Blog Archives

Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 brings you 4-inches of LTE Jelly Bean on a budget

Samsung Galaxy Ace 3

Samsung has announced the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3, the latest iteration of its basic, but popular, Android smartphone.

The Ace has been something of a star, often proving to be the model people turn to when they can’t quite stretch to the Galaxy S models and the new Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 looks to deliver more of that affordable goodness.

It comes with a host of clever features that you’ll also find on the Samsung Galaxy S4, as Samsung looks to add value to Android. As such you’ll get S Translator, Smart Stay, S Voice and so on, from the heavily skinned version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

There’s a 4-inch 800 x 480 pixel resolution LCD display on the front which gives you plenty of space and there’s a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, with 1GB of RAM lying at the heart of this affordable LTE handset.

There’s 8GB of internal storage and Samsung points out that only 5GB of this is left available for your content, as the rest is filled with Android’s essentails and Samsung’s bloat.

But you can expand this with up to 64GB via microSD, giving you plenty of space for movies and music.

The handset measures 121.2 x 62.7 x 9.8mm and weighs just 119.5g. There’s a 1800mAh battery powering the thing, which sounds a little on the light side for day-long endurance.

Around the back you’ll find a 5-megapixel camera, along with a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 will be available in either 3G or LTE versions and it looks like the LTE version will be coming to the UK – which is good news, as it offers a spec boost over the 3G version.

The 3G comes with a 1GHz processor and only 4GB of internal storage, of which only 1.77GB is left available for use.

There’s no word on the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 release date or pricing, but we’d expect it to be widely available and we’ll update when we have more details.

Article Source: Pocket-lint

Try EE 4G for FREE…but we’ll charge you a fee.

20130520_120058_Richtone(HDR)

About two weeks ago I found out that EE’s 4G service had been introduced to my area. I decided to visit their website to find out how and when I could get it. I entered my postcode on the checker page and was informed that 4G was now available in my area but not in my street. Looking at the map showed that the signal literally ended in the next street!

ee_free_con

I had a look round the site and they seemed to be offering the first month FREE with a mobile broadband SIM Only plan. I decided to place an order to see if the service would actually work thinking that if it didn’t, I could simply leave within the 30 day free trial without charge.

The SIM came around 3 to 4 days later and I popped it in to my 4G device. Nothing! I wasn’t shocked as their site did say it wasn’t available in my street. I walked outside to see if that would make any difference and it did. I got 1 bar and managed to achieve around 12Mbps using the speedtest app which I thought was quite good considering I only had 1 bar.

I walked back in the house and the signal swiftly dropped off. My test was complete and I decided that as it would not work in the house, I might as well cancel.

I left it until the next day and telephoned EE’s customer service number to explain that I was on the trial and that the signal would not work in my home. The gentleman at the other agreed that there was no signal in my area and put a request through to cancel the account. He told me that he could see the SIM card had only been activated the day before and that there would be no charge on the account due to the 30 day free trial.

Fast forward a week later and I received a bill on my door mat this morning. Initially I thought it was just a letter to confirm that my account had been cancelled. It did state that the account had been cancelled, but shockingly also contained a charge under ‘Early Termination Fee’ of £11.64.

I’m actually on the phone to EE as we speak. In fact I’ve been on over 19 minutes waiting for someone to answer the call. I just wanted to make people aware that these companies are very crafty nowadays with wording and small print, so do be careful if your looking at taking out one of these “Free Trials”.

On another note, I did a search on Google to see if anyone else had suffered this problem with EE and these appears to be worse stories than mine of people taking out 30 day trial contracts and then being placed on to a 24 month contract at the end of it. See this thread at MoneySavingExpert for more details of customer misery.

EE to double it’s 4G speeds in ten UK cities

Orange T-Mobile EE 4G Mobile Store, London, Britain - 24 Oct 2012

EE, the UK’s first 4G network has today announced plans to double the speeds and capacity of it’s 4G network in ten UK cities. Testing for the speed increase has produced lab speeds of 130Mbps and real-world speeds of 80Mbps, although average network speeds for 4GEE customers is likely to be around the 20Mbps mark.

EE is achieving the new network capacity and speeds by doubling the amount of 1800MHz spectrum bandwidth it allocates to 4G, from 10MHz to 20MHz. EE is also forecasting that the amount of mobile data it carries will grow by up to 750% in the next three years, making it even more important that it carries out such upgrades to it’s network.

Who is getting it?

The new 4G capability will roll out to ten existing 4G cities by summer – Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield. Trials of the new technology in Cardiff are have already seen headline speeds reach 80Mbps plus. Once switched on, the improvements will be automatically available in those cities within existing plans to new and current 4GEE customers on all 4G smartphones, tablets and dongles.

Article Source: EE.co.uk