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Devil's Advocate: The trials of buying a new mobile phone
Our columnist's harrowing adventure...

By Martin Brampton

Published: Tuesday 08 March 2005

A recent experience replacing his mobile phone convinces Martin Brampton that the mobile industry has a lot of work to do if it wants to keep customers happy and informed.

Late last year, my mobile phone packed up. Repair attempts turned into a wild goose chase and I finished up buying a new one - but not without a remarkable amount of difficulty.

Lots of moderately upmarket mobiles now boast PDA facilities and those features are quite as important to me as being able to make calls. Always having a basic camera in my pocket has also become something on which I rely. So that set the parameters for a new phone.

Then the problems started. The mobile phone business is structured to let people see nice, shiny gadgets and then to buy them in boxes off the shelf. Trying them out is considered unnecessary. After all, a phone is a phone. And you can return it within 14 days if you are unable to get on with it.

But all that seems to become inadequate when you are looking for office functionality and PC compatibility. Living over 25 miles from the nearest mobile phone store, I opted for mail order. Cheaper and easier, I thought. Disgruntled with the premature failure of the old Nokia, my first attempt was with an Orange smart phone, using the latest Windows for mobiles.

Everything started off smoothly enough, with the new mobile arriving promptly. Of course, some patience is required while the battery charges and the network connection is made. Unfortunately, it arrived on a Saturday so nothing happened until Monday. Then the problems started. The phone would not work with my Bluetooth headset nor would it connect via Bluetooth to my PC.

Lengthy telephone discussions led nowhere so the only route to clarification seemed the journey to the nearest Orange shop. Mostly that merely revealed that shop assistants know very little about the more advanced features of smart phones and have no equipment in the shop that is actually usable to try things out. Everything is in boxes, with batteries that need charging. But after an hour and a half of prevarication and pointless argument, a phone call to the Orange support desk came back with the answer that the phone was faulty.

This was where the Post Office started getting regular business from me for their Special Delivery service. Back went the Orange phone as faulty, with an inevitable delay for returns handling and the despatch of a new one. That behaved in exactly the same way and it became apparent that the phone did not support wireless PC connectivity. Thought a Bluetooth phone would do Bluetooth? Apart from the incompatibilities, I found the user interface quirky - often consistent but then irritatingly different.

Another job for the Post Office, returning the phone as unsuitable. But this time it was immediately returned as being too late for rejection. More telephone calls and another trip to the Post Office finally got rid of that phone.

At this point, I admitted defeat and tried to find a Nokia phone. After all, I only really wanted to do exactly the same things as the one that had broken. Asking phone sellers anything, whether via mail order, over the phone or face-to-face with shop assistants, simply demonstrated that almost all sales people have no information beyond the published literature. If that fails to answer your queries on what is now a pretty complex device, too bad.

Phoning Nokia for advice proved a disaster. Attempts to negotiate their automated attendants mostly finished in dead ends. And this is for pre-sales advice! Writing to them was no better. I am still waiting for a reply to my letter written around last Christmas. All I wanted to ask was what current model would give the same facilities as my old, broken Nokia.

Finally I took the plunge and bought a Nokia phone from an internet dealer. It came with a new bundled Bluetooth headset. Most things work but strangely not as well as my failed older model. My personal ring tone often fails and is replaced by a standard ring. The sound quality on the headset is worse than the old one. The screen is good but the battery life seems worse.

All in all, I am forced to the conclusion that the mobile phone business needs a significant overhaul if it is to be capable of selling and supporting ever more sophisticated devices. Buyers need more reliable information at the point of sale and better support services. The mobile phone is an integral part of many people's personal IT but it is not realising its full potential. Who is going to instigate change here?