3's New Tariff Option

I have to admit. Hutchison's 3 intrigues me. It has been since the day one.

I've been using 3 since the day I went back to office after my holiday in Australia. It's one of the benefits of being a PR consultant, what's with Hutchison CP Telecommunications being IndoPacific's client.

Being a "beta" tester of 3, i was "equipped" with loads of vouchers, free calls, cheap smses, and other things. Signal coverage was (and still is) flaky at best. But it's bearable.

Soon after the launch, my number was converted into a "normal" number. I no longer had the luxury of free calls, but I got to receive the 3X benefits. This scheme is somewhat confusing. If we buy a voucher worths, let's say, Rp 50,000, we'll get Rp 150,000 worth of credits. Sounds amazing, isn't it? It reminds me of Vodafone Australia's Cap scheme. But if Vodafone's Maxi Cap will get you AUD 310 for AUD 49, and you can use all those credits for whatever calls and SMSes you do (including Internationals), 3's 3X will confuse you a bit. You see, taking the Rp 50,000 example above, it will get you Rp 150,000. Yes, but it's divided into Rp 50,000 "main credit", Rp 75,000 "3 Bonus credit", and Rp 25,000 "General Bonus credit". The "3 Bonus credit" is applicable for all calls and SMSes to other 3 users. "General Bonus credit" is applicable for calls and SMSes to other operators' users. If these bonuses run out, the "main credit" will be used. Costs for other activities such as VAS, GPRS, and Premium SMS will be deducted your "main credit" directly.

Now, if you have lots of relatives, friends, colleagues, and whoever using 3, you'll get tremendous benefits. But since 3 is so new, and there's been lots of negative publicity about it, you'll mostly have to contend with the "General Bonus" and main credits. Which will leave you with a significant amount of "3 Bonus credit".

But even though 3 hasn't yet reached out to lots of users, it has certainly "reached out" to other operators. Take Excelcom, for example. It began cutting its tariffs quite significantly, and is now offering a Rp 1/second call to other XL users. UPDATE: As per my post above, XL hasn't been entirely honest regarding this scheme. I'm disappointed.

Not to be outdone, 3 now offers the "1/2" (Half) tariff scheme. With this option, calls among 3 users are now just Rp 75/minute, local calls to other operators users are now Rp 500/minute, and long-distance calls to other operators users are now Rp 1000/minute. Exactly the half of 3's already cheap tariffs. This scheme puts 3's tariffs to be the 2nd cheapest among Indonesia's GSM operators. It's even competitive enough with the CDMA operators. To enjoy this option, we just need to write "reg stgh" and send to 123. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, there's a catch. We MUST choose between 3X and 1/2. So, if you opt for the 1/2 option, you'll no longer eligible for the 3X bonuses. All your top-ups will just be "main credit". Sucks, isn't it? So, you'll just have to revert back to 3x, you think? *By writing "reg 3x" and send to 123, by the way* Not that simple. You see, when you convert to 1/2, the credits transfered are all the main credit, and just Rp 10,000 of the 3 Bonus credit. That's it. I learned it the hard way, and lost Rp 10,000something in the process.

Of course, this was implemented to prevent people from exploiting. Ie. topping-up under the 3X then changing to 1/2. Then changing back to 3X when it's time to top-up again. Quite smart move on Hutchison's part, I'd say. After all, this is Indonesia, and most of us are known for our sneakiness.

But there's a loophole. And I'm quite sure this will be used by most. Right now I'm back under the 3X option. But when I use up all my General Bonus credit and have less than Rp 10,000 3 Bonus credit, I'll switch to 1/2. By the time I need to top-up again, I'll revert back to 3X. Sneaky, eh? Not really. It's just the logical thing to do. Unless 3 implements some kind of limit on changing to 3X from 1/2 and vice versa. UPDATE: we can only change to 3X and/or 1/2 3 times. If you need more, you'll have to go to a 3Store. Smart move, Hutch!

That being said, my hat's off to 3. Thanks to them, cellular users are enjoying competitive tariffs. And they prove that cellular calls can be cheap enough.

Nokia: The Technology That Makes Us Lazy?

To this day, I'm still somewhat puzzled by the claim of nokia mobile phones being the easiest to use, the most user-friendly. I don't think it's true. During the early days of GSM phones, yes, maybe it was true. After all, with competitions like Ericsson, Siemens, and Motorola, Nokia really was the "child's play", what's with the others being "technology rich, yet arrongantly thought the users would take the time to learn and understand their products." Nokia, on the other hand, correctly calculated that the users at that time would be quite blind to the technologies available to them, and were willing to buy mobile phones that were easy to use from the first go, regardless of the price. Or, in short: Nokia thought the users were all stupid and lazy.

Now, this may be a bold claim from my part. But I'm sure it's true. People would (and still will, even) choose user-friendliness over price-friendliness. Because they don't want to learn. Manual? What manual? "I don't need no steenking manual!" stance can still be found among us, even more so today.

But it would be wrong to only blame Nokia for this. The other companies should be held responsible as well. If their products were a little bit more "down to earth", Nokia wouldn't have the position they're enjoying now. And remember, at that time, the other products had comparatively lower price compared to Nokias. But since the Nokias were more user-friendly, the mindset have been cast. Nokia is just reaping the benefits of others' miscalculated strategies now.

Nokia's stategy of throwing everything but the kitchen sink (or maybe they do now?!?!) at the market also makes a contribution. Not satisfied of having series of number (from 1 to 9, excluding 4 due to superstitious), Nokia now have "N" and "E" series as well. They even have to resort of reusing model number (6110 comes to mind).

Now let's see at what they're offering. If we talk about features, those found in the N and E series can already be found in the PDA-phones of O2, Dopod, HP, and the likes. Are Nokia phones really the most advanced mobile phones? Not by a longshot. Most mobile phones now are as user-friendly as Nokia. But the users are already convinced that Nokia phones are very easy to use, they turn a deaf ear to others.

How about the "Symbian" Nokias? They're not really the easiest to use. If they were, users wouldn't have to go to "Roxy" and the likes to install applications and games (not to mention that it's actually illegal to do so). They would do that themselves! If they were really intutive, we wouldn't hear any news about virus infecting them. And if they were really sophisticated, we would be able to easily sync them with our computers. Or maybe that's the reason Nokia now promotes their latest phones as "computers"? We have become lazy!

Since users would buy any models Nokia is throwing at them, it doesn't matter that no Nokia phone is complete in terms of features. Nope. Not even the Almighty E90 is complete, by any means. Yet, we're still willing to spend so much money to buy one.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not a Nokia basher. I use Nokia phones. My CDMA phones are all Nokia, and I still use N-Gage (even though it's breaking up now *sigh*). What irritates me is that now whenever people ask for my opinion on mobile phones, I would "judge" them based on what I think of their "tech-savviness". If they're sophisticated enough, I'd recommend Sony Ericssons. But if I think otherwise, I'd recommend Nokias. See, now I'm dividing the smart people from the less-fortunate one.

But that's how the things are now. I think it's cast in stone. We can't go back. Nokia is the undisputed ruler of the world of mobile communications. Me, I'm still content with my Sony Ericssons. Go figure.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

I've been using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) since it became available. Initially I was impressed, that MS actually listened to the users regarding features readily available in its competitors (Firefox, Opera), such as tabbed browsing, increased security, etc. But I wasn't convinced yet. No, I still believed in Firefox and used it (and still do) as my main browser. I still thought that IE7 wasn't perfect, at least when compared to Firefox. Besides, Firefox was more than sufficient for my day-to-day browsing.

It turned out that my hunch wasn't wrong. IE7 still has drawbacks. The worst, at least for me, was its poor (or even lack of) memory management. I always do extensive browsing with many tabs (or windows, in case of IE6) opened in a session, and not only for 1 or 2 hours, but for more than 5 hours in a very busy day. I've never encountered any slow-downs with Firefox for this matter. But when I tried IE7, after more than just 1 hour of tabbed browsing, I began to get many error messages, unable to open new tabs or windows, and, most obviously, my notebook slowed to a halt. For a laptop equipped with an Intel Core Duo 2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM, this is unacceptable. I pinpointed the culprit to IE7 because it was the only new software I added at that time. And whenever I went back to Firefox, the problem went away.

I was hoping the problem would be solved with the help of updates from MS. But it's been long enough, with lots of Windows updates, and the problem stays.

Unfortunately, I still have to use IE7 for some tasks, since some web sites only work properly in IE. And those are important ones! For example is Jobsdb.com. Apply for more than 10 jobs with the Search and Quick Apply functions, and suddenly you'll be logged off, with no options to get it done properly. Oh sure, you can log in again, but then you won't be able to apply properly (CV attachments don't work, etc.). Solution: restart. It's really annoying. To make things worse, Jobsdb only functions properly in IE. Damn!

To be fair, like I said, this only happens when we open lots of tabs (or windows). If you only use one window at a time, you won't notice any strange things.

Its security feature has been beefed up quite significantly. We now have more control on the contents displayed. Of course, IE will never be secured enough, but at least MS has been listening to its users and security advisors.

IE7 also has the ability to use add-ons. As of now, the add-ons library isn't as extensive as Firefox's. and I don't use IE7 frequent enough to care about adding add-ons, except for the "must have" ones such as Google toolbar.

One feature I do like is the ability to clear your private data in one go. Unfortunately, this has since been implemented in Firefox as well.

IE7 isn't perfect, but it'll do a good enough job for most users. However, there are "heavy users" such as me, who demands things. It's been a game of catch between IE and its competitors, and unfortunately, whenever IE received any significant updates, the others will have those abilities already.

Sony Ericsson k618i

Sony Ericsson k618i

This mobile phone comes in black. At a glance, it's very similar to k750i, Sony Ericsson's first 2-megapixels camera phone. This similarity was the very reason i bought the phone.

k618i's face*

k618i's back*

But there are significant differences between the phones. k618i doesn't have a joystick to navigate. Instead, it has the usual direction keys. The keys are in bright orange, which makes some people think k618i is a part of the SE Walkman phones line. A reasonable thinking, since the direction keys have double function as multimedia controls. Other than joystick, k618i also uses a different type of memory card, the Memory Stick M2, which is smaller than k750i's Memory Stick Duo.

Memory Stick M2 slot*

Multimedia-wise, k618i can handle many music formats, including MP3 and M4A. It's single speaker, on the back, is good enough for playback. The same speaker is also used for speakerphone. Supported video format is limited only to 3GP, however. It provides many functions for us to be able to edit our photos, create our own music (in MIDI), or edit our videos. I like its voice recording function, which is limited only by the size of free memory.

The next difference lies in the camera. Even though both use 2-megapixels sensors, k618i's photos aren't as good as k750i's. The absence of camera light somehow contributes to the lesser quality of the photos, especially when taking pictures in the dark. k618i isn't equipped with an active lens cover. In stand-by mode, we need to press the shutter button to activate the camera, and the camera will become active. This can be annoying when we forget to lock the keys, and the shutter button is pressed accidently. Strangely, in photo mode, we can't use zoom (it does work in video mode). Macro isn't available either. It seems SE is content enough with just the basic functions for the camera. The maximum resolution is also somewhat slightly lower, 1600x1200 vs 1632x1224 for k750i. Barely noticeable though, unless you're an information detail freak like me.

Sample of photo taken indoor

Sample of photo taken outdoor

So what does k618i have that is better than k750i? Its 3G function. Its weight is also lighter, which makes the phone more comfortable to hold. k618i's phonebook capacity is twice that of k750i's (1000 vs 500). Although, much to my dismay, SE still only provides 5 slots for phone numbers (mobile, home, work, other, fax). With so many people carrying more than 1 mobile phones nowadays (me included), it's quite annoying to have so little space.

One function which I think as a big improvement for k618i is delivery report when we send smses to more than one person. SMS is also sent in the background, so we can do other things while the SMS is being sent. Compare this to k750i, which makes us have to wait until the SMS is sent. Unfortunately, k618i, like the k750i, isn't equipped with Bahasa T9 dictionary. Hey, you can think/say whatever you want about T9 not being practical or whatnot, but I use it a lot on my Nokias.

We can use k750i's themes on this phone. But k618i's screen is longer, so themes with "boxes" for SMS writing will look ugly, because the text will spill out of the box.

3G Video Call screen*

Video call function, which I think is a must-have in 3G phones, runs smoothly. We can choose to use the front or rear camera. Of course, for a video call, why do we use the rear camera? However, prolonged use of video call will make the phone warm, almost unberably hot. According to SE, this heat problem affects most 3G phones, not only SE's.

k618i's battery last shorter than k750i's, even though they both use the same model. A normal one day use (including calls, smses, and browsing through GPRS/3G), will consume 50% of the capacity. This means k618i's battery will only last two days until it goes flat. Compare this to k750i's battery which can last three or even four days. But maybe this battery problem is also affected by Telkomsel's network condition (I use Kartu Halo), which lately isn't very stable, what's with the losses of signal, frequent changes from 3G to "normal" GSM.

k618i also has a "flight mode" feature, which is on by default when we turn this phone on. It's annoying enough, and I suggest to disable this feature, unless we protect our sim cards with PINs and we travel with planes frequently.

The phone comes with accessories such as handsfree, data cable, and 256MB external memory, other than standard accessories such as charger. I was mesmerized by k618i's "big brother", the k610i, with its matte finishing. But k610i doesn't come with handsfree and only has a 64MB memory card, even though the price difference is less than Rp 100.000. As a "geek", of course I choose the one with bigger memory! I don't need exclusive look in exchange for bigger memory. Moreover, we can't possibly find a brand new 256MB Memory Stick M2 for just Rp 100.000!

Connectivity is provided with Bluetooth. No IrDA. But who uses infrared anyway nowadays? Connecting the phone to other phones, computers, and BT handsfrees is smooth. I believe SE is still superior in Bluetooth technology, compared to other companies.

We can update k618i's software through the Internet. Unfortunately I had a bad experience in updating k750i, it makes me reluctant to try this with my new k618i. There are no extreme problems anyway, so I think I don't need this feature now. The phone is also equipped with a reminder function for the update. I turned this function off, obviously.

So, do I recommend k618i? Considering its price, now touching Rp 2.000.000plus, it's cheap enough for a 3G phone. BUT if you already have a 2-megapixels SE phone and don't yet need 3G, especially video calls, I suggest for you to wait for better phones. If you just can't wait, I'd recommend SE k800i with its 3-megapixels camera and 3G, a better choice. But of course, with a higher price tag.

Have Rp 2.000.000plus to spend? SE k618i is waiting & available. The rest, is up to you...

(*photos were taken with SE k750i)