garan.org

I've had my old mobile number turned off today. If the mobile number that you've got for me ends in 743 then you've got the wrong one. Drop me an email and I'll send you the new one.

Since getting my new K850i I've been having to okay the request to sync my contacts each and every time the thing paired up with my Parrot car kit. The option to 'Allow Connection' wasn't available. Sony Ericsson released firmware R1CA037 at the start of December which fixed this bug but frustratingly it took Orange until yesterday to sanction the update via the Sony Ericsson Update Service. I installed it yesterday and it's working so I'm happy. The firmware update also had another go at fixing the sync between flash and camera issue that meant I sometimes got blank black photos when I took pictures in the dark. The previous firmware was meant to fix that but didn't for me.

Just found that this phone has a torch feature. The K800's xenon flash wasn't suitable.

Got a new phone today - a SonyEricsson K850i. It's to replace my K800i for no other reason than I fancied a change and I was out of contract.

First impressions of the phone are favourable. The user interface has changed with the addition of three 'soft buttons' along the bottom of the screen which are quite natty. There's also an accelerometer inside the phone so the phone is aware of which way up it's being held and at times changes the screen from landscape to portrait accordingly. The screen is bigger than the K800i.

I've not tried out the 5 megapixel camera yet. The automatic lense cap is neat but I'm sure that it'll be the first thing to break now that the fluff in the joystick has been negated; there's now a raised frame around the 2 and 5 keys that you used for navigation.

I've installed Opera Mini Beta 4 which works well.

Sky's mobile recording software was a bit of a faff to get working. I should be able to go to

http://mobile.sky.com/skyapp/skyapp.asp

and everything work but the phone isn't supported so I had to download the jar file directly:

http://mobile.sky.com/SBM/SonyE_vid/SkyMobile_SonyWithTv.jar

Lee told me about this tonight:

http://www.google.co.uk/gmm/index.html

Wow! It's like being in 24!

Just remember that you have to pay a stupid amount of money for every bit and byte that you download over your mobile.