We continue our hopefully short series of posts about the mobile phone I was sent for free on the condition that I didn’t have to review it if I didn’t want to but still find myself wanting to write about. Yesterday we concluded that all mobile phones are shit and this one is no exception. The industry has managed to pack an incredible about of technology into a small object, such that it would be indistinguishable from magic 20 years ago, and yet make the whole experience of using the thing more irritating than irritated bowel syndrome.

But from what little I’ve heard about this phone (and I’ve been deliberately ignoring the hype and reviews) that’s not the point. It’s supposed to be a bog-standard phone. What’s different is the built-in Skype.

Before I got any further here’s a chart taken from the iPhone UK pages.

There are, you’ll note, three tariffs increasing in the amount of calls you can make and texts you can send. And yet they all come with “unlimited data”. Now, call me a fucking pedant but what is a text if not an incredibly small amount of data? Come to think of it, aren’t phone calls just data? Or are they converted into analogue sound waves as soon as they hit the tower? This, in short, is a con.

Skype and other VoIP systems are revolutionary not because they are generally free but because they break though this bullshit by saying everything is data and you can’t discriminate between the end use. Text, audio, video, whatever - it’s all the same when it’s reduced to 1s and 0s. So if your ISP lets you send email “for free” then it should also let you make phone calls.

The Skype phone, then, is something of a brave move for 3mobile (as I will call them so I don’t have random digits cluttering the place up) as they’re pulling away the curtain and revealing their lack of clothes, to mix a metaphor. The Skype service is treated as data and thus only works when you can access the internet with the phone. You can therefore use this phone to call other Skype accounts all over the world for free without being tied to your computer or wifi network. This is very good indeed.

So last night I called my mother in New Zealand, ostensibly just to try it out but being my mother we talked for 45 minutes. The connection was better than usual which doesn’t mean a whole lot as Skype calls vary tremendously depending how your call is routed, but it was a good thing. Usually we get a bit of a time delay but it was pretty minimal. And the connection did’t drop. Considering it was being done over a mobile line the quality was good. And, above all, I was phoning New Zealand for free. Sure, I was doing it from my flat so nothing really changed but I could have been anywhere there’s a 3G signal.

Incoming calls are pretty indistinguishable from normal mobile calls which was a little odd at first. Not a problem, just a little weird. No-one’s supposed to have this number so I freaked out a little when it rang.

The next test was instant messaging. Having gotten used to the 10p per text scam (I’ve always been a pay-as-you-go kinda guy rather than paying some absurd amount each month for a contract) this was pretty revolutionary. Not only can you “text” as much as you like you can send well over the 160 character limit. But that’s not the big advantage. Because they’re free I found myself sending little bursts and actually having a conversation rather than constantly thinking about the cost and maximizing the characters I sent. So other than some hiccups with the keypad having buttons in slightly different places to the usual phone I was loving this a lot.

When you’re logged into Skype on your computer the phone takes priority for incoming calls. Or at least mine does. There doesn’t seem to be a way to say which has priority. And when using IM on both it can get a little confused. Messages sent from the phone never seem to appear on the computer but the reverse will sometimes happen, displaying them in different colours despite coming from the same account. Or maybe I’m getting confused.

The downside is 3mobile have crippled Skype a bit. You can’t use your Skypeout account to call normal phone numbers which is a big shame and you can’t send files held on your phone over Skype. You have to use the mobile phone network for that which costs many monies. That’s fair enough I suppose since they need to recoup the internet use at some point. Interestingly the Skype functionality really is free and not part of an internet data plan. All you need is to have some credit on your phone. (At least I think that’s right - decoding mobile tariffs makes my head hurt - another reason I hate mobile phone companies.) I guess the future for this is a system where you pay for the unlimited internet connection and can use your Skypeout account.

The phones themselves cost £50 which doesn’t seem too bad for an unsubsidized pay-as-you-go.

And that’s about it. I guess if you use Skype and are in the market for a new non-contract mobile this isn’t a bad option. But I’m really not an expert. What I can say is the Skype stuff works as described, which is refreshing.