Mini-review: SIM4Travel Roaming SIM

Updated: With thanks to commenter ‘BigJohn’ for his note about the use of a Jersey Telecom number range.

One of the services I have been most remiss in not writing about after my time in China was SIM4Travel.  Now owned by the chaps over at Truphone we’ve been waiting for ‘a bit’ to see what exciting services they can offer using their own SIM cards.  However, in the meantime SIM4Travel still offers customers their original, cheaper alternative to your own operator’s roaming charges.  Costing £5.99 if purchased with £10 of calling credit the service provides a replacement roaming SIM with its own UK mobile number Jersey-based ’07509′ number which will work in any unlocked phone.  Call costs to these numbers vary (15p per minute from a BT landline at the time of writing), but are often excluded from bundled minutes on mobile tariffs.

I used the service in Spain, China and Dubai during my travels instead of my Three contract SIM to achieve the following savings:

Calling between Spain / UK

• Make call to UK from Spain:
  • 25p per minute with SIM4Travel
  • 25p per minute with Three
• Receive call from UK in Spain:
  • Free with SIM4Travel
  • 10p per minute with Three

Calling between Dubai / UK

• Make call to UK from Spain:
  • 49p per minute with SIM4Travel
  • 180p per minute with Three (contract)
• Receive call from UK in Dubai:
  • Free with SIM4Travel
  • 80p per minute with Three

Calling between China / UK

• Make call to UK from China:
  • 69p per minute with SIM4Travel
  • 180p per minute with Three (contract)
• Receive call from UK in China:
  • 39p with SIM4Travel
  • 80p per minute with Three

In use the SIM4Travel operates slightly differently to a normal SIM.  When a number is dialled a slightly disconcerting ‘Call not allowed’ message is displayed briefly on the handset.  A few seconds later the service calls you back with the number you were calling ringing.  The service is managed via SIM4Travel website, where credit can be added to the account which operates as a pre-pay service, however an on-phone SIM menu is also available for basic tasks such as checking credit.

It all worked brilliantly for me and, having used up the complementary £5 of credit provided for the review, this will be a service I will use again – a particularly nasty bill shock on my contract SIM when I got home reminded me how easy it is to lose track of you spend overseas especially for calls received (I didn’t want to ask my UK-based contacts to bare the cost of calling my Chinese number).

My only gripe, if I have one, is that this service shouldn’t really need to exist.  Your operator ought to be able to offer the same pricing as this service, regardless what technical trickery is used to achieve it.  Having a seperate SIM for overseas use is a pain, but it’s one I’m willing to put up with to avoid the dread of the post-holiday phone bill… and anyway I’ve finally found a use for one of those ‘old’ phones I had tucked away in my desk draw.

Three WiFi / 3G Router: Crap

I parted company with £69.99 today to purchase Three’s 3G / WiFi router, the Huawei D100.  I wish I hadn’t.

I’ve used it for an hour and decided it’s going back to the shop.  I may just throw it through the door and hurl abuse, but I hope to have calmed down enough to go in to collect a refund.

On paper it’s an appealing device – you insert your USB broadband dongle and it creates a WiFi access point…  Ideal for the MIR crew when we’re out and about.  Every operator will offer one – we saw T-Mobile’s effort recently.  So what’s wrong?

It doesn’t have a battery! It was advertised both in the marketing materials and on Three’s site as having a battery (UK Gadgeteer has the story)…. many sites wrote this up. It doesn’t.  It needs a power supply.  Three have changed their site without any comment and it’s confused customers. £70 for something that’s tied to a power supply? Bah!

It’s slow. Oh my god it’s slow. Speed tests are notoriously hard to do, but I never managed to get the router to operate faster than 25% of the speed achieved by using the dongle directly.  Pages crawl down.  T-Mobile’s unit didn’t feel this bad.

I love Three – the Skypephone, X-series and cheap broadband, but this really is a massive disappointment

If the lack of the promised battery doesn’t bother you, I’d still recommend waiting for reviews of a few other models to come in – I couldn’t live with it.

Three launch the SonyEricsson W595

Another event tonight – they’ve been coming thick and fast of late.  To re-cap the usual points:

Dark room – check.

Loud music – check.

Zero access to product or service – check.

Underground / no signal – irrelevant… no product to test.

Yes… it must be a handset launch.  And it’s a shame, because the excellent people at 3mobilebuzz had made a massive effort to get us there with Three’s PR team… Thanks to them at least for that – it is appreciated guys.

On the plus side, I do have a device now and initial testing is positive.  It’s a not a smartphone, but it’s slim and feels well built.  The software is nippy and UI is stylish.  Particular kudos to the Three people who have added their brand customisation, but have integrated it really well with the device both in use and style.  The highlighted feature is the ability to upload video to YouTube directly from the handset and then text the link to friends…  It’s nothing that Shozu hasn’t been able to do for the most part for a long time, but the execution is slick and makes this the most normob-friendly implementation of this I think I’ve seen.

Free with a contract from as little as £17 per month for 18 months, I expect this to have great shelf-appeal for people looking for an attractive low-cost phone with the appealing Walkman music playback features plus the lightweight content-creation option.  The ‘Darkside’ experience we ‘enjoyed’ (OK, it was quite fun) tonight will be travelling around Student Unions for the next few month – it will sell in bucket-loads there.

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As ever we’ll be giving the device a work-over and giving it away in the not-to-distant future.  Don’t say we don’t treat you people nice…