07.22
So I’ve been looking into getting into mobile phone software development for a while. I don’t want to go for the iPhone as they are facists, and the less said about Windows CE the better, which leaves the obvious choice as Android. I’ve been following news of the HTC Hero for a while – the G1 was just a little bit plasticy for my tastes – so I thought I’d wait it out and get it when it was released. And that day has come.
So I heard it was out and visited the Orange website – it’s available on T-Mobile, but not quite yet – to see if I could buy it and yes, it’s there. So I added it to the basket (getting quite excited) and was asked to pick a ‘plan’. And guess what?
There is no data plan for it.
That’s right, the latest Google phone is not available with a data plan on Orange. It’s an exclusive phone so I am assuming they had to bribe pay someone for the privilege of selling it, but apparently didn’t think anyone would want to use a data plan with it? It’s also not like they don’t do data plans – if I want one I am free to buy a Blackberry off of them and they have a range of plans that include data – just not for the Android phones. Well, it’s not strictly true they have no data plans – they do, but it’s £1.50 per day extra on top of the already expensive monthly contract.
It’s like Orange are stuck in the 90′s, offering thousands of minutes, free texts and hip, friendly, ‘appeal to the youth’ marketing copy on their website yet failing to see that the whole entire reason for that phone to exist is data! They even name the plans after animals for some reason – ‘Dolphin, best for texting, ideal for 14 year old girls’.
Maybe someday soon, hopefully, one Orange executive may hear about this MySpace thing that all the youth of today are using and make a MySpace Phone that gives cheap access to the internet, but until that time I think I’ll wait for the T-Mobile release.
Update:
On the (unavailable) ‘Panther’ plan – “500MB anytime mobile internet browsing”. anytime? anytime?!? It’s like I just had a flashback to the mid 90′s when BT were offering ‘anytime internet access’, where you could connect to the internet at any point in the day! They are advertising that they are not going arbitrarily gouge you on price and access at various times of the day as a feature. Generous.
Btw, you may give Windows Mobile a try. Starting with version 6.0 it is not that bad at all, and using NET Framework CE and VS you can write some nice small add-ons for it.
It’s not that they don’t know they should offer a data plan. It’s they don’t want to. Moving data is expensive, and uses up infrastructure resources. So, they will just try to sell the same SMS plans and speech minutes they sold in the 90s, which use very little infrastracture and yield big bucks. SMSes in particular, are practically the carrier’s tollbooth, since an SMS is only 0.2KBs in size and costs a whooping 20cents.
So, they will try to sell this model for as long as possible before switching.