April 23, 2007 at 12:20 am · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile, Mobile Data, Mobile Services, Operators, T-Mobile, Three, Vodafone

You know that surgeon I mentioned in the other post? Well, he was showing me Vodafone Live on his Nokia. It’s an ultra modern handset, but a shit browser. I think it’s a 6200 series, or similar. Anyway, he wanted to show me how to get on to Google from it.

Here were my instructions:

1. Open up your web browser
2. Ok, click on ‘Home’ — that’ll load up Vodafone Live (I said this with some conviction, assuming Vodafone had setup the handset this way. They had.)
3. Right…. now… (the first page of the service had loaded up) .. Ok … just… have … a look for… [my eyes were scanning, hunting for a Google link]… there will be a Google link……. some………where. He’s scrolling up and down and all I’m seeing is a half-baked shitter version of Three UK’s phenomenally good mobile portal. No Google link at all.

So I ended up having to manually enter mobile.google.com into his handset. There must have been a link from Vodafone Live to Google somewhere. Couldn’t easily find it. Perhaps I should have been using a Vodafone N95 to browse ‘Live’.

A little bird told me that Vodafone Live is being updated. I hope so. I can’t remember who it was that told me, so who knows. Perhaps there’s an update to coincide with the new data plans? I think you should either stick a whole team of producers and a bag of money around creating a shit hot mobile service that is updated across the day (a la Three UK) or deliver your subscribers a more or less blank home page with a link to Google on it, and a few other top links (a la T-Mobile UK). Half-way doesn’t work.