Mobile Phone Blog:

4G is coming to London for a nine month trial to 1000 O2 customers.

The operator has installed 40 masts in a 40 square kilometre area, with up to 25 stations in the pipeline, for testing of the high-speed mobile on the 2.6GHz spectrum ahead of a planned nationwide launch in 2013.

The trial could see a download speed as fast as 100mbps to the O2 customers taking part.

Chief Executive Officer of Telefónica UK, Ronan Dune, commented: “The work we are doing now will lay the foundations for our commercial 4G network when it launches in the UK… Our work in London will give us a better understanding of the capabilities of 4G technology and will allow us to explore the superfast benefits it will bring to people and industry across the UK. This 4G trial is the next step on our journey to a smarter network – a network that offers a seamless, connected experience across multiple devices, locations and services.”

As a little Christmas treat, Orange is giving Pay As You Go customers a pair of premium headphones when they buy a phone.

From today until 24 December, every phone bought costing £30 or more comes with the added bonus of a Christmas gift box packed with some nice mobile phone goodies.

In the box customers will find a pair of Angle & Curve headphones worth £60, along with other goodies including an Orange piggy bank, headphone splitter and screen cloth.

Pippa Dunn, from Orange UK, said: “This year’s Christmas gift box is our best yet – offering Orange Pay As You Go customers a top quality pair of Angle & Curve headphones, as well as some other brilliant added extras, all of which will no doubt add to the excitement of the festive season”.

The Christmas box is available to all PAYG phones priced £30 or more including the Orange Rio, Orange San Francisco, Orange Stockholm and Samsung Galaxy Mini.

To find out more, pop into your Orange store or look online.

O2 has announced O2 connect for the iPhone and Android devices which is available now as an invite-only beta app.

The new VoIP app will enable users to make free calls to mobiles and landlines over WiFi connections and most likely 3G as well once it officially launches next year. Apple and Android smartphones will be the first devices to get the app but it is expected more will follow.

An O2 spokesman commented “From a traditional telecoms company’s view, you either see VoIP as a threat, or you think about how you work with it and take advantage of it,”

The iPhone 4S has taken a record breaking 1 million pre-orders in just 24 hours smashing all previous pre-order records for Apple products, including the iPhone 4 which managed 600,000.

Phillip Schille, Vice President of Apple’s Worldwide Product Marketing, commented: “We are blown away with the incredible customer response to the iPhone 4S.”

The smartphone is free from £46 a month on 24 month contract with 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB data with Orange.

Orange CEO tells all that we could be getting our hands on the iPhone 5 as early as the 15^th October. Stéphane Richards revealed in an interview that the network was told the next generation Apple iPhone will be launching mid-October.

However with so many rumours regarding the device’s release date and with the 15^th being a Saturday we can’t help being a little sceptical.

Starting from today,6 September, Orange is refreshing its pay monthly animal portfolios, to include extra minutes and also to offer extra services to new customers.

The Panther plan now has three new tariffs from £15.50 to £26 to provide smartphone contracts at a lower price point. Data allowances have been strengthened to increase the minutes-data trade-off between Panther and Dolphin. ‘Swapables’, apps providing services such as news and music streaming, have come into play also offering up to two free services on the Panther plan, and available to purchase on the other animal plans as extras.

Customers will be able to change their swapabbles every 30 days via Orange World which will be accessible via an SMS link once the customer has signed up to a talk-plan. The Swappables that are available include MTV, The Times, Sky Sports and Sky News, Book Downloads and many more.

The Dolphin plan has had an increase in its minute allowance from its £26 tariffs to its £36 tariffs, and the Canary plan will receive more minutes than previously available in the £26 plans.  The Racoon plan is no longer offering any texts within its tariffs and is a ‘voice only’ option.

A new network is on the scene in the UK and is set to offer compelling tariffs with an international slant.

The network is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) similar to the likes of Virgin and Tesco Mobile, who don’t actually own a network but use the services of 02 and T-Mobile. Alpha Mobile uses Vodafone and claims to offer unlimited calls to international landlines, as well as other special features.

It’s a pay-as-you-go SIM but after paying a certain amount you’ll receive unlimited calls for 30 days. Outside of that, Alpha mobile offers cheap and cheerful prices on most international calls – cheaper than most of the major networks.

“Following the 16-year successful heritage of Alpha Telecom our landline service, we’ve launched Alpha Mobile taking our customer promise to deliver high quality, low-cost products and services, to the mobile market,” said Zafar Mirza, CEO at Alpha Mobile.

Three is offering £15 a month mobile phone contracts, with a minimum of 500MB of data, and a free handset.

The network has cut its prices and is offering five handsets for free on £15 a month tariffs. The smartphone included in the offer are the HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Desire S, Samsung Galaxy Ace and the Samsung Galaxy S.

The director of voice at Three, William Ripley, commented: “At Three we always try to help our customers choose the best smartphones and give them the best deals. Our emphasis is not just on voice and text, but also a generous internet allowance, which is ideal for new smartphone users…Smartphone adoption is increasing at a rapid rate and Android is proving popular due to the great value, variety of manufacturers and choice of form and function it offers.”

There is a possibility that the HTC EVO 3D may be delayed in the UK. The handset was set to launch next month but there is some new speculations that this is an unlikely release date.

Vodafone has removed the 3D capable handset from their coming soon page on their site and when asked to comment about the action the network said it no longer planned to include the Evo 3D in their smartphone range.

Either there are some technical problems with the HTC handset or the carrier has opted out of selling 3D smartphones after the poor sales figures of the LG Optimus 3D.

Anyone who has the Samsung Galaxy Ace on Three will be pleased to know the current Android 2.2 Froyo OS will be upgraded to Gingerbread 2.3.3 any day now.

The network has confirmed the upgrade and expects it will be available in the very near future. The handset is a mid-range Android smartphone featuring a 3.5 inch touchscreen, a 800mhz processor and a 5 mega-pixel camera.