Gadgets
T-Mobile Web ‘n’ Walk USB modem
After spending many boring lunch breaks at work with no access to the Internet i decided it was about time i purchased a 3G modem for my laptop.
My provider of choice is T-Mobile as i already have an existing contract with them and have had no real problems in the few years i have been a customer of theirs.
When i visited the T-Mobile website to make an order for a 3G USB modem i was presented with various different plans and contract periods.
As i am a heavy Internet user i opted for the Web ‘N’ Walk Max plan as this has a fair usage policy of 10 gigabytes a month and allows access to VoIP and streaming services. This all comes for the fair price of £35 monthly for the max plan with nothing to pay for the modem its self if you take out a 24 month contract.
Once i had completed the order online via the secure checkout i was instantly sent an email indicating my order was being processed and the appropriate credit checks were being conducted.
A few hours later into the day i then received a second email advising me that i had passed the screening stage and my order was now being picked from the warehouse for same day dispatch.
As expected the next morning my order had arrived via Royal Mail Special Delivery. I opened the rather small package to be greeted by the modem it’s self, the two USB cables and the manual. As usual i put the manual to one side, connected up the USB cable to the modem and then plugged this into my laptop.
Upon plugging the modem into my laptop Windows Vista automatically recognised the device and displayed an auto-run window to install the modem dashboard and drivers from the on-board flash memory of the modem it’s self. I proceeded with the install which took a little less than one minute to complete.
Now the modem was installed it was time to connect to the Internet for the first time and experience 3G / HSDPA browsing on my laptop.
The T-Mobile dashboard software indicated i had a HSDPA signal with a strength of two bars. I now proceeded to click connect to authenticate the device with the T-Mobile servers.
After a short moment the device was now online and i was able to browse the Internet via the Web ‘N’ Walk service.
My first use of the service was to conduct a simple speed test. The site i used for the speed test was Speedtest.net which reported i had just a little over 400kbps downstream bandwidth and approximately 300kbps upstream bandwidth.
I have to say i was rather shocked at the speeds report by Speedtest.net as T-Mobile advertise the service as having a maximum throughput of 7.2 mbps.
After a little thinking and a spot of lunch i decided to try and test the service in another way by using a multi-threaded download manager, my choice of download manager was FlashGet. The item i decided to download was the DVD ISO of CentOS 5.
FlashGet reported my average speed to be 225 KB/s which calculates to be approx 1.8 mbps. I was quite surprised at the new reported speed as just over a year ago even my home broadband supplied by Pipex was not as quick as the Web ‘N’ Walk service.
Overall i think the Web ‘N’ Walk service supplied by T-Mobile is useful as it enables road warriors to access the Internet anywhere they have got mobile phone coverage. However i think the fair usage policy that T-Mobile enforce could be a little fairer towards the end user, for example the 10 gigabyte limit on the Max plan would be quite easy to consume within a week.
I also think that the pricing could be a lot cheaper as well, compared to the Max plan sold by Three which has a fair usage limit of 7GB a month, T-Mobile works out to be £10 a month more expensive for an extra three gigabytes of transfer.
HTC Touch Cruise
Currently labeled as one of the most powerful smart phones on the market i just could not wait to get my hands on a HTC Touch Cruise. Unfortunately my contract is not up for renewal any time soon so i decided to bite the bullet and go and buy a factory unlocked Sim free model for the handsome price of approx £400 British pounds.
When the phone arrived i was a little shocked that my distributor (Total PDA) had chosen packaging that came across as flimsy but never the less i accepted receipt of the goods and “signed my life away”
Upon opening the City-Link mail bag i was presented with an elegant black box that i must say looks very executive. I carefully opened the box i was presented with the luxurious looking smart phone.
Upon turning on the phone i was prompted with various questions you might expect from a Windows Mobile device. For example i was asked to select my time zone and enter my locale information.
After doing this the phone then went to the next screen and prompted me to align the display correctly. This was easily done using the on screen targets and the stylus that is provided with the phone.
Now the phone had loaded to the “Today” screen a useful box then popped up that automatically configured my GPRS / HSDPA settings to my operator T-Mobile UK.
Straight away i loaded the pocket Opera version bundled with the phone and began to browse the Internet, instantly i had a HSDPA signal and was able to browse at decent speeds.
After my venture with Internet browsing via the mobile phone network i then went on to configure the phone for wireless LAN this was all a breeze using the built in comms manager. I was soon connected to my own WiFi network in under 30 seconds.
I discovered i was able to access the comms manager from the Touch Flo interface making it quick and simple to turn options such as WiFi, Blue-tooth and Data Connection on or off.
Overall the phone is fast and fun to use, the integrated Touch Flo interface is bordering on the functionality of Apple’s iPhone but no where near as powerful.
Some disadvantages i think the phone have are.
- Lack of IMAP IDLE support
- No advanced touch interface
- Poor battery life
- Laggy camera viewer
I hope that HTC decide to refine this model and bring out possibly a HTC Touch Cruise II with longer battery life and a more advanced touch interface.