Stephen Fry, Our technology Correspondent

[green_amber]

Says buy this Skype phone.

My contract is up in Oct and I was planning on getting the N95 new version or if they'd let me, the N96. (No I don't want an iPhone  - don't like the keyboard.)

But in some ways this is a brilliantly lateral idea. I travel a lot and get intermittent huge mobile phone bills. And could use this as modem to laptop ior Ipod touch when on trains, which is likely to be rather a lot in next year.

Anyone any experience of this? yes I could just use Skype from laptop - but in practice when abroad I mostly like ringing people for company when out alone at cafes, restaurants and bars.

How easy is to move SIM cards in and out of different handsets these days? I haven' tried it since the days I had my Orange SPV whose chip would NOT work in any non Orange hadset..

Comments

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I've never thought much of the voice quality on Skype.

Burbly burbly burbly.

One difficulty...

[tokyo-mb.livejournal.com]

This phone may be different, but in my experience the number of places you can use a Skype phone while traveling are limited. Many of the wireless hotspots you find require a web-based sign up of some form and Skype phones don't tend to be set up to deal with these - meaning that the only hotspots you can use are non-commercial ones.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Short answer: be careful of this. VOIP over cellular is pretty flaky at the moment, you really need a solid WiFi connection to make it work. It's also not necessarily data efficient so you might find the data bill on 3G roaming costs more than calls.

There are some solutions to this problem coming but I don't think they're going to launch this year.

Moving a SIM card is easy pretty much on any network except Orange who lock their phones. Unlocking the phone can be done pretty much anywhere for about ten quid, do don't get too hung up about it.

The Sony Ericsson X1 is a sweet looking device and I'm hearing generally good things about the quality so far. Ask me again in a few weeks. It'll be in the UK with Vodafone.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

might you be interested in selling the N95? perlmonger expresses a vague interest in one from time to time.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

It was stolen! I am currently using my ghastly old N90 till upgrade comes in..
I got mine free by upgrading when last Orange contract came up - can't you do something similar?