Of Phones and Things

Had a nice chat with Katy across on Orange. Laughably, as I try to get a number to call O2 for their contract termination, their 'upgrades' link points me to a message telling my to "Upgrade to Apple iPhone3G". If I hadn't passed the last straw already, that would have been it.

Oh, and walking past the O2 shop in the Bon Accord mall today after 1pm, I saw a big empty shop, a guard on the door, and a queue ("line") of 3 people outside. I shook my head in their general direction. I couldn't muster any happy thoughts. I read online that the O2 Upgrade system had crashed, and so some stores were only taking new customers, one store processed details on paper.

Using my browser's history I punched up the now-inaccessible contacts page. I called and got through to terminations. Security questions depended on knowing my account, but the online billing was fried. Being a trusting soul, I'd printed off relevant detailed to pdf last night (yeah, PrimoPDF), so could answer the questions. Being a good at his job, the O2 guy matched my Sony Ericsson C902 deal from Orange, in fact, bettering the monthly price by a tenner (£180 saving). No free 8gig memory card, but I can live with that (I can use the 1gig card I have with my existing phone, or spend the 2 months tariff savings on a 4gb card). All I'll need after that is a new body glove case (they seem to work well for me).

Happy bunny.

I took this with my 3.2mp camera-phone. The C902 has a 5mp camera. Not a 2mp camera (unlike the one I was hoping to get today). It turns out that the quality and spec of the embedded camera is more important to me than the hype of the iPhone. It also transpires that I want to be able to quickly text/blog-mail without having to slide out a keyboard (ruling out the N95 and some other smartphones).

So, the saga ends. I am on the promise of a new phone when my contract ends early in August. The details have been recorded on my O2 customer log, and I have written a transcript on paper (including the chap's name).

I still have twitlive.tv playing in the background (total viewers for his amazing 24-hour livecast has topped a quarter-of-a-million already ) I've closed down the O2 iPhone forums. I'll probably unsubscribe from the related podcasts and RSS feeds.

Please hold.