3 Skypephone S2 Review

To further the above comment, there are several other issues with the phone:

Once the text message inbox fills up to ~800-1000 texts (a tiny fraction of the phone's memory capacity), I began receiving every text message multiple times. Each message would arrive somewhere between 2-15 times (averaging about 4), over a period of up to three days. Eventually, as the inbox filled up further, the phone stopped receiving messages at all. I contacted three and this is a known software issue with the phone, and apparently up to the manufacturer to fix. There's no way to back up any texts (except 20 to the USIM), and they have to be deleted regularly because of this.

Also, the phone tends to freeze whenever it receives a text, the delay increasing proportional to the number of messages in the inbox, up to about 20 seconds for every text. Combined with the bug about receiving every text many times, this is extremely annoying.

Finally, the phone adds just about everything you type that's not already in the dictionary to the dictionary automatically. This includes combinations of existing words and punctuation like "10pm", "but...", "£5" and anything you happen to mistype. Just once is enough for it to be added.

Oh yeah, and the thin keys are horrible to type with, and make it very difficult to text without looking, as it's almost impossible to tell which thin row of keys your thumb is resting on.

kaalakiota - thank you very much for your posting about the inbox - I had exactly the same problem. Of course, three said it was a problem with my sim and I'd need a new one. I figured out to delete some texts - I'm never letting three near anything of mine again!

It takes a lot to impress me, and with the 3 Skypephone S2, I am very impressed.

At £70 it was good value, at £40 (at which it is on temporary offer) it is an amazing bargain. I found phones costing considerably more, are nowhere as well made as this phone. The phone, according to my receipt, was originally selling at £106!

I have recommended this phone to several people, and all have gone out and bought it. They have not been disappointed.

They ability to use Skype, was all I wanted. That and to have a mobile phone, send texts. Everything else was a bonus.

Yes, the text when web browsing is very tiny, but too my surprise, it is not too difficult to read, though I have difficulties when tired.

I wish icq was an installed application.

The camera is not very good, and with 3.2 mega pixels it should have had an optical zoom.

There are minor gripes.

Yes, it should have a headphone socket.

The strobing bars as it is charging give no indication of the state of charge.

The battery, with occasionally accessing of the net, is lasting a day.

The phone gets hot in use which gives some idea of the power drain. I like the metal back plate, but I strongly suspect it is there as a heat sink.

Contrary to what one comment has said. You do not have to top up your credit to get Skype. It is free. If you do top up with credit you get for 3 months hundreds of free texts and free 3 to 3 calls.

It is annoying you cannot ditch the preloaded junk.

It should have the ability to access 3 e-mail, but this does not work.

I'm baffled why 3 offer a 3G dongle, when all you need to do is plug in your Skypephone.

Big problem I am having is with the 3 signal level. No bars a lot of the time, very slow download, many lost connections.

I plugged the Skypephone into my laptop, and found a data rate of 110 kilobits per second. 1 Megabit per second would have been acceptable, but ten times slower than this! I tried downloading icq 6.5. 7 kilobits per second!

Eats up battery power very fast.
Also you cannot use any bluetooth device for skype calls. I tried to use it car bluetooth handfree kit , it did not work.
Bluetooth device works fine for landline or mobile phone calls.