The Motorola Motocubo A45 is a stylish slide phone available in a white enclosure. The device is a tidy manageable size with dimensions of 82 x 61.5 x 16.6 mm, and weighing 110 grams. The phone was released by Motorola in October 2009 and has been one of the company’s best sellers since. Users of Motorola mobile phones are impressed by its sleek and compact image.
The handset comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, although they keys are placed quite close together making typing a little bit awkward. It offers Organizer, T9 and dial functions and Voice memo; the menus are easy and quick to navigate.
The TFT display screen is vivid and sharp, measuring 2.5 inches and has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 256K-colour support. The camera is not one of the key features of the phone, being only 2-megapixels but the pictures are of reasonable quality.
The Motocubo is powered by a Li-lon 930 mAh standard battery and will give you 8.5 hours of talk time and up to 350 hours of standby time.
You can keep in touch with your friends with emails, SMS and MMS. The Motocubo supports WAP 2.0/xHTML as well as Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, GPRS, EDGE, micro USB v2.0 and HSCSD. You can browse the web and switch applications quickly and easily.
You can store up to 1500 contacts in the phone book, and display the last 20 dialled, received and missed calls.
An FM radio and an MP3 and an MP4 player can be listened to through your own headphones thanks to the addition of a 3.5mm jack.
One company that offers cash for your mobile phones is Mazuma. This company is also known for world class phone recycling services. Plus it offers free courier services if 10 or more phones are submitted.
Mazuma’s offers depend on your mobile phone type; they offer £140 for your Sony Ericsson Satio and as much as £280 for an Apple iPhone 3G S 32GB model. The official site of the company, www.mazumamobile.com, has a ‘Sell Mobile’ button where users can type in their mobile phone unit model, review the order, enter personal details, and finally, confirm the order. If you are unsure of what model your mobile phone is, you can also select from among 28 manufacturer logos in order to browse through model images.
The company site also features a 24-hour live online support and a section called “Being Responsible” where you are given the essential facts about recycling presented in a very simple, easy-to-read format with the happy-looking Mazuma mascot – a funny-looking red mobile phone unit with hands, legs and ears and a relatively large oval-shaped human face that occupies the screen.
Mazuma was voted in 2009 as the Best Mobile Phone Company in the UK based on a study conducted by an IBM business research company, Service Science. With a satisfaction score of 89.1 percent, Mazuma has beaten eight of its rivals in terms of speed of transaction as well as consumer price expectations.
The promises that Mazuma makes include satisfaction or your phone is returned, a 48-hour payment schedule, a free mobile data delete tool, free postage for 10 or more units, an SSL registration and the promise of being environment-friendly.
The Pop Pink is one of the latest mobile phones from LG, most notable for its compact and bright appearance; it’s a budget phone with a few extra features here and there. It’s one of the smallest LG mobile phones available, yet the screen is a sizable three inches. A very slim, yet solid feeling unit, at first glance it seems that this phone may very well do all it needs to do at a very low price.
Most notable about the LG Pop Pink other than its bright pink exterior, is the size of the unit and screen. The touch screen absolutely dominates the face of the unit, and is clearly the focus of the device. Despite only supporting EDGE data transfer at low data rates, this phone is still quite capable of surfing the internet, as well as sending messages through both IM clients and through social networking sites. The phone works well with the existing applications designed by LG for their phones. While this is to be expected of all LG devices, these applications still run smoothly even on weaker hardware.
While there are many good things to be said about the LG Pop Pink, the battery life is another story entirely. Supporting just 200 minutes of talk time on a single charge, the phone simply will not cut it for some. This combined with the total absence of Android are the greatest concerns about this phone, however in most every other way, the Pop Pink still manages to exceed expectations and is a welcome addition to the cheap mobile phones market.
Making mobile phone news with its super slim classic design is the Samsung Lucido S7220. When looking at it, the Lucido S7220 is similar to the Tocco Ultra slide-out, brushed black finish, edged in hot red; but this phone is not a touch screen. The screen is AMOLED and 2.2 inches in size. The phone is one of the lightest around, at 90 grams, and, it’s only 11.8 mm thick, fitting perfectly into a trouser or jacket pocket.
The camera is 5 megapixels and comes with GPS tagging, panoramic mode, face detection, and smile shot. It also includes anti-shaking which can be turned on or off whether in still mode or shooting video. The phone features EDGE, 3G, Bluetooth, and HSDPA. It also has a decent audio/video player.
This phone also has a couple of safety features: Assign “fake calls” it to a shortcut key and, when in that awkward or uncomfortable position, you can fake a phone call to yourself. For a realistic effect, you can also record audio to speak to you, ensuring the call is believable. The “SOS” feature will text pre-assigned numbers and the mobile tracker will use the GPS to show those numbers where your phone is.
There isn’t much negative to say about the Samsung Lucido S7220 – the keypad layout is a bit uncomfortable, but that’s about it. All-in-all, the Samsung Lucido S7220 is one of the best mid-range phones on the market. For mobile phone deals for this phone please contact your provider.
In the current economic climate there are very few people who would not like to earn a little extra cash, and there are even fewer people who don’t have an old mobile phone handset lying around. There are many companies who are prepared to pay for old mobile phones and who can dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way.
Going to a phone recycling company is a good and easy option. There are other ways you could try, such as selling the phone yourself on an auction site such as eBay, but these other methods offer no guarantee of a sale. If your phone is in reasonable working condition then that should translate into a reasonable offer from a mobile phone recycling firm.
If your phone is damaged in any way (and hardly anyone has a mobile phone in pristine condition) you may still earn cash from it. Offers will vary between companies and some may not make an offer, but it is worth a try. At the very least you will know that the phone will not be rotting in a landfill site polluting the environment.
So what happens to them afterwards? More recent models are shipped out to other countries such as India and China and sold on to consumers. Those that can be easily repaired may be refurbished. Some phones may be stripped down and their components recycled. The parts that cannot be reused in some way are passed on to organisations that can ensure they are disposed of responsibly.
One of the factors that can drive customers away from a broadband service provider, is a lack of solid customer support. For this reason, many broadband providers have taken steps to make sure their clients can get help any time of the day or night. Often, this involves offering several different ways to contact the support team.
The most common approach is to call the customer support number provided by the broadband company you do business with. Many providers offer the ability to reach an actual person for as much as sixteen hours each day. This can be the ideal approach when you have a question, want to make some minor changes in your service, or other matters that can be handled in a short period of time.
If you need help after the normal business hours offered by your provider, there is often the option of sending an email to the customer support team. Typically, you can get a response in twenty-four hours or less. When the issue is not one that needs attention immediately, this approach is a good fit. As a bonus, you also have documentation of the response to refer to in future, something that is not necessarily the case with a telephone call to the support team.
Today, many broadband services are offering a third means of connecting with the support team: instant messaging. This approach is often used to cover the hours of the day when the support team is not available by phone. When this option is available, it is usually accessible via a link on the provider’s web site. Customers find this is especially helpful when there is a question or concern on weekends, or other times when help is needed sooner rather than later.
The HTC Hero is a smartphone similar in design and function to an iPhone. The HTC Hero has won multiple awards, including the Stuff Awards 2009 Winner of Gadget of the Year, Mobile Choice Consumer Awards 2009 Phone of the Year, T3 Gadget Awards 2009 Gadget of the Year and T3 Gadget Awards 2009 Phone of the Year.
The HTC Hero allows users to personalise their mobile phone to a great degree. Widgets can be placed on the home screen, instead of having to access content through a number of menus, according to a variety of designs and sizes.
The HTC Hero is 4.41 inches long, 2.21 inches wide and 0.57 inches deep. It weighs 4.67 ounces (with battery). Its display screen is a 3.2 inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 320/480 HVGA resolution. It handles up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link through its network connection. It comes with GPS, 5.0 megapixels colour camera with auto focus, MP3 and Windows Media players, a G-sensor and digital compass.
Aspects of the mobile phone that are praised in the HTC Hero reviews are the size and sturdy feel of its screen and the ease with which the on screen keypad can be used. Twitter, Facebook and Gmail contacts are automatically added to the address book. Criticism of the HTC Hero is that its operating speed is not as fast as could have been expected.
There are over 3,500 HTC Hero deals on offer from the major networks.
Joining the touchscreen fray has been a bit of a challenge for RIM and the BlackBerry. While the first Storm model couldn’t live up to the performance of some of the latest mobile phones with touchscreen technology, the new Blackberry Storm 2 9520 aims to be an improvement.
Pros
The Storm 2 feels solid and looks chic. Curved edges, metallic accents, and a more sophisticated key layout give the phone an overall elegant appearance.
The clickable touchscreen marks a vast improvement over the first BlackBerry Storm. The Storm 2’s capacitive technology feels significantly more reactive, and the typing experience is enjoyable.
Email functionality is in line with the latest mobile phones. The touchscreen makes scrolling through emails super fast and easy, and the rapid portrait to landscape rotation is a marked improvement over the Storm 2’s predecessor. There’s also 256MB of internal memory included and support for a 2GB microSD card.
Cons
The touchscreen on the Storm 2 still seems to be lacking. The clickable screen interface can be frustrating, particularly for users familiar with other touchscreen phones.
The media suite is also a bit thin. RIM has been putting a lot more focus on developing other BlackBerry mobile phones, so apps for the touchscreen line are disappointingly few. Hopefully this is something that will remedy itself in the future.
Conclusion
The Storm 2 is an adequately refined version of the original BlackBerry Storm. While users won’t get an iPhone experience, there are still plenty of features and performance benefits that will help this model stand up favourably, when users compare mobile phones.
The Nokia E71 is a slim, extremely handsome phone, encased in attractive metal and if you like typing long messages, emails or chatting using a mobile IM service then you’d be hard pressed to find a better phone. If you do like this phone but want to compare it to others with similar features and in the same price range then check out the Sony Ericsson W705 or the LG Prada 2 KF900.
The E71 has a screen that is bright and clear and a QWERTY keypad that is well designed; in fact one reviewer even went so far as to say that the QWERTY keypad on the E71 was the best he had ever used in his mobile phone review.
Every key on the keypad is of the right size and only requires the gentlest of presses to register easily and accurately. In fact it makes emailing and texting a complete pleasure.
Even though the E71 is slim, Nokia has managed to fit in HSDPA (3.5G), Wi-Fi and GPS, which means that applications such as Google Maps will be easily downloaded and can be used to navigate around the country.
There are a couple of negatives with this handset. The 3.2 megapixel camera’s shutter lag is a bit long, meaning that you have to hold the phone perfectly still unless you want your photographs to come out looking blurry. There is also no standard 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The main niggle though is the lack of folder support for Microsoft Exchange.
But apart from these slight problems, this is a great phone.
Some companies that buy old mobile phones will take even very old models. Phones that are over four years old are recycled, rather than refurbished, in most cases. Certain models are cleaned up and made ready for resale in countries where mobile phones are generally too expensive for the majority of people to buy.
Older phones are dismantled and the parts are used to build new ones. This is environmentally friendly and cheaper than using new components. There is money to be made from these if you have large quantities of them. For example, a charity could collect old mobile phones and sell them to one of these companies. Generally speaking most mobile phone recycling companies will help here.
Phones, which are over four years old usually, have no value, but they will still be accepted by charities that will sell them on for recycling. Oxfam has a scheme whereby you can send up to twenty old phones in a pre paid jiffy bag and they will sell them on to recyclers. Office Green Technologies also have schemes where they will collect phones and donate money to charity for old mobile phones that nobody else wants to buy. This is an excellent way to make money for your favourite charity.
So, once mobile phone models go out of fashion, many of them can be refurbished and sold abroad. Damaged and very old mobiles are usually stripped down and the components reused to help the environment.
If you have a mobile phone that is less than four years old, it is worth checking a comparison site to see how much you can sell it for. However, don’t just throw the very old ones away because they have no resale value; charities like Oxfam can benefit from them.