Well, DataWind has updated their PocketSurfer device with a small touchpad and GPS. There is also a new data plan at 40 pounds a year and a 60 pound one that gives you unlimited surfing for life. While it all sounds like a good deal, I can’t imagine surifng will really be all that nice on this device. Check out some more details over at Pocketables. Has anyone here tried the PocketSurfer or has one? How do you like it?
New PocketSurfer2R comes with lifetime dataplan
Posted on 08 October 2008, Last updated on 11 November 2019 by Steve Paine
It sounds to me like the kind of things that people are waiting for.
For now data plans are just not cheap enough for wide acceptance.
That’s why 3G is not selling very well. They may sell great phones (or netbooks, now) with great capabilities and great content but people are just not willing to pay the insane cost of it.
For instance I don’t know personnaly anybody that is using mobile Internet otherwise than for business. Well, actually, if I only stick to people that are close to me, the total count is of zero people, nobody is using mobile Internet. A completely failed marketing job in my eyes! Commoners just don’t want to pay that much.
Look at Japan: mobile Internet technologies are very common because they were historically affordable.
Another well-known example is the iPhone: the iPhone litteraly made the mobile Internet market take off. But that’s quite not because of the good Internet experience the device provides, but simply because of the data-plans that starts to be affordable. But again, even iPhone’s data-plan is not cheap enough for wide acceptance. It just shows that this is way to go for mobile Internet to be a common reality.
About the decice, it promises to do its job well and with an affordable data-plan. We don’t care that the display isn’t top-notch or that it can’t do video or audio. We don’t care that is isn’t a real computer. It just do the trick. That is perfect in my eyes.
But of course since I don’t live in UK, I’ll stick with the “no mobile Internet for me, no way I pay that much!” for now ;-)
I was going to test this out earlier this year but didnt get round to it in the end.
Its an interesting concept and I suspect good enough and small enough and cheap enough to be useful but how much more useful is it than a smartphone? Most people in Europe can get unlimited 3G for 10-15 Euro per month which is under 300 Euro over 2-years, the realistic life of such a device.
Steve
Are you serious when you say that “most people in Europe can get unlimited 3G for 10-15 Euro per month”?
Because if that’s true, it just means that my analysis simply restricts to France. Which wouldn’t surprise me actually.
In France I don’t see how people could get unlimited 3G for 10-15 Euro per month…
I’m sorry, I should have been more specific. In most places now you can get 3G (not necessarily HSDPA though) HTTP-only or proxied for 10-15 Euro per month. I’ve used services in UK, Germany, Holland and I know Finland is also confirmed. If it’s not in France now, it should be soon!
Steve
We’ll see but you’re definitely more optimistic than I am about France. ;-)
I purchased one of these devices first time around, and it was in the bin within 2 days. It is the most poorly designed devices i have ever tried (and i have tried quite a few). The user experience and connection speed was very poor. I think this company missed a trick here as the concept is brillant but the execution is appalling.
Interesting! Is it SIM locked?
Steve
Maybe the trick is that you have unlimited Internet access but since the experience will be awful with such a device, you’ll rarely use it and so the “unlimited access” won’t cost much to the company… ?
I’m afraid I have to agree with JayTee. I got a PocketSurfer 2 last October and persevered with it for a few months but finally gave up when it started falling to bits.
It uses a browser based remote connection to a virtual machine running a customised version of IE 6. In theory its a good idea and sometimes it worked well BBC news and simple well designed web sites but suffered from some problems which in the end did my head in.
1) The speed for pre cached pages can be okish but with today’s web 2.0 it gets tedious waiting 10 to 20 seconds for a page to load
2) More serious is the fact that multiple pages are not very well implemented with a confusing key press combination to switch between them
3) Some Java and Javascript functionality either didn’t work at all or had annoying problems like not being able to type in a chat window
4) The device lost connection easily (like in a tunnel on the train even just for a few minutes – unlike my 3 dongle which happily resumes where it left off), this is especially annoying after fiddling around to get the web pages all set up
5) Battery life is low at around 2 hours maybe less, that might seem like a lot but when you factor in the slow loading pages and having to reconnect often it feels more like half that time
6) Build quality is really poor, I had a replacement unit after 1 month when bits just fell off, the replacement just started coming apart after light use over a few months.
A year on and I’m looking at getting a UMPC and use my fast and funky 3 mobile dongle. I’m thinking about a WiBrain just not sure if the screen is too small for my 4 eyes.
Bats
i pay 20 euros a month in the netherlands for 1024/384 kbps. it is expensive but it subsidised my htc advantage to a great deal.
tovarish