New 3 Skypephone doubles as HSDPA dongle

by Julian Prokaza
on Mon 21 Jul 2008 3 Comments

3 Skypephone S2The original Skypephone caused quite a stir when it launched on 3 last year with its free Skype to Skype calls and tiny £50 PAYG price.

Now 3 is back with a successor, the Skypephone S2. The newly printed spec list shows it has a 2.2in QVGA screen, 3.2MP camera, 50MB on-board memory expandable up to 4GB via microSD and will measure just 14mm thick.

The big draw, though, is that it will also get HSDPA and will come with modem drivers to use as a 3 mobile broadband dongle.

It'll be on sale from 18th August for the slightly higher price of £69.99 - or 'under £70' as 3 puts it.

[ Pocket Lint]

Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie
© Dennis Publishing

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  • neutral

    by Maggie Yates at 11:13 on 5 Sep 2008Report abuse

    HiDo you have any info in layman's terms?? I am not a tekkie at all!! I :( am looking for a broadband dongle for my daughter who is in hospital. She has a mobile on the Orange network. I don't understand what HDSPA means also what would it cost us per month for say six months if you have such a deal.Many thanksMaggie Yates

  • neutral

    by stephen toms at 01:24 on 21 Sep 2008Report abuse

    this might be of help to you and your daughter while she is in hospital. i got the old skype phone 8 months ago. i did not think it would be good. but i have saved lots of money (hundreds of pounds) as its possible to make free calls from one skype phone to another. i got my parents a skype phone and i ring them for a few hours a day free. if your daughter is in hospital and you want regular long phone calls for free then get yourself and your daughter a skype phone. also my skype phone is not the new turbo network HDSPA skype 2 phone, mine is the old skype nonHDSPA phone and it is supposed to be much slower than HDSPA. however a friend of mine has the HDSPA dongle and we tested them together connected to our laptops, and in a low 2bar 3g signal area they were exactly the same speed on the internet, but in a HDSPA signal area, my mates HDSPA is 4times the speed of my non HDSPA skype phone connected to my laptop. i pay £10 a month and connect my skype phone to laptop by usb and surf the net just for email and reading web pages it is perfectly ok but not anything like as fast as cable broadband. i find my connection through my laptop using my skype phone is about twice the speed of a 56k modem. tested on www.e-sword.net which is a very fast site i actually get 12k download speed with my skype phone connected to my laptop, while on my proper cable broadband i get 600k download. both tested at same time downloading free e-sword bible from www.e-sword.net. so it is clear the skype phone is definately not fast enough to watch google video or streaming internet tv. a 5 minute google video takes 15 minutes to load before being able to watch on my non HSDPA skype phone. definately not good unless money is limited. a 1gig alowance is enough for email and reading text. but if your daughter is in hospital and wants to watch streaming internet tv and google video then it will be easy to use 2 gig or more downloading every day. on a sunday afternoon i sit on net and watch google videos and surf and from 2pm until 5pm i easily use 1gig on my cable internet. so if your daughter wants broadband for streaming google videos and streaming internet tv then dont get a contract with a 1gig a month download limit or she will go over it in the first day and you will get a HUGE bill. i recomend the pay as you go 3dongle where when you go over your download limit the dongle just stops working until you top it up with another £10. this way you cannot get huge unexpected bills as you can with a contract. if money is limited dont buy a dongle at all buy the new 3 HDPSA skype phone on pay as you go(dont get it on contract as you will get huge bills if you go over the download limit) and usb connect it to the laptop and pay £10 a month for pay as you go internet, and your daughter can also use the phone to call you using skype for free, assuming you also have a skype phone. one of my mates was in hospital a few months ago and he connected his laptop to the hospital broadband for free. so find out first if the hosptial you daugher is in provide free wifi broadband. if they dont suggest they do it can be fitted in a week to a hospital if they get any competent pc shop to fit it. if the hospital does provide free wifi broadband then just buy a usb wifi connector for the laptop, some laptops have wifi built in. finaly as regards your daughter in hospital i suggest you find your local penticostal(means they believe after jesus ascended to heaven that the holy spirit was sent from heaven and that the holy spirit gives gifts of healing and heals believers) find your local penticostal church(do a internet search for AOG PENTICOSTAL CHURCH ni your area and ask them to pray for her every week until she is better. also go to http://www.bennyhinn.org/prayer/default.cfm and they will pray for her.

  • neutral

    by rob dunford at 11:08 on 25 Nov 2008Report abuse

    just got one of these and use the mobile dongle connected to my laptop but things like hotmail, ebay etc all come on pc in mobile form which is rather annoying!! can anyone tell me how to change this or if its possible too otherwise im well impressed by the s2

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