sinéad's lifestream

The new job is going well, a change of scenery is definitely something I needed. I feel a lot less stressed out. Working for 3 as a sales associate means I am completely focused on selling products and hitting my targets, rather than stressing out about the store paperwork and deadlines. You would think that I’d be happier now… but I’m actually bored. Selling 3 handsets is easy, they practically sell themselves. I’ve come to the conclusion that I was stressed out in 3G because I wasn’t being paid to BE responsible, but it was part of my job to be, but no-one else on the same wage had any of the management duties that I did. I’m craving a little responsibility now that I find my brain switching off and my automatic “robot selling phrases” kicking in. The only aspect of working for 3 that is keeping me interested is talking to customers about the X-Series.

X-Series is a sexy name for access to the “Internet” on your phone, or rather 3s version of the Internet. They have partnered with Skype, Yahoo!, Orb, Sling, Google, Ebay and Windows Live Messenger to bring features of these online services to X-Series compatible handsets. You also have FULL, free web access. There will no longer be a “walled garden” – if you connect to the “Internet” from any 3 handset at the moment, you’re only able to access a selection of mobile sites that are compatible with your phone, but the handsets due to launch on X-Series are highly sophisticated devices.

There is a massive interest in the Nokia N73, due to launch on the network sometime in January, I’ve got my eye on one of these bad boys. This will be the first X-Series handset launched, with the Sony Ericsson W950i following later. While most consumers I’ve spoke to are dying to get their hands on a Nokia handset with a 3.2 mega-pixel camera and Carl Zeiss lens, don’t be under any illusion that this is a “camera phone”, this is a truly portable multimedia and communication device.

With an X-Series handset you can check your e-mail, logon to Windows Live Messenger, make voice calls over Skype (currently limited to other Skype users), bid for items on Ebay and even use Google to search. You also can browse online, check your Myspace profile or your Bebo page. Your profile that you labored over for hours will still look a lot better when viewed on a pc screen though, as the Internet browser from 3 modifies webpages to look “better” on the handsets small screen, in order to improve legibility.

For all these features, you’d expect there to be a massive monthly fee, it makes sense right? Granted you’ll need to take out a 12 month mobile phone contract, as the service isn’t available on 3Pay, but the X-Series subscription is cheap and for a flat-rate monthly fee you have “unlimited bandwidth” (although there IS a fair usage policy, stating that 1gb is sufficient for each user).

In the UK the monthly fee for full services is €15 a month, or you can access services for €8 a month which excludes Orb and Sling only. Orb allows you to connect to your home computer, and Sling allows you to connect to your home television subscription (such as Sky Digital) both via your home broadband connection. These two features are probably the most impressive and yet the least accessible to non-geeks as they require a complicated technical setup (they’ll also drain the battery life out of your handset).

Overall X-Series sounds rather impressive, as the service hasn’t launched in Ireland yet I haven’t had the opportunity to test the above features out. As soon as I get my hands on my very own N73, I’ll post a full usability review. For now, there is a fantastic review of the UK version over on Digital-Lifestlyes.info.