Mobile Network Comparison

Tesco Mobile is on the move onwards and upwards. The supermarket chain has just announced aggressive plans to grow its mobile market share in the UK through a planned buy-out of its current joint venture with O₂ while securing new agreements with Hutchison (Three Mobile) to give it increased access to the most profitable side of the UK mobile market.

Tesco currently has about 4.5 million customers and operates as a virtual network utilizing O₂’s resources. It uses O₂’s cellular towers and does not need to worry about having its own network infrastructure. This gives it access to O₂’s 70% 4G coverage of the UK market.

Hutchison’s proposed £10.25bn takeover of O₂ will see a change in the mobile market in the UK as Hutchison will then be in control of both the 3 and the O₂ networks. Although the figures probably pale in comparison, Tesco is determined to grow its share of this market to provide an alternative profit stream to the tough grocery market. Meanwhile, Three Mobile will welcome Tesco’s plans since they will help counter the opposition it has received from the competition watchdogs regarding the impact of the acquisition on the UK mobile market.

Sharon White, head of the communications regulator Ofcom, voiced her opposition to the deal last October and in a recent letter to the Financial Times stated that “a combination of Three and O₂, creating a new market leader and reducing the number of UK networks from four to three, would damage competition and leave consumers poorer ”.

The Telegraph has reported that: “Tesco is an interested party in the merger review process. It is important that any landscape created by the merger process allows challenger brands, such as Tesco Mobile, to deliver the best possible services for UK customers, and champions consumer choice.”

Tesco has had a 50:50 joint venture with O₂ for thirteen years and is planning to buy back a portion of Tesco Mobile shares which O₂ owns. It is rumoured that such a deal could cost Tesco up to £300 million. At the same time, the supermarket wants to secure a long-term deal with Three Mobile for capacity in the new network after the merge with O₂. Tesco’s intention to build its mobile base is a radical about-turn for Tesco CEO Dave Lewis who last year announced his intention to sell off Tesco Mobile to reduce its £22bn debt.

We wait to see how this development will impact users. Will it mean increased costs or increased value? What do you think?

In its recent review of the top smartphones for 2016, The Week choose the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge as the handset with the best smartphone screen. This is an opinion shared by many technology critics who regard the Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge as two of the best smartphones available at the moment.

The Samsung S6 Edge was declared the winner of the Best Phone in the 2015 TechRadar Phone Awards while the S6 was voted their best smartphone for 2016.

The design of the Samsung S6 Edge is undeniably beautiful. The fact that the curved glass looks good is already enough to make people want this phone. But the curve has a purpose too. It is an additional area for communication and this really makes it different from the rest of the smartphones on the market.

The technical specifications are excellent. The main display is 5.1 inches with an impressive QHD, 1440 x 2560 resolution which gives excellent clarity and sharpness. This married to Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology makes for a bright and vibrant display. The pixel density of 577 ppi is one of the best in its class. With Gorilla Glass 4 covering the S6 it should be less prone to cracked screens than its primary competitor the iPhone 6.

The real innovation in this phone is the fact that the curved side screen provides some pretty useful functions. If the main screen is off, a quick slide of a finger along the edge of the screen will reveal an overview of important notifications such as news headlines, sports scores, or updates on time, date and weather. Any new text message will also scroll along the edge screen in its entirety.

Another enjoyable feature of the screen is People Edge which manifests itself as five circles to which you can assign five contacts (“My People”). These are then easily available for texting, calling or emailing. Another useful feature is that when you pick the phone off a surface, it will notify you on the screen whether you have any missed calls, texts or emails from your My People contacts.

When you place the handset face down and you receive a call, text or email from you key contacts you will be notified by a discreet light on the side display. The colour of this light can be customised to match your key contacts. On receiving a call from My People, you are able to dismiss the call and send a pre-written text message to that person by placing a finger on the heart rate monitor for two seconds.

The Samsung Galaxy S6, White Pearl 32GB (SIM free) is currently available from a new low of just £360.

What is the number one item on the wish list of nearly everyone who owns a smartphone? Batteries that last longer than 24 hours! As phones become faster and more powerful, batteries are struggling to keep up with the increasing demands for power and this is the number one feature we’ve been campaigning for since we started reviewing handsets.

British company, Intelligent Energy has just announced that it has signed a £5.25 million ($7.60 million) joint development agreement with an unnamed “emerging” smartphone original equipment manufacturer to develop an embedded hydrogen fuel cell which could potentially power a smartphone for up to a week.

The Loughborough based company has been at the forefront of fuel cell technology development for over 25 years. Fuel cell technology offers possibilities which mobile phone users currently can only dream about. By embedding a fuel cell into a phone it would then be feasible to enjoy off-grid power for long periods without any reduction in the capabilities of the smartphone. In addition, overheating batteries would also be a thing of the past.

The fuel cell generates electricity from a chemical reaction that combines hydrogen with oxygen. The process generates energy and the only waste product is water – it’s the same science behind hydrogen cars work. It is not clear at this stage how the waste water will be discharged since this would inevitably require a vent of some kind which could feasible impact on some of the waterproof phone designs.

Intelligent Energy has already developed and taken to market a hydrogen fuel cell power pack for recharging smartphones off the grid. The Upp cartridge, currently available in the UK, is a fuel cell that provides a user around five smartphone charges and can then be exchanged for a refilled cartridge that the user must purchase. It is available online and in some Apple stores for £5.95 per cell.

As well as being a huge benefit for everyday users fed up of huge power-hungry screens and poor wifi battery performance, an integrated fuel cell will be a very desirable for heavy users or users who operate in remote regions away from convenient charging points. But a service fee, like the one currently needed to recharge the Upp cartridge, could make this an expensive way to keep your phone charged. Battery sourced power is hard to beat for convenience and low cost although it does have a tendency to lose its charge inconveniently quickly.

Will the fuel cell replace the traditional battery in the future? It’s a problem that desperately needs to be solved but at present, it seems unlikely until a cheaper option can be found to recharge it.