Queued For Sending

SMS now seems so clumsy and slow to me. I am sure that if you live in an area where you have great mobile reception then text messaging is almost the default way to communicate with anyone. I do get a bundle each day myself. The difference is that replying is such a pain.

Actually typing the message is OK, thanks to SwiftKey, but then comes the really annoying bit. You hit Send. And wait. Queued For Sending. Then, some time later, if you're lucky, you hear the derponk noise that accompanies a change to Cannot Send,  You try again. This time the display stays at Queued For Sending and there's nothing you can do. At least with Cannot Send you get a chance to Send Again. Not with Queued For Sending.  No way. You have to hope that it either does go or that you hear the kerponk.

On occasion I have resorted to copying an unsent message and sending it again and it has gone before the Queued For Sending one! Now that has really confused recipients sometimes!

All in all it's a bit of a drag. In complete contrast is GMail and, indeed, several other apps now which have message systems embedded in them - all, of course, using the internet rather than mobile data connection. In every case, I have been able to communicate far more quickly and reliably - and in the case of GMail, include all sorts of extras like links and images simply.

My problem, of course, is that not all my recipients have the appropriate apps on their phones but more and more do and, to a large extent, I am replying to those that come in that way so it's not that much of an issue anyway. More relevant might have been lack of an internet connection but I am finding BT WiFi hot spots in far more places than I find decent mobile reception! Not sure how long that will remain the case and maybe I have just been lucky. To be fair, most of my SMS problems are at home in a rural village and that is where I get great internet service in contrast to the non-existent phone service indoors.

It is frustrating, though, to see all the money being planned for 4G networks so that people can watch movies on their way to work when so many people are like me and unable to make a simple phone call or send a message on their mobile without wandering around outside or balancing on a window ledge.

It may be terribly embarrassing for teenagers to see a dad holding his mobile in the air to get a signal but that is what has to be done here and it is not always easy to remember to avoid doing that elsewhere!

Soon there will be a High Speed train whizzing past a few miles away and neighbours may be crowing about their new £40 a month fibre optic internet connections but none of us will be sending each other SMS to comment.

The people on the train will probably have 4G beaming down to their devices. They'll probably be beaming as they look out of the window and see me in the middle of a field waving my arms around.

Oh dear O2. Simple questions need simple answers.

My Xperia X10 has been great but lately the need to charge it more than once a day and seemingly random shut-downs when it had way more than 50% charge was getting on my nerves. In a way I am quite glad that I didn't switch my O2 contract to paying a low monthly amount and keeping the phone which is what I probably would have done when my 2 years were up in April. These last few weeks convinced me that I do need another phone, well a battery probably would have done, but the Xperia P looked really nice, is due to get Android's Ice Cream Sandwich now - maybe even Jelly Bean soon - so I set up an upgrade through MyO2 on-line.

That was simple enough and the next day the new phone arrived. In the box was a SIM card which is a two-in-one affair which looks as though it would fit the normal size SIM socket as well as the new microSIM socket. You can break out the microSIM for phones like the Xperia P. As I couldn't transfer my old normal size SIM to the new phone I was wondering how on earth O2 would know that the new SIM was mine. And, presumably, it would have a new number. I suppose if it had been a really really nice new number I might not have minded but the prospect of having to update so many things with a new number wasn't that appealing. A colleague also pointed out that none of the people I'd given cards to or met at various places and scribbled the number down on bits of paper, napkins or hands would ever be able to know the new one.

So, rather than break out the microSIM and stuff it in and hope for the best, I got in touch with O2 via their on-line chat thing. I had tried communicating with Ask Lucy on their site but firstly she only wanted me to type one sentence at a time and secondly appeared just to send me links related to various words she recognised, all of which were useless. The chat worked better and I did get the feeling that 'Diana' understood my query. She said she would send a microSIM in the post which I should use. Well, that seemed simple and I assumed that she would somehow link that one to my account so that when I stuffed it in the phone it would recognise me.

It arrived very promptly the next day, today, and I set about getting the new phone up and running. The fact that I couldn't make calls didn't trouble me as it is a lousy area and that's often the case. GMail and Facebook were almost instantly up and running which was very encouraging. So far so good, I recall posting on Facebook at the time.

Then it told me that a system update was available. Yes, Ice Cream Sandwich already, I thought. Cool. So I plugged it in to the PC which set about downloading the new software. That took ages to get it on the PC and then it was time for the next stage: putting it on the phone. I followed all the instructions but each time it failed so I gave up on that. Try again another day. Over at the PC there was no chance of it getting a connection but putting it back next to the old phone, which did have a connection, I began to wonder about that recognition thing again. Looking in the applications I found the one that would tell me what my number was. No number. Hmm. I looked at Network Provider. None there. It could see O2 was there but wouldn't link me to O2. More or less as I had wondered at the very start.

Back to O2 support on-line. And that's where I spotted something called a SIMswap page. It was billed as the place iPhone users getting the latest iPhone could order these new microSIMs that it said they'd need. Reading on there was a link to a SIMswap page where you entered your number and, although it didn't say so, it looked like the sort of place that would do what I wanted.

I put my number in, entered the code they sent to my (fortunately still going) old phone and that may have done the job. I then got a message on the old phone to say that the switch would take anything between 30 minutes and 24 hours. I would know when it had been effected when my old phone stopped working, the site said. Now, I have no idea when that will be but maybe when I wake up tomorrow I'll have a dead old phone and a live new one.

It'll be fun finding out. But, really O2, you could have made that a whole load simpler by just adding a short paragraph in the box to say "Hey, you've got a phone that needs a microSIM. Your old one won't fit. Stick the new one in and go to our site etc..."

Watch this space. I still have the system upgrade to do!

Plug and go go

With a computer on its last legs and a laptop down to its last GB of space I've got some new equipment coming. That's nice but how on earth do I move all the files from one to another? External hard drives would work but less than £10 got me a USB Data Link cable from Gizoo. It's great, plug one end into one computer and the other into another and you get a split screen with the local files in one part and the remote machine's in the other. Moving stuff is just a cut and paste job and several gigabytes that would have needed several trips by normal USB stick were almost instantly transferred.

Another gadget I got is a Pama bluetooth hands-free box. Intended for the car, as I seem to get more calls when I'm driving than I do when I'm not, it is a slightly revised version of something I bought a couple of years ago. That refused to recharge for some reason I never discovered and, as it had been a bit scratchy and basic I didn't bother getting another. This version is much clearer and displays caller ID too which is useful. Only about £30 from Amazon and it also has another use - I live in an area of poor mobile reception with none anywhere inside the house where I can sit in any comfort. With this device, the phone can be placed wherever the signal's good and I can just chat to the box in the warm and dry. Few of you will appreciate the difference but those that do should take a look. It's cheap and works.