Skypephone S2 mobile phone review

Free calls on the go? Yes please, but does it deliver?

Skypephone S2 mobile phone. Phones, Mobile phones, Skype, 3, HSDPA, Social networking 0

Reviewer: Stuart Miles
Review Date: 21 August 2008
Manufacturer: 3
Price as reviewed: £69.99
Latest price: compare

Our score

8/10

Full Review

A year on from the first mobile phone that was dedicated to Skype, 3, the mobile phone operator, has released a follow-up second version titled the S2. But has it improved the situation - should you get excited?

Available as a pay-as-you-go (and contract) offering from the operator, the S2 is a candybar glossy black and silver affair that is inoffensive to look at and will appeal to many looking for a mobile phone that sits firmly in the middle ground.

It is not ram-packed with features like the Nokia 6220, nor is it basic enough to be classed as entry-level like the Sony Ericsson J series.

There is a 2.2-inch QVGA screen (240 x 320 pixels), a keypad that has thin, narrow, keys and the usual array of shortcut keys on the sides for taking pictures and changing the volume.

Above the keypad there is a d-pad, and further shortcut keys allowing you to access the menu beyond the pick up and hang up buttons, and while these aren’t perfectly arranged to be easy to use (they are in a c and reversed c to give it symmetry), they aren't too difficult or cluttered either.

Other features include a microSD card slot so you can expand the memory beyond the phone's meagre 50MB and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back so you can take pictures or record video.

Being available on the 3 network means the phone is 3G ready, and 3 has taken this one step further and offering HSDPA connectivity for fast internet access.

The speed boost when surfing certainly helps and in our office in Ascot and in central London proved little hassle connecting us to pages quickly. Surfing was fast, the only thing slowing us down being the inability to type quickly on a 12-key keypad.

Probably hoping to get people to use the HSDPA connectivity further, 3 has bundled modem drivers for the device in the box, meaning you can use this phone to connect to the Internet on your laptop, however, you can't do this and benefit from the free Skype calls: it will all be classed as data and charged accordingly.

How the phone looks is one thing, but what about performance? Turning the phone on gives you a simple home screen with a series of icons at the bottom that you can then scroll through. Clearly the way new phone interfaces are going (we've seen similar designs on the new BlackBerry and demoed Android handsets), the system lets you quickly scroll through your applications very much like pressing Alt-Tab on your PC.

In use and it is easy to find the app you want, although it we are being really picky, it's frustrating if the app you want is some way through. Of course to get around this there is a menu button that gives you a more familiar grid and quicker access, but on the whole we like it.

Press the Skype button - after all that's the main reason you've bought the handset - and all that's required is your login. Pulling in your Skype contact list, the software lets you, like the first model, phone anyone in your Skype contacts Skype-to-Skype for free when in the UK. While the phone is on you stay logged in and contacts theoretically are automatically synced between your PC and phone. (We experienced a delay in syncing contacts, however based on previous experience with the Skype software on the original phone we believe this might have been down to new software not fully finalised, as the phone isn't released until the end of August.)

Call quality was good on our tests, not perfect, but good enough and certainly in line with Skype call quality on the PC or Mac. It's one of those catch 22 moments: if I was paying for the call I would be at times disappointed, but I am not so I was happy to put up with the odd blip. After all, I've just phoned a mate in the US and Australia for nowt whilst in the pub.

Other applications of note include Facebook - hey you've got to have a bit of social networking sometimes - installed as standard and 3's Quick link page that will get you to all the major UK websites that you'd want like the BBC quickly. It's great for getting you started on the mainstream web.

Verdict

As a concept we love it. However, the S2 suffers the same problems as the S1, in that you've got to really want to Skype people to make this a worthwhile investment.

Credit where credit is due, 3 has listened to criticism that the first phone got and improved it. This version adds a better camera, better web surfing capabilities, the browser is vastly improved, and is overall a better phone all round.

The catch? Pay-as-you-go customers will have to top up the phone every 90 days (it was every 30) to benefit from the free Skype calling, and outside of the UK on roaming those free Skype calls disappear, it becomes part of your data package and therefore phone to gets very expensive, very quickly.

If you are looking for a phone that is just a phone, but want a bit of free calling on the side, this is as good an offering as you'll get from mid-range Nokia or Sony Ericsson handset.

Full tags

Phones, Mobile phones, Skype, 3, HSDPA, Social networking, Skypephone S2

UK Shopping

mobiles.co.uk, three.co.uk, carphonewarehouse.co.uk, Nokia.co.uk, o2.co.uk, orange.co.uk, phones4u.co.uk, t-mobile.co.uk, vodafone.co.uk, ebay.co.uk

US Shopping

bestbuy.com, ebay.com

Comments

those are some sexy hands, maybe you should put nsfw in the title :) Posted by entry level laptop, uk
i have the S1 which is unable to sync with my mac address book, any ideas if this one can Posted by Ian, UK
I have the same question as Ian. Of course, a plug-in won't exist yet, but if this phone supports SyncML (like the rest all day) then it will work. Do you know if it does? Posted by Antony, United Kingdom
"Pay-as-you-go customers will have to top up the phone every 90 days (it was every 30)" -- Stuart, can you give any more detail about this change, it's the first time I've heard about it. Does that apply to all 3 PAYG customers or only those with the S2? Posted by Tony, UK
I'd like to know the same question as Tony as well. What is the amount you need to top every 90 days please? Posted by Mark, UK
At present you can have your free Skype calls on any 3 network around the world, provided you are on the appropriate 3 network, of course.

The only exception is, if you're UK PAYG, you can't skype when you're in Australia.

Are you saying this is being withdrawn or is it an error in the review?

PETE UK Posted by Petee, UK
Except for the 30/90-day topup, which is the first I've heard of it, most of these questions are answered in Skype's knowledge base pages at http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase and with reference to multiple SkypeIn numbers (Australia) see http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=subcat&_i=15
Posted by Chris Killingbeck, UK
Can someone tell me what the cost is for using SkypeOut on the S2 phone as compared to the PC? Thanks. Posted by kryszek, UK
I just ordered 3 Skypephone S2 to replace my old Sony Ericcson as £10 montly payment. All the review I read confirmed that S2 cannot be used as a normal mobile in US but the staff from 3G said this is Tri-band and that I can use it in US.

Is it true? Posted by athena, UK
I am using Skypephone S2 at the moment, I like it simple and cost effective.
I list the pros and cons for this phone as below.

Pros:
1, Cheap, I bought Twin pack for £99.99, so each is less than £50.
2, Simple design, easy to use.
3, Support up to 4GB microSD card memory, and if you connect it to a PC, it appears like a USB drive.
4, Skype usage, PAYG £10 for 90 days, Pay monthly you need to pay £5/Month for Internet Max Add on in order to use Skype service.

Cons:
1, No front facing camera, so does not support video calls.
2, 3.2 Mega camera but the picture is not sharp enough.
3, Few software support this phone. I use Mobireader to read ebooks, but the reader software does not support this phone so far. Posted by Jeff, UK
For clarity three PAYG credit does not expire unless you go for the current Stretch plans. See extract from 3 website.

* Pay As You Go General Terms and Conditions

* Top ups
* Where a Top-up is bought in store and a 16-digit code provided, the Top-up
* needs to be activated within 90 days of buying it. Once activated, Top-ups have
* no expiry date.

* Stretch and Add-ons
* To convert a Top-up to a Stretch or Add-on, you need to have an active Top-up.
* Once a Stretch or Add-on is activated, it is valid for 30 days. Activation starts as
* soon as you have converted a Top-up to a Stretch or an Add-on. After 30 days,
* any inclusive value will be lost. Posted by Tim Hall, United Kingdom
This isn't going to be a feature review as such, more of a "having had it for 3 months, these are the bugs three deny the phone has and apparently have no plans to fix". It's also to let you know "you're not alone" if you had the same bugs or experience trying to get support from 3 customer services.

It's not all bad - I think the phone itself, an Amoi 8512 is actually a well-made, robust and fast phone. Also, the built-in modem works excellently via bluetooth and the cable - I easily get a sustained 1.3Mb down and 400k up, and it works fine for downloading BBC iPlayer stuff. It also allows me to use the "£5 for 3Gb" package, rather than the "£10 for 1Gb" package with other "mobile modem" users appear to be stuck with (correct me if I'm wrong) and with a 2-pack for £99 I'm not complaining on price!

Major Bugs:
Phone rebooting - I think this is a problem with the battery voltage sensor, because I was on the verge of taking both back and giving up (3 CS had "never heard of this" before!!) when they started behaving. I assume a few cycles of battery charge had done the trick (it was rebooting even with full battery).

The Gmail application was one of the selling points of the phone, and there is actually an inbuilt preset to download it. Until very recently, it didn't actually work (just giving square blocks for text). There is finally a working download of gmail and google maps, but before, When you called three CS, all you hear is that "no-one else has reported this problem" or "please reboot the phone" or "your signal is poor" or "please send it back for reflash" - and yet, both handsets are identical and I can find over 20 other forums posts with the same problem. Just me, eh? Maps still has a problem in that after about 600k, it says "out of memory", despite having 20Mb of phone memory and 1.8Gb of card memory left.

Other little annoyances are the lack of testing - when using the inbuilt browser, the error messages are less than helpful - how about:

"Received response with status code other than 200 that does not have body part However, notification is not given of redirection unless settings is to display body part when dialog is canceled."

When you send a message, it says "message has been sent to...", but when the other person reads it, it says "message has been sent to...", so it's difficult to know whether it has actually been received - it should, of course, be ""message has been received by...". Also, when selecting multiple items for deletion (pics, messages etc), it says "delete the marked?", which is poor English. Spelling mistakes pepper other areas of the phone, too. Not a problem, just not very polished.

When in text message function, the message count takes 20 mins (to do 400 messages)

You can't uninstall the useless pre-installed junk that clutters up the applications menu, and you can't remove Sky Sports from the feeds list. It also won't accept passworded feeds.

Java rendering problems - one of the first things I did was download Opera Mini which beats the pants off any other mobile browser, however they phone has a java graphics rendering problem with causes vertical stripes one pixel or so wide down the screen, so although it's readable, K for example would end up looking like <

Strange phone book error - or perhaps it's just me not understanding how the phonebook works:
I have set the phone to display "contacts displayed on SIM and phone", and I have copied the phone contacts to the SIM. However, there are just a few contacts which don't show in the contacts list, either when browsing or adding to an sms. But when you try and add the contact again it says "contact exists - overwrite?" (or something) and when you get an incoming call, it displays that caller's name. BUT I can't find it in the phone book!

Back button "bug" - I've seen several posts with people complaining that the back button is broken and causes the screen to break into blocks - actually, that's the way it's meant to be - the "blocks" are preview windows of page history, and this is quite a good feature, although it caught me out at first.

Here's an annoying which has nothing to do with the phone, but Yahoo and ebay FORCE me to use crappy mobile versions based on my IP! I've tried several suggestions, but if I'm using my home PC connected by the mobile modem, it is absolutely infuriating to be forced into a mobile version of the site. But that's not the phone's fault, just something I thought I'd mention if someone had a solution!

Other questions:
How can I mass-delete loads of rubbish from the T9 dictionary?
How can I backup text messages?

Overall, the phone has potential, but I'm very disappointed by the lack of support for both applications, and from three themselves. Almost every category you browse shows "sorry, there are no applications for this phone". It needs a firmware update and some support, although there is a forum at
http://www.3skypephone.com/forum/ Posted by digitaltoast, United Kingdom
I have a question on the S2 if you could help me out here. i'm want to use my Wireless LAN when i'm in the house as i'm based in the UK and i speak to many Skype users all around the world. My problem here is if i have paid for a monthly subscription and i call the US when using this phone in the UK it will cost me.

Surely there should be a way of accessing the wireless LAN at home and using that connection to speak to those outside. Otherwise i would have to use my VOIP wireless headset with my laptop. Posted by Darren Fry, UK
I bought one just for the free Skype, they currently are on offer in 3 shops for £39.99 and that's brilliant value for money. As a basic mobile phone they are OK, if you expect it to match a Nokia at 3 or 4 times the cost you'll be expecting too much.

The Skype interface is fairly basic, but it works better than most cordless "WiFi" Skype phones and has excellent voice call quality on hands free. It even works via Bluetooth on Skype and the 3 voicemail works on Skype for free as well.

Battery life is reasonable and it will charge via a mini USB connection from a PC or laptop, so charging isn't difficult.

Two main problems:
1. The web browser is tedious to use.
2. The text input defaults to predictive text every time you use it.

I'd give it a 5* rating for a cheap Skype cordless phone, anything else you get with it is a bonus.

Posted by Dave, UK
You can now get a spare battery for the 3 Skype phone at batterytrader.com, UK based but they ship worldwide, here is the link http://www.batterytrader.com/skype-internet-phone-wps1-battery-replacement-p-19611.html Posted by Masterwest, http://www.batterytrader.com