Looking for the best iPad data plan to get the most out of your amazing new Apple iPad?

Most of the UK’s major mobile operators are now offering special iPad data plans, complete with the new micro-SIM card which is essential for the iPad and iPhone 4.

Mobile operator Three are offering an iPad data plan that’s only £7.50 a month for 1GB of data.

We’ve put together a simple comparison table of all the best offers along with some tips for choosing the best deal on a dedicated page.

Google’s Android platform has provided the ailing, old school phone manufacturers with an operating system that is a true rival to the iPhone. Android really is the closest alternative to the iPhone - it’s easy to use, reliable, it gives you most of the benefits of an iPhone-style touchscreen phone but with the big bonus of a range of cracking looking devices with bigger displays or higher resolution cameras.

So what are the best options? Here’s a handful of suggestions:

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and X10 Mini Pro

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, and it’s baby sister, the lovely dinky new Xperia Mini X10 Pro, offer two of the best options in the market.

With a great 8 megapixel camera, huge 4 inch touchscreen, and a slick, if a touch large, design, the Xperia X10 is one of the most popular Android phones to date.  With Twitter and Facebook built-in, swift access to internet and email via its very fast 3G connection and Timescape which merges all your contacts, networking, emails in one easy application it’s great for those you just have to be ‘connected’ at all times. The 1GB of memory and the battery life are impressive on paper and feedback I’ve heard suggest that it at least outlasts the iPhone.

The Xperia X10 Mini Pro is the smallest Android phone around.  It has many of the features of the X10 – Wi-Fi, GPS, headphone jack, MP3 player, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, FM Radio and a slightly reduced but still great 5 megapixel camera in a very compact and cute design.  Sony Ericsson are apparently targeting the female market but I’ve played with one and think it would pass the pub test for most blokes!

HTC Desire

The HTC Desire is arguably the main rival to the X10 or the Desire. The camera resolution is lower at 5 megapixels, but it does have auto focus and face detection so shouldn’t be too far off the results you get from the X10. The styling is undramatic but the size is a bit more practical.

The problematic processor of the HTC Hero has been resolved in the Desire, which makes using the Desire a lot less frustrating. The touchscreen is very responsive – almost too responsive at times.

Google Nexus One

HTC built the hardware for the Nexus One and it’s very similar to the Desire, and the basic spec is the same but it uses touch sensitive buttons instead of physical buttons. It also lacks HTC’s Sense user interface. On the plus side it includes Google’s Car Sat Nav App and a suite of smaller products bundled into a Car Home App designed for use whilst driving.

It includes many of the features of the usual Android phones – syncing of contacts, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, a 3.7 AMOLED touchscreen. It also has Active Noise Cancellation, so making calls with the Nexus One is very clear, and also makes voice activation a lot less frustrating.

Dell Streak

Ok, so the Dell Streak is starting to move into another genre, but maybe it represents where the phones and manufacturers of the above are heading. As Dell describe it, the Streak is a hybrid device that lives in the space between a smartphone and other larger tablets or netbooks that you might be using right now.

So how does it rate compared to the other phones we’ve featured. Well first off its 5 inch screen is certainly larger than anything we’ve seen. It runs Android 1.6 and will be upgrading to 2.2 shortly. It has a 5 megapixel camera and when the planned 2.2 update happens, it will also run flash videos, which its closest competitor the iPad may never do. Otherwise the spec is fairly close to the other Androids, for example, Wi-Fi, 512mb internal memory with micro SD card, touchscreen – only the radio is missing and the talk and standby time is to be confirmed.

Summary

So it’s horses for courses.  The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 stands out mainly for it’s high resolution camera whilst the Xperia Mini X10 Pro is the smallest Android phone around and has a QWERTY keyboard for the text and email addicts amongst you.  The Dell Streak is more of an iPad rival and it has a very large screen for a mobile phone.  The HTC Desire is a good iPhone imitator whilst the Nexus One has a little bit extra for drivers who fancy a bit of Sat Nav in their life - some of the Sat Nav iPhone Apps cost £50 or more!

What would I buy?  An iPhone 4 of course! ;)

Have you got an Android phone or do you think there’s a better alternative out there? Let me know by adding a comment below!

The iPad is flying out of the shops and on the whole it seems to be a hit.  However, as with the iPhone one issue that seems to be bugging people is the battery life, or lack of it.  Apple state it should last for 9 – 10 hours (depending on whether you are using 3G,) but when you are using it intensively for browsing and movie watching the battery life apparently disappears a lot quicker.

So, what can you do to increase the battery life of your iPad.

1. Lithium batteries, like those used in the iPad and all mobile phones, are sensitive to temperature so you can help by making sure that you don’t leave it in very hot or cold environments such as cars on a sunny day, or … in the freezer!
2. Secondly, when it comes to lithium batteries you should always give them ‘regular exercise’ - a once monthly full charge and de-charge as suggested by Apple. Next - the settings within the device itself.
3. Much can be done to reduce the use of the battery by changing your settings. For instance if you go in to the settings and turn off auto brightness and reduce the levels of the screen then you will reduce the amount of battery used there.
4. Reducing the amount of services you have switched on is also important to increasing the batteries life span. When you are not using Wi-Fi, 3g, location services, push notifications, push mail, or data fetching, turning them off will save your battery. All of these services require power, even when they’re running invisibly in the background as they constantly connect or re-connect to the internet and this will drain your battery.  I regularly switch off the 3G and Wi Fi on my iPhone if I know I need to make my battery last for a big night out when my battery is half gone.
5. You could also get an external battery such as the ‘New Trent’ Backup Battery. It’s only £45 and it makes a lot of sense if you are planning on using your iPad for long periods of time such as keeping the kids (or yourself) entertained on a long flight. It has enough juice to double the length of your devices battery and doesn’t look too bad.

Thanks to the guys at  iPad cases and iPhone 4 cases specialists cleverkit.com for helping out with these tips.

Apple have released the new iPhone software - iOS 4. This is a substantial improvement to the old software and best of all it’s free!  But do you know how to download iOS 4 onto your iPhone 3G, 3GS or iPod Touch?

Will iOS 4 work on my iPhone or iPod Touch?

iOS 4 is available for:

• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4 (when launched)
• iPod touch second generation
• iPod touch third generation

Not all features will work on all products but it will provide lots of new - and free! - features to the phones listed above.

How do I get iOS 4?

Don’t know how to update to iOS 4?

1. Download the latest version of iTunes on to the Mac or PC you used to install or last update your iPhone.
2. Plug your iPhone into  to the computer via the USB connector.
3. Click on the iPhone or iPod Touch icon in the list on the left.
4. Select the Summary tab and then click the  ‘Check for Update’ button.
5. Follow the simple instructions and within 30 minutes it’s all done!

Don’t worry - it’s all straightforward and pretty easy to do.  Just allow a bit of time to download the software from the internet and then install it on your iPhone.

Please leave a comment below to tell us what you think of iOS 4 and to leave your own tips :)

As widely predicted the Apple iPhone 4 has today been announced by Steve Jobs. It’s a totally new iPhone featuring some really big improvements along with some very cool new features. I’ll cut straight to the important stuff and tell you about the big new features that have been revealed so far.

Sexy, slim, glass and steel design

The iPhone 4 has a brand new design. It’s the slimmest smartphone in the world at only 9.3mm thick.  I haven’t checked this so don’t castrate me if Apple’s statement is a little fanciful - they are famed for making up their own definition for what constitutes a ’smartphone’ in the past. 

Gone is the scratchy, slightly cheap and crack prone plastic.  The iPhone 4 has a super slick looking glass front and back with stainless steel around the edges.  They’ve even created a new grade of stainless steel just for this product!

Rather cleverly the stainless steel edges are used as the antenna.  Genius design.  The ‘aluminosilcate’ glass is “chemically strengthened to be 30 times harder than plastic”.

The design looks amazing in the photos and I can’t wait to get one in my grubby mitts. I may pitch my tent on Regent St tomorrow (for full disclosure I must admit to not owning a tent…).

New ‘Retina’ super high resolution display

The iPhone 4 will have the highest resolution display ever built into a mobile phone.  Their new ‘Retina display’ shows 326 pixels per inch, which is so dense that the human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels (when held at a normal distance).  The display has four times the resolution of an iPhone 3GS. It features IPS technology which according to Jobs is “quite a bit better than OLED”.

The display is likely to set a new benchmark in mobile and I think it will come into it’s own when you see it in the flesh. The only downside is the display is no larger than the iPhone 3GS at 3.5 inches.  I would have preferred to see it grow a little but I guess the trade off would be a bigger product that wouldn’t fit in my pocket.

New 5 megapixel camera and HD video capture

The iPhone 4’s camera is a big improvement.  Not only is it a 5 megapixel camera but it records HD video too. The HD video captures 720p at 30 frames per second - HD TV quality video recording in your mobile phone.  Sweet.

The camera has finally got an LED flash and the new camera technology is claimed to work extremely well in low light thanks to it’s ‘backside illuminated sensor’. I hope this lives up to the hype. There’s also a front facing camera for self-portraits and the new FaceTime video calling feature.

FaceTime video calling

iPhone 4 will feature the brand new FaceTime video calling feature.  You can video call other iPhone 4 users (over WiFi only for now) using the aforementioned front facing camera, switch to share something you can see with the main camera and flip between landscape and portrait mode mid-call.  I’m not sure how this will work for the person on the other end… will they need to change to modes at the same time?

Now, this is the only feature I’m not sold on.  Video calling has been available for years via 3G - Vodafone’s 3G launch in 2004 seemed to be built around it - but it hasn’t ever caught on.  I also have video conferencing available via Skype on my laptop but I’m quite happy to stick with IM and occasional voice calls - I’m not bothered about using the power of the interweb to watch my mates pick their nose 200 miles away.

Maybe it would be different if I had kids? Perhaps Apple will do it properly and bring video calling to the mainstream? However given that both parties need an iPhone 4 and WiFi I suspect this will only be used by a small minority on rare occasions, at least for a couple of years as the base grows.

iMovie for iPhone

To make the most of the new HD video capture Apple are releasing an iMovie App (for the princely sum of $5) that will let you create movies with your video clips, photos and music which you can then email directly to your friends.

It looks very cool and easy to use.  Ideal for shooting, editing and sharing mini-movies on the fly.

I’m hoping you’ll be able to upload straight to You Tube and Facebook too - perfect for embarrassing your friends before you leave the club or showing off your snowboard skills whilst still on the slope.

The $5 charge - which I assume will end up at £3.99 in the UK - is a little bit of a surprise.  Maybe this is the start of Apple charging for more of it’s coolest new features?

Gyro and Accelerometer

It took me three attempts to spell it correctly but the iPhone will be the first phone to have a built-in three-axis gyroscope as well as the accelerometer of old.  This enables lots of technical sounding cool things such as capturing angular velocity (presumably the precise speed and angle you’ve dropped your beloved iPhone 4?)  but in real speak it means you will be able to have an even more awesome gaming experience because it will be loads more accurate to your every move.

Multi-tasking and more talk time

iPhone 4 will feature the Apple A4 processor which will support multi-tasking.  It will also help the iPhone 4 to give you 40% more talk-time than the 3GS - fixing the biggest issue I have with my iPhone.

Better call quality

The iPhone 4 has a second microphone which works with the main mic to suppress background noise and improve your call quality.

Verdict

This is the biggest iPhone upgrade yet.  It’s a totally new phone with a stunning new look, some great new features and improvements that tackle it’s previous weaknesses around the camera and battery life.

I can’t bloody wait until it launches!  :)  Now how much will it cost to cancel my O2 contract early….

Let everyone know your first impressions by leaving a comment below!

Apple have tonight announced the iPhone 4.  It’s a completely new product with 100 new features that will launch on June 24 in the UK.

It will feature a brand new, very sexy glass and stainless steel design, a 5 megapixel camera with flash, HD video capture, video calls, a 3 axis gyro and much improved battery life! Phew.

It looks fantastic and has some incredible features.   I want one now!

More detail will follow in a later post but let me know your initial thoughts by commenting below.

Apple have announced that 2 million iPads have been sold since its launch 60 days ago. Huge sales for a gadget that costs upward of £400, particularly when you compare it to the 3 months it took the iPhone to reach nearly 1.4m sales. A really strong start but does this indicate that it will last the distance?

So the iPad has finally reached our shores.  The launch day queues on Regent Street demonstrate the huge demand for the new uber-gadget in the UK - but will you be buying one?

I’ve tested Apple’s latest innovation and, as you can read in my previous post Do ilove the iPad?, I really liked it as a piece of technology but I wasn’t convinced it had a place in my life.

Contrary to my caution and misgivings a good friend of mine insists he will shortly be buying an iPad.  In doing so he helped me realise why for him, and for many other people, it has a purpose, albeit one that has a vague whiff of luxurious indulgence.

He owns an iPhone and an iMac (which is a desktop, not a laptop for the non-Apple addicted amongst you).  His iPhone is perfect when on the move and his iMac is ideal when he needs a full on focus for browsing, uploading photos and his favourite passion - winning auctions and selling stuff on eBay. However if he wants to do a bit of causal browsing or Facebooking whilst cuddling up to his lovely better half on the sofa the iPad would be ideal - and much better than watching Come Dine with Me or Desperate Facelifts (or is it Housewives?).  He can browse websites, watch wakeboarding videos on You Tube or even chat with me.

He doesn’t own a laptop so for him the iPad is iDeal (sorry, iReally must stop i-ing things). In fact, he used to own a laptop but it was overkill - too big, too power hungry, too heavy and too much technology for the job in hand - so he sold it to me.  This is a perfect reason to own an iPad, but one that wont convince many laptop owners.

So why is the iPad so difficult to understand when compared to Apple’s other ground breaking products?

Let’s look back at the product that provides both the DNA and the hyperbole which has gifted the iPad such a fantastic start - the iPhone. It revolutionised the mobile phone, a category of gadget that was of course already very well established and based on clear and distinct needs that only a mobile phone could fulfill - mobile communication by voice and text.  It brought incredible new features and usability to the party and kick started the mobile data revolution.  It was a very different kind of mobile phone, but a mobile phone none the less.

Back in time the iPod created the MP3 player - it was a reinvention of the Walkman which had identified and served the need for listening to music on the go.  The iPod just took it to a new level.

With the iPad Apple is trying to create a new category that sits between existing products rather than revolutionise an existing one. This is a brave strategy as you could end up creating a product that serves lots of needs adequately but excels at none of them, which can be dangerous according to my uni textbooks circa 1998 at least… Perhaps the thinking has moved on now?

If I could be bothered to create my own Venn diagram it would show that the iPad sits somewhere on the cross-over between the mobile phone, the netbook, the laptop and the desktop.

There’s an interesting article published by The Register which shares this opinion.  The author, a long-term Apple fanboi, describes how after only 56 days he is already falling out of love with his iPad. He sites a few practical issues around the ergonomics of the device but in general his summary is that the iPad creates a new category of device, one that he doesn’t currently have a need for.

The iPad is a replacement for neither a netbook nor a notebook. It’s a different category of device entirely. However, in its current incarnation — although I do get some utility and entertainment out of it in specific usage scenarios — it’s in a category that is yet of little value to me. Perhaps not to you, either.

To succeed and find it’s place in millions more homes it will need to find some strong niche uses in which it beats its alternatives rather than simply ending up as a glorified digital photo frame or overgrown iPod Touch.  Great iPad Apps and innovative accessories will be key to this and I’ll be watching very closely.

I may yet be an iPad owner but for now I may well invest in other luxurious indulgences.

Much like my hairline, O2’s network coverage seems to be receding over time.

I’m not sure if the issues are temporary, or just local to me, but O2’s network coverage problems are frustrating a lot of people I know. O2 are at risk of losing loyal customers, particularly those customers they scooped up (and paid through the nose for) with the iPhone exclusive launch.

My personal experiences centre on my commute to work.  I used to have great O2 3G coverage that kept me entertained when I regularly missed my train home from Richmond station. I could while away the long, err, minutes checking out the news, Twittering or catching up on emails. In the past couple of months O2’s 3G signal has simply disappeared along with the usual fall back EDGE network leaving me in a mobile data black hole! It’s a shame O2’s coverage map (see below) doesn’t seem to recognize this issue.

I’m now stuck with an unusable signal that fails to connect to the internet.  It’s ridiculous that a busy suburb of the biggest city in the UK still doesn’t have good coverage.  I was on a stag do in Berlin this weekend and the O2 Germany 3G coverage was impeccable - it did cost me £23 for about 5 minutes of browsing though :( O2 helpfully texted me with this information and a little ‘be careful’ warning after I’d landed back in the UK - thanks guys!!

The O2 3G network coverage on my train journey seems to have deteriorated too. There are only small pockets of 3G coverage that are practically unusable as my poor old iPhone tries to cope with switching from 3G to EDGE  to GPRS and back to 3G every 30 seconds.

I’ve had no end of problems receiving calls too.  Voicemails regularly appear whilst I’m sat awaiting a particular call, watching my phone. I’m pretty sure this is because the 3G coverage is so weak that the phone is continually switching between 3G and 2G coverage and getting its knickers in a twist.

Just this weekend one of my friends told me he now switches off his iPhone’s 3G connection in order to get reliable coverage on O2 and he just puts up with EDGE speed browsing (at best). Surely it shouldn’t come to this?

At home my O2 mobile broadband coverage is unusable too.  I recently moved house and was looking forward to getting use from my pay as you go dongle but it was a wasted effort and I had to buy a new one from T-Mobile.  Something really seems to be going wrong.

Anyway, rant over and I feel much better for sharing. I could bore you with a lot more examples of poor network coverage but if you’ve read this far you are probably already reaching for the Jamie Oliver blades, wrists outstretched…  Suffice to say I’ll definitely be moving to a new network as soon as this contract runs out and I’ll be checking the coverage for Orange and Vodafone very carefully over the coming months.

P.S. I can’t wait to get my hands on the iPhone 4G! :)

Have you noticed problems with O2’s mobile phone coverage?  If so add a comment below and let everyone know where coverage problems exist!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post on GadgetStylist. The day job has taken up all my time in the past few months. Funnily enough its the day job - working for Review Centre - that has given me the chance to write once more, thanks to my chance to play with an iPad…

When Apple announced the iPad I was impressed by the gadget behind the hype and felt that I needed one in my life - but I was unsure why.  I already have an iPhone and Macbook so what could I possibly use an iPad for? Perhaps playing with one for an evening would help me figure this out?

I was also concerned about the ergonomics. Laptops sit nicely on your lap with the screen angled pretty well whether you’re watching iPlayer or browsing websites.  The iPad, whilst sexy and slim, needs to be held or propped up when in use.  The Apple promo videos all seem to feature the demonstrator sitting with their legs crossed or hanging over the arm of a sofa with the iPad propped up on their knees - is this to be known as ‘the iPad position‘?

Anyway, Review Centre is giving away an iPad as part of a competition and that gave me the chance to play with the prize before it was safely locked away…

First impressions, the iPad really is a very cool, highly desirable piece of kit.  Its ridiculously slim, feels wonderful in your hands and the build quality is simply ’solid’.  It oozes style.  In many ways the iPad resembles a giant iPod Touch with the same single ‘home’ button on the front, simple volume controls, mute switch and power/sleep mode button - which is no bad thing.

One criticism is the lack of a built in camera.  Several friends have mentioned this as something that would put them off buying a first generation iPad as they wouldn’t be able to have video calls with family and friends.

Switching on the iPad, you’re presented with the iPhone operating system that so many of us are now accustomed to - but on a huge scale.  As you can see from any screen shot all your Apps and the main functions are again represented by those iconic rounded square icons.  Business as usual. The addition of customizing the background image and a landscape version of the icons is a nice if frivolous feature that will surely come to the iPhone itself in OS4.

Web browsing on the iPad is probably the best feature when the product is fresh out of the box.  Using the multi-touch commands to scroll and zoom around a website is so much more engaging and fun than using a mouse or touchpad.  The large display makes a huge difference when compared with the iPhone.  However the omission of Flash, which has been discussed at length elsewhere, means the experience of web browsing is compromised on some websites.

Where the iPad will live or die is by the Apps that are built for it.  The handful of Apps I got to try where good if not ground breaking but this is just the beginning.  App developers the world over will be beavering away at creating Apps that really define what the iPad can do.

The huge display means Apps have a lot more room to play with. For instance, the Mail feature is much easier to use than on an iPhone because you can have your inbox and messages open on one page.  The beefy processor should enable multi-tasking in future software updates and will enable plenty of App innovation.

The handful of games I tried were fun and more engaging due to the bigger screen if a little gimicky.  I think the iPad could be great for RPGs and strategy games as the multi-touch interface should be perfect for marshaling your troops or planning attacks on rival castles.

So, my first impressions are mixed.  Out of the box it’s a super-sized iPod Touch, but without the portability.  Hmm, so why would someone want an iPad? I think it would be great for keeping the kids entertained, awesome for watching movies on a flight (with the addition of a stand accessory) and it will find its place as a casual web browsing and entertainment device in the home.  I quite like the idea of putting an iPad on a stand in the kitchen and letting Jamie or Gordon take me through cooking a recipe step by step!

Do I still want one of my own?  Yes.  Do I know why? Not really - but I’m confident that the Apps that come out will unlock it’s full potential in the coming months.

The iPad launches in the UK in late May with the Apple store taking orders from May 10.  Orange, Vodafone and O2 have all announced they will launch the 3G version of the iPad too.

/5

Tablet Computer

Apple iPad

Freeview HD has launched which means HD TV channels are available for free in some parts of the country.  To celebrate this the people behind Freeview HD have launched and iPhone App that lets you plan your viewing whilst out and about.

But there are only two HD channels available on Freeview HD I hear you cry (or maybe not?).  Fear not, the App covers all Freeview channels. You can customise it to your region and also search for a particular programme or category of programme.

All you need to do now is buy a Freeview HD box and enjoy free HD channels on your telly!