i was having a look for something, right, and in the course of finding it (whatever it was) i stumbled merrily upon this Alcatel phone thing that my "network service provider" of (ahem) choice for (little) service were quite keen for me to purchase. i see over on amazon and that they sell it for £11.99 or thereabouts, i am pretty sure they flogged it to me for about £2, hence the purchase.
i never got around to plugging it in, or opening it much, at the time, for i had no use at all for it. i still, as it happens, do not, but figured hey, blog post material.
Alcatel is French, isn't it? that is something which did not occur to me as i happily handed over £2 or whatever it was to be the proud owner of it. next it will be a beret, i suppose. and it would not at all surprise me if the people who do my phone and that started selling berets; they are of little use with phone network things so who knows maybe quality, surrendering head attire might be a big massive success for them.
i know a lot of the kids out there really like this whole "unboxing" thing, so just for you here is a picture of it, as in the Alcatel, un, as it were, boxed.
yeah. pretty crap looking by the standards of phones you can get today, i will give you that. it might, however, be OK in an emergency or something, if i really needed a phone due to my regular one being knacked or something. also it seems to have a radio on it, which is nice.
i could not, to be honest, be arsed to take the SIM card thing out of my current, or if you like incumbent, phone. this lack of arsed quality would, you would suspect, make it difficult to give an armed, fully operational and comprehensive test of this Alcatel thing, but this is not the case.
yes, as you can sort of make out there, i still have my SIM card thing from SA. as far as i am aware it remains active, and should still have a few coins of money on it. i figured what the heck, shove that SIM in, fire off a few random text messages to people to run down the balance, and that would be that.
oh i quite agree, that result was reasonably, indeed mildly, amusing, so let's have a look at the screen off of Sky or whatever for the final result.
that's not an "unlucky" defeat, that, that's a hammering, indeed a battering. off of a 3rd division team that didn't exist not so long ago.
so, anyway, i shoved that SIM thing in the phone, put the phone all together and did this, dear reader, whilst taking the decision not to take step by step images, or if you like photographs, of me assembling it. there will be some assembly pictures soon(ish), thanks to the child of the condiment phoenix, but more on that at a later stage.
right, all plugged in, charged, a very homoerotic French song played as i switched it on, asked for the PIN thing for my SA SIM thing, typed it in, accepted, then this.
it is asking for something called a network key. ah, yes, network locked. i had forgotten such a thing existed as a concept. in SA it was considered anti-consumer to lock a phone onto a network and they stopped making them do it. so the SA SIM will not work on it.
quite frankly, i am flabbergasted, indeed amazed, that the people of the UK (for Scotland are with us still at the moment), indeed the EU, stand for this "network locked" business. considering how keen the EU are to knack people for anti-competitive behaviour, be it Microsoft or football transfers, it is strange that they have let this one slide.
so, then, this phone is of use to me if i (a) buy a SIM for the network in question, or (b) my phone somehow gets knacked beyond use and yet the SIM survives, presumably slotting into this phone and working with relative ease. neither of those are likely.
still, i thought, u have a snazzy USB charger from this, at the least. except i do not.
yes, in typical French fashion, it is one of those totally and utterly spaz USB connectors that misses the "universal" of the U of the name USB. as far as i have been able to work out, indeed ascertain, this USB thing will not connect to any other device we have around the home that relies on the magic of a standard, indeed universal, USB thing to charge it. cheers for that.
what to do with the phone, then? i have given thought to giving it away. Spiros really, really likes French things, for a start. i might even buy him the relevant SIM for it, and draw a little French flag or something on it. also Sharpy gave me his address, and he looks like the sort of chap who would be delighted to get useless rubbish in the post.
another look at the not universal, quite possibly as a consequence xenophobic USB connector? i cannot think how looking at it from a different angle would assist at all, but here you go.
and yes, i am quite aware, as it happens, that there is quite a nice little cottage industry on the go here in the UK around unlocking phones for the people. they key here, however, is surely in the word industry. they charge for it, and i see no reason at all for me to be firing my financials across the net to spend 50% of the £2 cost of the phone, just to unlock it for no apparent use or reason.
that said, typing in how to get an unlock key gratis, or if you prefer free, into that google thing gets some pretty interesting results.
yeah, either people will give you the key "free" so long as you hand over banking details, or otherwise they will give you free instructions if you pay for the key. cheers for that.
so, the Alcatel thing is back in the box. my apologies now, then, if i stumble upon it around November and basically do a repeat exercise of the above.
i appreciate that the above will have been of little use to anyone at all, but thanks for reading anyway.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment