The Europa, AKA the  GT-I 5500 is an alleged smartphone, running Android 2.2. It cost me 50 quid, plus 15 quid pre-loaded  on a SIM card. Not too bad, unless you want to keep your old number, in which case you end up with a spare SIM with 15 quid on it, which expires within one month.

One of the reasons, besides the obvious need of a phone replacement,  that I bought the thing was my desire to replace my current “smartphone” combination of an old 3rd generation iPod and MiFi dongle thing. Carrying the pair of them around was a pain, considering the battery life of each, so I was looking for something about the same size that wouldn’t entail a pocket full of cables and mains adapters.

As you can see, the Europa is smaller than the iPod, with a considerably smaller screen, so consequently the on-screen keyboard is far too small and fiddly for a normal sized human to use, let alone a giant ham-fisted oaf like me.

The Europa has a 2 mega-pixel camera, which is crap. Any more information about it would be superfluous.

The processor is woefully underpowered, and apps keep crashing. A particular problem is the WiFi system failing to work and the settings page just reporting “Error!”. Useful.

If by some arcane magic the Wifi system does work and the Europa is used as a mobile hotspot, the data rate is deplorable:

Note that I was is Stafford at the time, which is considerably more than 50 miles from Morecambe. Hence I could not see the Chinese Synchonized Swimming Team practicing.

Also, using the phone as a hotspot causes you to fall foul of Three’s piss-awful censorship. Most URL shorteners seem to be blocked.

So it looks like I’ll be keeping the MiFi for a while yet. And, considering how ropey the phone is, (despite my hatred of Apple) the iPod too.

You know the game, I’m sure. Someone writes the name of some famous celebrity/character/serial killer on a Rizla and sticks it to your forehead. You then have to work out who “you” are by asking questions that have yes/no answers. Sort of like Akinator, but for people who have friends.

Pete’s version has the name come up on the iPhone screen, along with a timer. As iPhones and iPods generally don’t come pre-gummed, unlike Rizlas, you’ll need to affix it to your face somehow. Blu-Tack works fine for at least the minute and a half that you need, unless you have super slimy skin in which case you’ll probably need Gaffer Tape.

Either way, you’ll look a bit of a knob…

So, if you want to look like a dickhead, here is the link to the App: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoozat/id492001248?mt=8

Since then I’ve played about with the phone. And then I broke it.

The phone got knocked off the end of my workbench, after which it failed to work.

The phone now fails to recognise SIM cards, and rattles when shaken. This makes me think that the SIM contact mountings have broken.

This is shit. I’ve thrown a Nokia 3310 at a wall and it still read the SIM, even though half the keypad was snapped off.

Tesco have withdrawn the phone from sale, and are not offering replacements.  I was offered what is tantamount to a credit note against  other goods though.

The saying goes: “he who breaks something to understand it has left the path of wisdom”.

If it already broken, it is fair game.

So I’ll be taking one apart soon.

The phone, which offers less features than a Nokia 3110, is available from Tesco for the whopping price of £9.48. This is what it looks like, with the usual cigarette lighter for size comparison:

At 80x50x10.3mm, its small enough to bung in a pocket/bag/glovebox and forget about until you need it. The battery allegedly last for 90 hours, and you can chatter away for 100 minutes, or so they say.

You can make and recieve calls on it, and do the text message stuff, but that is about it. No games, no putting your own ringtones on it, no web browsing and certainly no fancy-pants apps that will annoy the hell out of your mates (if you have any left after installing that Vuvuzela thing).

This less-than-a-tenner phone isn’t locked to any network and does the GSM 900/1800 or 850/1900 thing, allowing you to pop your existing sim card into it. I’ve tried it on all the usual UK suspects and it works, with the exception of 3. 3 sims carry a warning not to insert them into 2g phone or they will become blocked, and I only have one 3 sim at the moment, which I don’t want to lose.

Talking of losing things, this is probably the main market for the phone. If you are the sort of numpty who can’t go out for a night on the lash without losing your phone in a taxi, this is the idea one for you. True, you’ll lose your number, and won’t be able to annoy your mates (those you have left) with the latest iDrone apps, but losing a ten quid phone is a lot less hassle that losing one worth £400*.

*Of course, the only reason why I don’t have four hundred and odd quids worth of phone is because I keep buying tat like this instead!

A rough indication of size

The reasons for buy it are twofold. Firstly the internal GPRS modem in my Ubisurfer has gone down, rendering it useless without another means of connectivity (at least until Datawind’s tech support sort me out a replacement or fix); and secondly, my trust Huawei E220 USB broadband modem is being pressed into service as a permanet net connection for my Linux box running a game server (until Virgin can final get around to installing proper broadband for me).

That’s enough of me justifying the purchase, let’s have a look at the thing.

There it is, all lit up like Blackpool

Ooh, shiny. So, pop in the sim card and battery, plug it in to the charger and wait for twelve hours. Thumb the power button for two seconds and on come the five lights.

Ah, you’re thinking, there are four lights! Well, the fifth light (in the middle, not shown) only comes on when you first power up the device or if you feel an irresistable pull to a a foreign land (roaming).

If you’re really insteresting in what the four status lights mean, I’m sure you can find out elsewhere.

Thumb the wifi button for two seconds, then the Saturn button (only my name for it, as it has a little picture of a ringed planet on it) for two seconds and if all is well you’ll be able to connect to the internet through the thing.

Assuming all it well, that is. Sometimes it isn’t. Even though i’m a bit of a 3 fanboy (nine phones and two modems over the years), I still have issues with them. Firstly 3 is a crap name for a company, Whampoa would have sounded cooler; and secondly the coverage where I currently live is ropey at times.

Coverage map of ST17 XXX

The darker shade represents indoor/outdoor coverage, whilst the lighter shade shows outdoor coverage only. The pointer shows where I live. Not shown is a 3g modem gaffa taped to my window in order to get a good signal.

Besides the device itself, the box contains a short USB lead and a charger. The charger is, obviously, for charging the thing, and the USB cable is for three things.

1. using it as a storage device if a microSD card (not supplied) is inserted into it
2. using it as a USB modem
3. using the configuration program.

The configuation program (which installs straight from the device itself – nice) allows you to do all the usual wifi router based things: DHCP config, port forwarding, changing the SSID to something rude, changing the password to something you’ll actually remember.

Connecting to the thing is easy with any most wifi devices. So far I’ve managed to get two laptops (WinXP and Linux), the Ubisurfer and a borrowed iPod Touch running concurrently. I know the iPhone works ok (slightly faster that the phone’s built in 3g modem), and I’m sure the iPad will work. (Does anyone want to lend me one to test?)

Sadly, I could not get a laptop running Hexxeh’s Flow build of Chromium OS. But I put this down to Flow failing to recognised the Dell’s WiFi hardware.

Its a great little device. Go and buy one now. £49 from Three on their PAYG plan.

So, all that remains for me to do now are the customary speed test, using www.speedtest.net, as ever.

Firstly using the old E220 USB Modem:

E220 USB Results

And now using the E5830 Mifi:

E3850 Mifi Results

I clearly have a winner here, but your mileage may vary.

Finally, here are the frankly deplorable results taken recently from my sister’s Orange Home Broadband link recently:

Orange are shite

The story also had a sidebar entitled “Helping kids to be fine online”, which gave 10 handy tips on keeping the kiddywinks safe on t’internet. Point 8 was particularly interesting:

“8. The internet can be accessed from many devices – including mobiles – so make sure kids’ phones are registered as such with the provider and filters are in place.”

Fair words, but illustrated with a poorly chosen picture (versions from the printed copy, and The Sun website):

Ah, the good old Nokia 3310, that well known internet capable phone from 2000. But not only is it possibly the most internet-useless phone of the century, it is also the most dangerous.

I don’t mean that the Nokia 3310 in general is a dangerous phone, just that one in particular. It was, after all, the one used by terrorists, as shown in The Sun’s story of December 17th, 2008.

Clearly The Sun either don’t know anything about phones, or have a really rubbish picture researcher. Or this particular phone is cursed.

Here is the map:

View Larger Map

Download the file

So, how cheaply can I bodge one together?

Well, using a my long suffering Skypephone and a Bluenext BN-906GR (£25.44 incl VAT and P&P from BlueUnplugged.com), I think I’ve cracked it.

Software wise, I’m running TrekBuddy on the phone, which needs some fiddling with to get working. I’m using v0.9.83 (download link), and this is what I did:

Firstly, download TrekBuddy from that link above, and copy it across to your phone. You might as well do this by plugging the phone in via the USB connector and using it as a mass storage device, as you’re now going to have to create some directories.

On the phone, create the directory TrekBuddy, and in that directory create some more called:maps, resources, sounds, tracks-gpx, tracks-nmea, ui-profiles and wpts.

Now, go and get a map. I’ve been using GM2TB to get google maps. If you go for a map of the whole country then you’ll not be able to see your location very well, so I’ve just grabbed a map of the Stafford area. I’f I go somewhere else, I’ll make a map of that area first.

Anyway, get your map from GM2TB, and save the .tar file in your TrekBuddy/maps directory.

Now install the trekbuddy.jar file, and run the application. It won’t work properly.

Enter Settings, then Basic. Change the name of the default map to file:///Memory%20card/TrekBuddy/maps/stafford.tar (assuming, of course that your map file was called stafford.tar), and change the Data Dir to file:///Memory%20card/TrekBuddy/

Now save the settings, exit the application.

Pair your GPS reciever with your phone as per the makers instructions.

Now start TrekBuddy again and go through the menus to start a tracklog. All should be good.

To view you track in Google Earth, you’ll need to copy the .gpx files on to your PC (either by using the phone as a USB memory device or by Bluetooth), and convert them using something like Routeconverter.

Then hey presto, you can see where you’ve roughly been. I say roughly because despite a claimed accuracy of 2.5m, a test track of me walking home from work shows me walking down the middle of the River Sow for 100 yards.

I might try a Skypephone 2, or an INQ1. But I’ll be really pissed off if they develop the same problem.

EDIT: After half a day of arguing with 3 that they CAN issue me with a replacement SIM, they’ve finally agreed to do it. At no charge. Still, I’ll be using it in another phone until they can also fix the Skypephone.

EDIT2: Got the sim card and the phone back. It seems to work now, lets see for how long.

Well, now I’ve gone and bought a 3 Mobile Internet dongle thing. Specifically, the Huawei E220.

So, what do you get for your 50 quid?

Apart from the device itself, the DVD style box contains a SIM card, a manual that I didn’t bother even opening, two USB cables and some padding that I didn’t bother to eat.

No installation CD? Nope. The clever little chappy installs all it needs from an built in memory stick type thingummy which pretend to be a CDROM. Take a not, USB device makers: This is the way forward.

One of the USB cables is a standard 6 inch one, which works ok but means that the modem is hanging about where I usually have my mouse (never having got used to the crappy touchpads that most laptops have). The other is a much longer affair with two Type A connectors at one end, just in case your computer can’t push enough power out from one socket. This is fairly useless to me, as the added cable length means the device needs the two plugs to be connected, and the two USB sockets on my Dell are on opposite sides of the case. It works great if I have my “media slice” connected, as that gives me 2 extra USB sockets on the back, but it also triples the weight of the machine, so I usually leave it to gather dust.

I’m using the long cable to connect to my telephone instead.

What you probably can’t tell from the photo, is that the sim card holder is held in place with sellotape. It won’t fall out during normal use, but did pop out a few times while in my bag. Hence the classic British engineering fix.

So, how fast is it?

Firstly, here is what I got through my phone on a good day:


And here is what the new dongle gives me:

A bit faster, as you can see. I managed to get up to about 2900kbps by standing outside the house and getting a clear line of sight to the nearest transmitter, which is about 300 yards away.

With this “proper” internet modem connected, rather than the mobile phone, Three aren’t restricting what I can access. So now I can waste my time on b3ta, and won’t get an electronic telling off if I accidentally try and watch some young flibbertigibbet shaking her udders on YouTube.

So what does it cost to run?

Well, you have a choice: £10 for 1gb, £15 for 3gb or £25 for 7gb.

A nice range of prices for you there. Being a bit skint, I opted to only spash out a tenner, and my 1gb lasted a week.

Luckily, you can stick on as many addons as you have the money for, and don’t need to wait until with end of the month. Next time, however, I will be getting the £25 top up (assuming that I get hold of some money).

I’m quite happy with it, currently. When I get the chance, I’m going to have a wander in to the countryside, and see how well the modem (and indeed the AMOI phone) function when quite far from a transmitter.