well done, you know where you are with that.
The iPhone suggestion is worth looking at further (content iPhone 4 owner)
 
I dropped my moto g second gen into some salty water recently. It was submerged for a couple of minutes but survived so I'm well pleased. I find the larger size makes it good for limited browsing. And navionics works well on it although HD would be better.
I'm on O2 PAYG which is economical but at each top up they try to put me on a tariff that expires after a month which is irritating. I'm a very light user, never use mobile data although my tarif does include a small allowance. Always use free Wi-Fi when available.
 
Nicholas123 said:
These phone people seem like a load of sharks...
Click to expand...
It doesn't surprise me that the staff in 3's shops, or anybody else's for that matter, don't understand and/or won't promote tethering. Historically (I've been doing it for 10 years) mobile operators have treated it as tantamount to theft. Three's website doesn't explain all the options and restrictions either. But they do some good PAYG data plans - once you understand them.
 
DaveRo said:
It doesn't surprise me that the staff in 3's shops, or anybody else's for that matter, don't understand and/or won't promote tethering. Historically (I've been doing it for 10 years) mobile operators have treated it as tantamount to theft. Three's website doesn't explain all the options and restrictions either. But they do some good PAYG data plans - once you understand them.
Click to expand...

If you could advise me about the best way to get a mobile to do that tethering through 3 PAYG data plans Dave I would be very grateful.
After another visit to the 3 shop & a chat with a very helpful young lady there I discovered that it is only phone sims that have "rates & top ups that never expire." (I also discovered that phone calls through tablets were not the same as ordinary calls as you have to use skype or some sort of special ap).
Might save all the angst of having them pinch the unused data allowance at the end of the month.:disgust:
 
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It should just work?

I've got a 3 PAYG SIM in my spare/backup phone. I just set up the Personal Hotspot, started mobile data, turned the Hotspot on, and connected to it via WiFi on my day to day phone. Worked fine.

On the 3 2 1 tariff, I think it costs a penny per Mb, so about £10 per Gb.

3p per minute for calls, 2p for texts, 1p per Mb for Internet.

Can't believe "Three" staff wouldn't know this, or be able to find someone who does, but anything is possible these days.
 
Yes, it should just work. Especially if you just go into a 3 shop and follow their recommendation and you're using a smartphone which has 'personal wifi hot spot' built into the operating system. 'Tethering' has come mainly to mean such a wifi hotspot. There are other ways - Lakesailor mentioned Bluetooth - but go for wifi where you can, it's simple.

An important thing to know about 3 is that they distinguish between a 'phone SIM' and a 'mobile broadband SIM' which they aim at tablets and dongles. (They didn't use to, and technically they're the same; I ran a '3 PAYG SIM' in my Nexus 7 tablet until one day it wouldn't work.) It's a way of preventing consumers of larger amounts of data using cheaper plans aimed at simple phones and single users - which is fair enough - but it's inconvenient for a light or occasional user of mobile data.

Whether you have a 'phone' or 'mobile broadband' SIM the credit doesn't expire with 3 (it does with many other operators, especially foreign ones). But any data packages you buy do expire - which is pretty normal everywhere. But with both types of SIM you can just load credit and use it at 1p/Mb - though their website doesn't emphasise that. It may not be enough for you but it's what I do. (Except abroad under 'three feel at home' where you must buy a package.)

A problem you may hit with a mobile hotspot built into Android or iOS is that it won't work with some operators or SIMs. The makers of the OS and the operator collude to prevent it. (And it's probably against the operator's Ts & Cs anyway). So you need a more expensive package. (I don't know how 3 fares here - I've run a hotspot but not on Android or iOS.) You may be able to get round this by using bluetooth tethering; essentially the phone acts as a modem to (usually) a single device. Bluetooth can 'just work' ... but often doesn't, without a lot of faffing; it depends mainly on the devices using the same bluetooth 'profile'. It's too complicated to cover here - just be aware it exists if you find that the SIM you want to use - perhaps a foreign one - won't tether over wifi. (Tip: many old dumb phones will tether to computers over bluetooth - I usually take one on holiday in case I need to use a local SIM but want to keep my UK SIM in my usual phone.)

Mobile SIMs can provide 3 main services - voice, messages (SMS, MMS), and data. Applications like Skype use a data connection, as do some newer cheap 'phone' services that require an app. It's cheaper to provide data than voice connection these days.

Question: can a hudl2 tether to a phone over bluetooth? Anybody done it, and to what phone? I've examined the hudl specs and it suggests not - no suitable profiles. But then my setup theoretically doesn't work either!
 
Bought one of the lakesailer type mobiles off ebay on Friday night & am delighted.Curry's returned offering for £34.99 in the colour I wanted yellow,Yes!!!!!!!!!
When it arrives along with the laptop I am sure I will have many wonderful hours trying to sort out tariffs.Delving into the wonderful world of aps & all the rest of it.....Sailing is now looking a far more realistic prospect.

Thanks all for all your help & kindness :encouragement:
 
I'm trying to sort out the best PAYG tariff. Isn't it confusing? I think deliberately so. I'm currently with O2 where unused credit can be carried over from month to month (with difficulty). After reading this thread, I've been checking 3's tariffs which automatically carry over month to month and offers 'all you can eat' data - yummy. I may swap over to 3 when my current O2 credit runs out.
 
Nicholas123 said:
Bought one of the lakesailer type mobiles off ebay on Friday night & am delighted.Curry's returned offering for £34.99 in the colour I wanted yellow,Yes!!!!!!!!!
When it arrives along with the laptop I am sure I will have many wonderful hours trying to sort out tariffs.Delving into the wonderful world of aps & all the rest of it.....Sailing is now looking a far more realistic prospect.

Thanks all for all your help & kindness :encouragement:
Click to expand...

Two things.
Don't assume it has connected to your Wifi without putting in the router passcode (Wifi in Settings), otherwise you will be using phone data allowance when you could be using your own Wifi.

Be wary of phone "updates". They are perfectly legitimate, but use a huge amount of data allowance (about 300 Mb). Again, only allow them when you know you are using Wifi (little radio beacon icon 3rd from left on the top of the screen).

But so far, it is great.

I got an free app called Live Tile Clock 8.1 which displays the time on your start screen a bit bigger than the little display at the top. Good for those with less than perfect sight.
On the lock screen the clock is very large anyway.
 
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ghostlymoron said:
After reading this thread, I've been checking 3's tariffs which automatically carry over month to month and offers 'all you can eat' data - yummy. I may swap over to 3 when my current O2 credit runs out.
Click to expand...

I think you'll find that 3's SIM-only plans only offer "all you can eat" data on your phone. If you tether to your phone, data use is limited (although I think it's 4GB max a month, which would be enough for many users).
 
Lakesailor said:
Two things.
Don't assume it has connected to your Wifi without putting in the router passcode (Wifi in Settings), otherwise you will be using phone data allowance when you could be using your own Wifi.

Be wary of phone "updates". They are perfectly legitimate, but use a huge amount of data allowance (about 300 Mb). Again, only allow them when you know you are using Wifi (little radio beacon icon 3rd from left on the top of the screen).

But so far, it is great.

I got an free app called Live Tile Clock 8.1 which displays the time on your start screen a bit bigger than the little display at the top. Good for those with less than perfect sight.
On the lock screen the clock is very large anyway.
Click to expand...

I plan to use the laptop predominately while away on the boat "tethered" to the phone using wifi.The Samsung laptop has either wifi or bluetooth & presumably while tethered to the phone it will depend what I download as to how much the bill for the phone will be?
What I guess you are talking about here is using a wifi router at home for the updates etc then you type in the routers own passcode which is presumably written on the back? (I am actually using a wired connection for my internet broadband at home because my computer is an old one & the transfer rate is slower over wifi than wired). Thanks for all the info what I will probably need judging by conversations here is to increase the memory with a bigger memory card so Lakesailor did you buy your 128 gigabite one or whatever it was on ebay or through an outlet you can disclose? That would be helpfull :)
 
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Seems sd cards are cheap enough on ebay but you get a bill for tethering so won't risk it. Back to buying a dongle & the time limit associated with it's use.What a bloody racket! :disgust:

3 are big on talking about things that "suck" so I have put it to them that this sucks!
 
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