Why is wifi so important in a smartphone

[Guest nickcornaglia]

Plus I have more than enough phone minutes every month and unlimited data GPRS. And hopefully EDGE in the near future.

[Guest Alex_le_brit]

It's simple, as someone has already said, not everyone has a PC, and a laptop, and an iPod, and.. and..

There's one simple reason I would like a wifi enable phone, and that's connection to the internet anywhere in my house or garden, without having to turn my PC on and have it whirring and humming and getting hot and using up electricity and warming the planet.

Oh and if you have wifi and bluetooth you can happily use your bluetooth folding keyboard to write mail to send over wifi. Or has someone managed to get their phone to connect to their PC for passthru AND their keyboard at the same time?

[Guest poulidis]

Although slightly more limited in the house.. I would still like WiFi..

1. Not sure about your house, but BT has limited range, wifi would cover your house/most of garden...

2. MSN Messenger for free...

3. Surf the 'limited' web when you want for free.. want to check the cinema times when sat on the patio.. no problem... no GPRS charges

4. Stream Music/Video from your main PC to your Smartphone.. this is a big 'use'..

5. With the right software, you could stream music from your house to your phone from any WiFi hotspot.. (Work, etc)..

6. Inclusive minutes can be used up easily within a few days.. if you have the optin to call people for next to nothing via VOIP from home, you can save the minuytes for when you need them, and save some money by reducing your tarriff..

Horses for Courses I'd say, its easy to think of reasons for and against, I'd say the biggest is the range and availability of WiFi hotspots, Home, Work and in Towns..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Right on. That covers me completely.

[Guest nickcornaglia]

If you had unlimited GPRS, would you be AS concerned with needing WiFi?

[Guest tonijj]

If you had unlimited GPRS, would you be AS concerned with needing WiFi?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes! Basically because you can access internet in more places than Bt. With BT youre locked to your house (or office) but with wifi you can get I-access in tons of places. I.e. Hotspots, unsecured WLAN's etc etc, and of course, the range is better too.

[Guest confused and hungover]

how about this then... http://www.benq.com/products/product.cfm?product=576

a projector that receives it's input over WiFi... possibilities of doing presentations from your smartphone, playing movies, games, slideshows, live video feed from your smartphone camera, all over WiFi, straight to the projected image...

[Guest chucky.egg]

Just stumbled on this and thought I'd add my 2p

I've ditched Smartphone for PPCPE in part because I have the option of WiFi

At home I don't need to switch my PC on to get my emails, or trawl forums etc. I can download files direct to my device, from the sofa.

Not interested in Skype, but I am interested in saving money - I reckon WiFi (free hardare from work, existing ADSL line) saves me about £8/month on GPRS

[Guest nickcornaglia]

I guess I'm lucky here in the US to have unlimited GPRS.

And my PC has been on for about 1-1/2 years now (with a few restarts here and there). :) So walking over and checking emails while home or at work has never been a problem.

If WiFi gave me more options in life beyond laptop uses....I'd be a fan of it on my phone. But until then, I'm content. (Though faster GPRS would always be welcome! ) ;)

[Guest flashrus.com]

why are we complaining? Why not have it just for the sake of saying... yea, this things got wifi ( thats if you dont use it) but, I personally use it to call overseas and its brought my phone billing to nil. I am usually on the phone for about 2-3 hours a day with regards to business, so for someone like me, its a life saver

[Guest Confucious]

Simple, it adds cost and HTC should be spending there time on fixing the bugs and adding other features. You want cheap international calls? Use VOIP on your PC. We don't want our battery eaten up by WiFi.

I am speaking for every other person in the universe except you (or maybe just for myself :o)

[Guest 1T-M0nk3y]

First things first, Confucious, you wrote a while back that you thought most people with wifi had at least either 2 PCs or a laptop. I know that my friend ordered broadband a year ago & the supplier happened to be offering a wifi router OR a modem & he chose the wifi just in case he decided to get a laptop in the future, so he was using it with only 1 PC - after all, it had no speed loss over a wired LAN as wifi is faster than home broadband + is his friends came round with their laptops they could use it. So, there are people out there with 1 desktop PC and wifi.

My reasons for wanting wifi, though, are very specific:

I am an IT support tech. I spend some of my day at my desk, but also a great deal of time away from it (while still in the office) - I can check my e-mail on any PC using OWA but it'll be nice to have it delivered to my phone immediately - It saves me walking up 4 flights of stairs, sitting down, looking at my e-mail and realising I have to walk back down 4 flights of stairs because I got an e-mail just after I last checked. At the moment I only use e-mail on my phone as an ongoing task list as I refuse to pay GPRS costs.

I wouldn't be worried about the battery because I would always have the phone plugged in while at my desk (as I do now) so it would stay charged & I would switch wifi off in the evenings or at weekends

In addition I like to drink coffee (a lot) and some coffee houses here in the south west offer free wifi hotspots for their customers - so while I may be paying 5p per cup more for the coffee while I check up on whatever - it's cheaper than the £3 per half hour or however much someone said wifi hotspots were elsewhere.

While my needs are very specific & I don't expect many others to find it useful for these reasons it is all about the individuals needs & for me it would be fantastic.

PS. I don't really like wearing headsets and I refuse to walk around holding a great slab next to my ear - otherwise I'd already have a PDA - I like the form factor of my C500 and I imagine the QVGA will it quite a lot easier on the eye for reading e-mail too.

I'm a bit miffed that Orange have decided not to include wifi on the C600 as they will not supply Qtek or i-Mate phones - so they have taken the choice away from the customer.

[Guest Confucious]

I am sure some people have need for wifi, it wasn't high on my priorities for a phone and I didn't think it worth HTC developing a phone with it.

Since they have I find it strange that O have decided to omit it from the C600 but then they were going to omit it from the M5000 until everyone else included it so it might yet change.

I hope for your sake they do change their mind.

Good luck.

[Guest vetch]

Just thought I'd say that I think it's totally short-sighted to say "what's the point in WIFI"?

The point is that within a couple of years it will have totally changed the face of mobile communications... Imagine what will happen when it is commonplace for every town to have full wifi coverage provided for free...

If it isn't provided by the local councils, it will be offered by corporate entities, like Google (who are already doing it in San Fran - it's free, but ad supported - like all Google services)).

You will practically never have to pay for your phone calls or internet access again...

And the more people have wifi in their phones, the closer this comes to being a reality, because the more push there is for a service provider, such as Google, to be the first to establish themselves in that market, and the sooner communication becomes cheaper for us all.

Jx

[Guest Pagemakers]

I'm surfing away on my SP5 using wifi at blistering speeds. The best thing to happen to the smartphone platform since it was developed.

[Guest TigerNet]

Yup!

[Guest GuyAdams]

I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and preference.

I personally cant wait to recieve my i-mate SP5 with Wi-Fi for a few reasons:

i) Im a I.T Manger and responsible for 9 locations, I travel alot and its a pain having to kick a user off a workstation so I can log in and recieve my mail or use OWA over the internet or download a driver for a device...etc. We have wireless AP's at all branches and it will make my life so much easier.

ii) What about a Wi-Fi enable PDA or laptop? you may ask, well I carry a laptop and its a pain, its not so much big but its just an added item to carry around with me, so again *free* access to the web and email on my smartphone will be a god-sent.

iii) The more my smartphone can do for me the better I say because its a centralised point for me to access the services I most often use, mp3 player at the gym, gps for travelling to conferences, recieving email and checking servers when offsite, my dad even use's his smartphone to control his diabetes by entering what food he eats and his blood sugar results each day.

...but this is my opinion.

One last thing, I've have been a loyal Orange customer for over 7 years and now I'am leaving to become a Vodafone customer, I think specially asking HTC to remove/disable the Wi-Fi in the C600 is disgraceful. Its nothing but a shameful attempt at making sure customers use their own expensive services and is the reason I'm not renewing my contract with them.

Regards

GuyAdams

[Guest Pagemakers]

I'm leaving Orange for Voda after 10 years too.

[Guest GuyAdams]

I've had a few nasty phone calls to Orange of late which ended in me asking to speak to a manager and getting the response

"Iam not willing to escalate this issue"

and then when I ask for this person's name or extension

"Iam not willing to give you my name or extension"

Which to me is shocking. If I ask to speak to a manager or another member of staff because I dont like the way I'am being spoke to then I expect to be passed on and most of all if I ask for a persons name to make a complaint about that person I expect to be given their name!

It would be nice to be rewarded for my seven years of loyalty and to be frank I been given nothing, actually...sorry... I was given 100 bonus texts one month because the local transmitter was down and I had no signal at home for 2 weeks, this was three years ago.

Its not really the way you keep customers happy.

Regards

GuyAdams

[Guest Confucious]

"Iam not willing to escalate this issue"

and then when I ask for this person's name or extension

"Iam not willing to give you my name or extension"

Regards

GuyAdams

Stunning! I thought they had to give you at least their name.

No operator is perfect and you will hear complainants about them all but this is disgusting.

Just my 2d's worth.

Edited October 13, 2005 by Confucious

[Guest dazza12]

GuyAdams, I've had the same experience as you.

I decided to register an official complaint about the withdrawal of Wildfire. The person I spoke to said they'd make sure my comments would be heard.

I said that wouldn't be good enough, I'd like to make it an official complaint. To which I was told that what they'd offered was the best they could do. At which point, I asked for their name. They gave me exactly the same line as yourself - it might even have been the same CS person I spoke to. I asked for a reference number for the conversation - was told they couldn't do that and the best they could do was to enter details in my notepad.

I asked to speak to a manager - was told there wasn't one available, she'd just gone home. I then carried on with other details of the call. Another issue meant I needed to escalate it. The manager wasn't available, he was on another call. I then mentioned how ironic it was that the same manager that had gone home 5 minutes previously had come back, took a call and changed sex. And I was then told they don't escalate calls.

I wasn't suprised to hear that no entry at all was made in my notepad. I wish they'd identify themselves, so that complaints could be made. Otherwise O staff could get away with anything. Like telling customers a new phone is 2 weeks away - 3 months ago!

[Guest GuyAdams]

It seems there arnt many companies now that pay any attention to customer service, its because everyone whats everything for nothing.

The consumer market isnt the same as it used to be thats for sure.

Regards

GuyAdams

[Guest beauchambers]

I Could of used WiFi on my c550 on a recent visit to the us as i was charged £20 per MB on my orange contract i could of paid $2 in the local Shopping Mall for 30mins and said hello to my mates via msn at the same time

[Guest Alex_le_brit]

Out of interest, how much would people be prepared to pay for "free" access to wifi? I'm thinking for instance about wifi provision provided by local authorities?

Would people be willing to pay an annual subscription, say something like a TV licence fee which then enabled free wifi log on anywhere in the country?

Perhaps it's something the BBC should do? Wifi access nationwide? I'm sure that in a few years we'll have streaming TV, so at that point the BBC will be "available" by wifi anyway.

[Guest Confucious]

Difficult one.

I upgraded on a train from Leeds to London and in 1st class they had free WiFi so I tried it. As I have unlimited UMTS until 01/03 I wouldn't normally pay for it. It worked fine.

If there was 100% coverage then I would certainly pay - why use UMTS when you van use WiFi? I should imagine the phone companies might object after paying vast amounts for 3G licenses!

How much? Depends on availability, if it could replace my data access then quite a bit. I would be very happy if I could pay £10/month for all my data but if you asked people to pay a licence fee of £120/year I'm sure most would object!

The whole charging for data seems to be a bit up in the air at the moment as no one seems to know how much data people will use / want. T-Mob say 40Mb is more than you8'll need. I used68.8Mb in December with just "light" usage but wouldn't pay the rates O will charge me for that amount/ O2 are going to up their data limit from 100Mb to 1Gb / month for £30 which is a bargain but do most people want that much?

I would be quite prepared to pay a tenner a month for 100Mb but would I pay more? I don't know.

Probably.....

[Guest sruthika]

Hi Friends,

WiFi is very elpful based on how we use it...

Think of it this way...u r sitting at some restuarant for luncha nd you get so bored after u finish your lunch and u still have 30 more minutes to return back to work....you need to do something... The best thing to do is... browse on your smartphone using wifi..

The next scenario....you carry a whole lot of stuff with u...like Ipod, Mobile phone, laptop and u have to cart it around wherever u go.... But when u have a windows based smartphone with u, U r already carrying a MP3 player, Mobile Phone and a Mini Laptop.

Thats the best use of a smartphone ;)