General mobile/cell phone questions.

[Lobsang]

1. Can a mobile phone recieve a text message if the message is sent while the phone is switched off? (rephrase - does a message sit in some buffer at a mobile phone 'server' until a phone is switched on)

2. Can you list some good WAP sites (I am comfortable in the belief that - although there are probably 1 million times more standard websites than WAP websites, the minority of WAP websites are probably 1 million times more useful/interesting (on average) than internet websites)

23 how on earth do I get my phone to send e-mails? (e-mail is listed as one of the types in 'message type', but when I get as far as entering the destination of the message, it only lets me specify numbers as the address (obviously not an e-mail address)

3. What do I say when people ask "why have you spent £200 (and £150 deposit = £350) on a phone that you will hardly ever use?"

(I would love it if someone could suggest a way in which I could use my phone a lot (such as 'chat' services) without having a humongous bill ATEOTM)

[Crusoe]

1. Yes.
2. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail both have WAP access, but I don't have the addresses to hand. I believe I searched for them on Google. I also use Ananova (the UK news and scores website) and the Network Rail journey planner.
3. Agree. How did you spend that much?

[Fernmeldetruppe]

Most of the news agencies have sites. The carrier often gives you choices of useful sites in your microbrowser instead of having you look them up.

Great easy uses:
-news
-flight arrival times
-driving directions to restaurants, businesses...
-weather for a particular locale
-stock quotes
-e-mail (as you noted)
-IM
-a multitude of others

Updated info (scores, news, quotes...) could also be pushed to you from web sites.

Is it possible that there are other screens that you let you spell out the address? Many phones have one screen for numbers, one for text and two or three for special characters.

[Lobsang]

Another question (which arised in my head as I sat and waited ages for a tiny wallpaper picture to download) -

What is the data rate of WAP?

[Lobsang]

I am sure I can use the WAP part for e-mail. My question was not clear enough - It says I can specify the SMS text message type as e-mail.

In most places I can switch between text and number entry. but when asked to enter the number to which to send the text message (when msg type is set as e-mail) it won't let me switch from number to text. it will only let me use numbers.


I might find the ability to send e-mails useful - as I would be able to send e-mails to my home computer as I am out and about.

But it is not vital, as I could probably just make a note of it in my phone somewhere.

[Fernmeldetruppe]

Yeah. It sounds like your phone believes that your recipient only has SMS capability.

GSM has a data rate of 9.6 kbps. GPRS should be deployed in your area, though. GPRS has the capability of achieving 170 kbps (although I think it was originally envisioned being 115 kbps). I have not used either GSM data or GPRS but I have heard that people are actually getting something closer to 40-50 kbps. This page seems to agree with that assessment.

http://www.computers.toshiba.co.uk/site_indexing/CNT_37784_103_1.html

EDGE should get 384 kbps and it is in pre-deployment across Europe right now.