I recently got a Three Skypephone and found that it could be paired to your PC and used as a modem. The software provided was Windows-only, so I set about looking for a way to connect my Ubuntu laptop as this is what I’ll be using any time I’m away from home.

The closest match I found was this tutorial at davesource, but it didn’t work right off the bat for me. All it took, however, was a few restarts to get bluetooth playing nicely - then I disabled my existing network connections:


sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig lo down


Then edited the gprs-connect-chat script from davesource’s tutorial so that line 47:


OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet2.voicestream.com","",0,0' \


looks like:


OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","three.co.uk","",0,0' \


I then followed the connection routine detailed in the davesource tutorial and after a short while I was up and running - fired up Firefox and was able to connect straight away.

Speed was pretty good, the service I selected with my plan was “Broadband Lite” and it isn’t an overstatement, you get pretty decent performance. This was with my 3G signal indicator at 3 out of 4 bars.

So, the iPhone is released today in the UK. Do I want one? Yes, yes I do. Am I going to get one? Nope.

I know the next question - “Why not?” - so I’ll tell you…

The iPhone is immensely cool. I played with one in the Apple store in Bellevue, WA (that’s America, dontcha know) a couple of months ago and it was everything I want in a phone - light, full of things to fiddle with and seriously nice looking. It lets me check my email without being at a computer, it lets me surf the web outside (perfect given that I rarely remember to look things up before I travel) and it even has pretty decent battery life (allegedly).

In the US, the iPhone is exclusively available on the AT&T network and they’ve continued this trend by making the UK version only available on O2. This should make me happy as I’ve been an O2 contract customer for the past 4-and-a-bit years. Due to the amount I’ve used my phone in that period, each time an upgrade comes around (every 12 months) I’ve had the full range of the latest handsets available to choose from… until now. It would appear that from all information I’ve been able to glean on the subject, the iPhone is not going to be available as a free upgrade.

This then becomes an issue when you consider the iPhone is more expensive here. It’s £269 for the handset, then you’re tied in to a contract of either £35, £45 or £55 per month for 18 months.

It’s cool, but it’s not that cool…

Of course if it turns out any of the above is false, I’ll reconsider. Contact me if you know the definitive answer about upgrading to the iPhone…

Update (21/11/07): I stumbled across some new info today, it seems that you can upgrade on O2, but it’s not a free upgrade. However if you took out your O2 contract prior to 19th September 2007, you don’t have to pay the usual fee charged for upgrading outside of your normal options. You still have to pay the handset price (currently £279) and then take out one of the iPhone plans noted above (£35,£45 or £55 per month respectively).

It appears that EDGE network coverage is improving though, as an aside. So maybe once the initial flurry has died down the iPhone will be an attractive option here.