The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Mobile Reviews
Samsung i8910 HD unboxed – video
Jun 1st
8 megapixels, a large 3.7 inch touch screen and ‘HD quality’ – is the Samsung i8910 HD the ultimate multimedia experience? Conor over at Orange has got his hands on one, and unboxes it for your viewing pleasure..
The MAXroam road test – day three
Apr 19th
So day three of my MAXroam road test (read the introduction, day one and day two if you haven’t already), and having been up first thing to catch a ridiculously early flight from London City Airport and been rushing around for the rest of the day I was now settled into my hotel room in Jersey. Seeing as I was technically roaming (even though the Channel Islands are still within the UK numbering plan) I thought it was time to see if I could get my MAXroam SIM and account up and running.
I popped the SIM in my trusty SIM-unlocked BlackBerry Pearl. My aim? To see if I could make a voice call successfully to my other handset.
Heading back over to the MAXroam website and logging into my account, I saw that I’d been allocated a mobile number in Belgium. I assumed this was my base number, but I was more interested in the feature MAXroam offers whereby you can get a local number in quite a few cities around the world. I clicked the button, and it broke again. ‘ An error occured during communication with server!’, apparently. A little drop-box appeared but no countries were listed.
Hey ho, not the end of the world. Checking my BlackBerry, which had after what seemed like an age finally booted up, It’d successfully registered on the relatively new Cable & Wireless GSM network in Jersey. Good stuff. So, as per my day one post about following instructions, I grabbed the welcome pack and read up on making a call. There were two sets of instructions, slightly different, but on the subject of making a call it had this to say:
1. Always dial the full International phone number, excluding “00″ or “+”
OK, so I dialled my UK Three number in the format it said. No +44 or 0044, just 44 followed by the number (obviously missing the first zero).
2. Even if you are making a local call use the country code + area code + local number. Then press the send key
I get it 
3. Wait about 5-10 seconds and your phone will ring. Answer this.
I waited, then after a few seconds a message popped up: ‘Call failed, please try again’ with another message rather annoyingly over the top ‘Sim call barred’. As MAXroam is using a callback service, I’d come to expect this. However, nothing in the instructions said I might see these rather confusing messages.
Then a few (5-10) seconds later another message popped up: ‘*182*44(number I dialled)# (ok)’
That’s a USSD message. Again, I half expected to see it, but for the average user it’s a little daunting.
And then? Nothing. So I gave it a minute or so, and tried again. The same things happened, then nothing. No call back.
I gave up again for a while, and rattled off another email to the guys at MAXroam. Whilst normally I’d fiddle around and try all sorts of combinations of number formats to get this working, I was planning to test the serviceas a ‘normob’ user – and not someone who necessarily knows what he’s doing
Stay tuned for day four of the road test – and see whether I got it working.
The MAXroam road test day two
Apr 18th
Rather later than planned, here’s day two of the MAXroam road test. It’s a rather short update as I was rushing around the country that day, but with a trip to Jersey planned for first thing the next morning I wanted to at least try and get things working before I left for the airport.
If you’ve read my previous posts here and most recently here, you’ll know I’d got as far as trying to activate my MAXroam SIM. True to his word, CEO Pat Phelan got his tech team on the case, and first thing the next morning Platform Manager Chris Kennedy registered my SIM for activation. So, back to the registration process I went.
I entered the number of the SIM into the registration screen, setup my details and, well, it worked. Sort of. As you may know, MAXroam gives you a default GSM voice and SMS number (in this latest incarnation, it’s a Belgian +32 number) – and the option to add other local voice numbers in various cities around the world. However, when I first registered I just had a blank space where the Belgian number should be, and trying to add a local number threw a rather bizarre website error.
With the hours getting fewer and fewer until a rather early start to get to London City airport in the morning, I thought I’d have another try tomorrow and see if I could get things working. Stay tuned for the next update!
The MAXroam road test day one
Apr 15th
MAXroam packaging
If you haven’t already read this post, let me bring you up to speed. CEO Pat Phelan over at MAXroam sent me one of his new version five SIMs to play with. Here’s how I got on, from registration to making a call, during five days – and a few thousand miles of travelling – last week.
So the package arrived, and I finally got my hands on it. Due to a slight co-ordination/space-time continuum issue (you know the sort) it took me a couple of weeks to actually get a hold of the package, but last Monday evening I opened the envelope, took out the contents, and armed with a BlackBerry, my trusty MacBook Pro and a nice cup of tea (milk and two sugars please, if you’re offering) I sat down to try out the service.
Now I don’t know about you, but there’s been many a time when I’ve believed I’m too clever to read the instructions. It usually happens with technology, and occasionally IKEA furniture. However this time I thought I’d go through the five easy steps printed on the inside of the packaging. And rather pretty packaging it is too – as you can probably see from the couple of photos taken with my trusty Nokia E71. Anyway, back to the instructions.
1. Buy your MAXroam SIM here and simply register it online at maxroam.com
MAXroam packaging
A little strange to find the packaging of a product I just bought asking me to buy it, but not to worry. Flipping over the back of the packaging I found another set of instructions – ableit slightly different, that started with registration – so I figured I’d follow those instead.
2. Go to www.maxroam.com and click register my SIM
So far so good.
3. Enter the number on your SIM and follow the instructions
“I can manage this”, I thought rather proudly – so I typed in the long number into the website. And bam – it broke. ‘This SIM has not been registered by staff to allow activation. Please contact Customer Support.’ Hmm, it’s nearly 8pm on a Monday night, wonder if I can get this fixed tonight? Rather than try the usual customer service approach, I emailed Pat. Within 10 minutes, I got a response asking for a different number from the SIM card. Sent that over, and within minutes Pat replied again saying it’d be sorted in the morning.
More tomorrow..
The MAXroam road test
Apr 14th
A few weeks ago I had a brief email exchange with Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom – the Irish entrepeneurs behind MAXroam. I’ve been following their progress for a while, and have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the new version of the platform.
Fast forward to last week, and Pat had very kindly sent me a SIM to try. Due to my lack of time it’d been sitting unopened in a non-descript brown envelope for a few weeks, but with a week packed with travel ahead of me I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Now that I’ve had a chance to recover from my busy week last week, I figured it was time to write about my experiences with MAXroam. Whilst it wasn’t the most exhaustive test in the world, I thought it’d be interesting to share my experiences.
More coming tomorrow..
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