So if our phone breaks, it’s a problem, especially for small businesses. It could be the lifeline for us receiving new business, or for keeping in contact with our customers. Imagine if you’re held up for 10 minutes in traffic? Turning up 10 minutes late looks bad, but a quick call from the car or van goes a long way. And it’s all possible because of this technology we now take for granted.

However, a lot of small businesses are in trades where, to be honest, breaking your business handset is part of the routine. Let’s be honest, a lot of the modern phones are great at what they do, but they’re not terribly robust. So here at Connecting Business, we’re always happy to fly the flag for handsets built specifically for our customers, and the new Samsung C3350 toughphone is no exception.

Samsung C3350

The handset comes from a good pedigree. The recently retired “Solid Extreme” B2100 was a popular choice for tradesman, and the replacement looks likely to be just as popular. Sporting all the basic requirements for a handset for a small business – calls, texts, and e-mail are easy with a sensitive keypad that can even be used with gloves on, and you could happily chat away for the whole day without charging the battery (although your bill might be quite high). It has a colour screen, a slot for a microSD card, and a more than adequate 2MP camera. The phone also has Bluetooth, so can be used with modern handsfree kits, and for keeping your business advertised, can also be used for Facebook and Twitter. And here comes the good stuff; it’s water and dust resistant to IP57 standards with a special hardened case to protect it from the elements. Oh, and if you get stuck in a power cut, it’s got a torch as well.

And the amazing thing is, despite packing all of that into a “basic” handset, Samsung haven’t hiked up the price. At less than £70 contract free, and likely to be free on most business tariffs, it’s well worthy of consideration for your small business, and is available now at connectingbusiness.com. Call us now on 0800 999 0900 for more details.

Infiniti 7 inch Android Tablet

We like budget tablets; that’s why we love this Infiniti 7 inch Android tablet.  For less than £100 this could be the perfect answer for your business.

Although it’s at the lower end of the tablet spectrum, it delivers fantastic functionality on one of the most popular operating system available. 

Check out our video blog and see what you think.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Click to see the full spec page)

Why not give up carrying around a heavy laptop when away from the office?  We realise that you can’t go to business meetings empty handed, so what we suggest instead is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.  This is a fantastic Android tablet which is incredibly light at just 565g and has an amazing nine hour constant-usage battery with over a month of standby.

What’s more, if you opt for the 3G version you can now connect it to an O2 Mobile Broadband tariff with either 1 or 2 GB of inclusive data (with unlimited Wi-fi).

At £7.50 or £13.50 per month respectively, these 24 month Mobile Broadband tariffs are the best value around, so whether you are a small or medium sized business it’s now incredibly easy to get online wherever you are, and on a large screen.  It’s a no-brainer.

This fantastic tablet will give you access to the Android App store where you can download business mobile apps and tools such as Office Communicator and Share Point, includes a 3MP autofocus camera, has a full 1080p HD screen for video calling or playback and houses a Dual Core 1GHz processor.

You can even create and edit your Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents, then email them to your colleagues using the Microsoft Exchange Mail app.

All in all, this is a fantastic tablet on a fantastic tariff, so go on; give up that heavy and bulky laptop in favour of a lighter Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.  Or at least think it over while you’re eating your pancakes.

Check out the spec page in the Tablets section of our website, or call us on 0800 999 0900 to talk about purchasing this amazing device.

So many people and businesses prefer electronic bank transfers over cold hard cash.  And it seems every measure is being taken to make sure it stays that way.  As an example, our Head of Ecommerce recently had to have a coded key cut for his car; the chap came out to our office with all his equipment in his van and got straight to work.  Six minutes and £150 later he had finished and required payment, but guess what… he didn’t want cash.  Instead he had a portable PDQ machine in the boot of his van enabling him to take electronic card payments from pretty much anywhere.

So many businesses are taking this approach to accepting payments, and although it’s pretty standard now in high street shops and restaurants, its popularity is still growing extremely quickly.

Pingit is free to download and is said to be the first app of its kind to be introduced by a major UK bank, although there are similar apps available for internet banks but they don’t work in exactly the same way.

So how do we think this will affect future business and money transfers?  It could make paying for items or business services much easier going forwards.  Take our remote key cutter, in his portable PDQ machine; he’ll most certainly have a data sim card which he’ll pay line rental for.  With Barclay’s new app, he doesn’t need a data sim to receive funds, making his monthly outgoings reduce automatically.

There is a cap in place by Barclays however, which means any one transfer can’t be larger than £300, and you won’t be able to receive more than £5000 in any one day.  So as long as our key cutting friend doesn’t do more than 33 jobs per day (all based on £150 each), he should be fine.

As long as Barclays can prove it to be successful and more importantly; secure, the other banks will surely roll out something similar.

We think this app is a fantastic idea and would love to see it thrive, but one addition should be made, it should include the Queen’s head.

Or, all desks will have a standard screen in place, and we’ll just have to insert some kind of personal chip or something to activate your personal profile.  It’ll be the ultimate hot desk environment, no moving PC’s around to change desk.

As if to prove this theory, Asus has designed and developed the Padfone.

Due to be officially released at the MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona towards to the end of February, the Padfone is a Smartphone that runs on the latest Android software (Ice Cream Sandwich) and also comes with its own tablet, the Padstation.

The Padfone itself contains all the important stuff like the processor, Internet connection and memory, the Padstation is in essence just a projector, a large screen with its own battery that will display whatever is on your Padfone when the two are connected, but obviously enlarged.

The downside is you can’t use the tablet by itself over Wi-fi; it only works when connected to the phone.  By itself, it’s just a shiny useless screen.  Or a hot-desk screen?  Perhaps Asus had this in mind when it was being designed? 

The Asus Padfone & Padstation

So, the word ‘tablet’ is not correct.  It can’t be a tablet if it doesn’t have its own processing chip, but we can – and should – call it an accessory.  That actually is better for businesses because as it’s only an accessory it doesn’t require its own sim card, it doesn’t require its own tariff, and it doesn’t need to be connected through expensive tethering.  So instead of having to fork out on extra data-only tariffs for staff tablets, it simply uses the inclusive data in your mobile tariff. 

This is a real bonus and could significantly improve standard business activities such as presentations, writing emails, creating excel documents, or surfing the web etc.

Plus when connected, the Padstation will charge the phone’s battery, which is pretty cool and could really save your bacon when you’re on an important business call.

We like this idea a lot but sadly don’t know any technical specifics yet, it’s even rumoured that the design of the handset will change a bit between now and the MWC.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get our hands on it soon to give you a full review.

That’s why we’ve decided to put together three scorching hot special offers for business mobile customers to help you save money and keep the fire burning.

Special Offer No. 1 – The Builder’s Special.

The tariff – Business Single 600 on O2 for 24 months.

• 600 minutes
• Unlimited texts
• Unlimited O2 to o2 calls
• Unlimited calls to 10 UK landlines (of your choice, starting 01, 02 or 03)
• 0.5MB of inclusive data

The price – £30 per month, but this is FREE for the first 6 months.

The Builders Special Offer

The Freebies

• Samsung S5690 Galaxy Extreme.  Check out our previous blog on this amazing Tough phone.
• BeeWi Android Bluetooth Helicopter, see it in action here.
• WeSC Oboe Street Headphones – Black
• Energizer 3-in-1 Super Universal mobile charger

And if all that wasn’t enough, we’ll give you £50 cash back as well!

Special Offer No. 2 – T-Mobile’s Mega Apple Deal

The tariff – Business 1-Plan 1500 on T-Mobile for 24 months

• 1500 minutes
• Unlimited texts
• Unlimited landline calls
• 1GB of inclusive Data

The price – £55 per month

T-Mobile's Mega Apple deal

The Freebies

• iPhone 4S 16GB
• iPad 2 Wi-fi-only 16GB
• BeeWi iOS Bluetooth Helicopter, see it in action here
• WeSC Oboe Street headphones – Black
• Energizer 3-in-1 Super Universal mobile charger

All that, plus £50 cash back!

Special Offer No. 3 – Free Nokia Lumia on Orange

The tariff – Business Solo 25 on Orange for 24 months

• 450 minutes
• 250 texts
• 750 MB of inclusive data
• 

  Nokia Lumia & Energizer charger free on Orange

  A choice of either A) Unlimited calls to UK landlines or B) Unlimited Orange to Orange calls

The price – £25 per month

The Freebies

• Nokia Lumia 800
• Energizer 3-in-1 Super Universal mobile charger

If you would like to buy any of these special offers, you’re welcome to call us on 0800 999 0900 to talk about it in more detail, or you can fill out our really short online form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

This got us thinking, how many other professions use the camera on their smartphone to help with their work?  Probably quite a few as it goes.  Electricians, Interior designers, Mechanics, Builders, Landscape painters, dare we even say Photographers?  Maybe a picture of something they need to order like my plumber, or of something they take inspiration from?  Car rental companies are even photographing their vehicles before they rent them out in case they come back with scratches on, they can prove the scratch wasn’t there to start with.

The Olloclip iPhone 4 & 4S lens.

With advancements in Smartphone camera and lens technology continuously improving, getting a decent quality picture from your device is getting easier all the time.

One of the best Smartphone cameras available is on the iPhone 4S, and now it just got even better with the addition of an Olloclip iPhone lens.

Also compatible with the iPhone 4, this 3-in-1 lens simply clips over the corner of your iPhone thus transforming the picture.  The 3 lens clip includes a Fisheye lens which captures approximately 180 degrees field of view creating some striking photos.  Unclip and turn the lens round for the Wide-Angle lens which offers up to double the width of the standard iPhone photo, without compromising the height.

Olloclip 3-in-1 iPhone lens

Unscrew the tip of the Wide-Angle lens to access to the Macro feature for super close up shots, in fact you can get as close as 12-15 mm of your desired object which is about 10 times closer than you can without the clip.  This would have been perfect for my plumber, or Mechanics wanting that close up short of the part number engraved onto a small pipe or greasy engine.

Also featured in the iPhone, iPad & Android Apps Magazine, the Olloclip “is a very lightweight piece of gear that simply slips onto your iPhone and also comes a carry pouch to keep it safe.”

So if you use your iPhone camera for work, why not simply pop it on when needed get some really fantastic and shots.  Why take your camera out with you now, when you have your iPhone?  Forget photography, it’s all about ‘iPhone-ography’.

We think this is one of the most exciting iPhone accessories of recent times, and if you would like one, just contact one of our team at connectingbusiness.com.

Like many people we all like our eggs in different styles because we like variety, don’t get me wrong I’ll happily eat any other style of egg as well, it’s just that poached happens to be my personal preference.  But the one common denominator between us all, regardless of our personal preference, we all like eggs, cooked in any way.

It’s a bit like the Samsung Galaxy smartphone range (yes I realise that link seems a bit tedious but bear with me).  The Galaxy range now consists of the following:

• Galaxy S II
• Galaxy Nexus
• Galaxy Pro
• Galaxy Ace
• Galaxy Note
• Galaxy Extreme
• And now, the Galaxy Advance

Some of those even have different variations, and there’s other models designed for other countries that we haven’t mentioned.  Not forgetting the Galaxy Tablet computers. 

They’re popular amongst businesses in particular as they’re powered by the Android operating system, they’re easy to use, and they cover a wide price range.  So even if the ‘mobile’ budget isn’t huge within your organisation, you can still issue your team an Android powered Galaxy smartphone that doesn’t cost the earth. 

As it’s the newest of the bunch, today we’re interested in the Samsung Galaxy Advance.  Due to the UK market very soon, the i9070 Advance is set to have a 4 inch Super AMOLED (pronounced am-o-led) touch screen display, with a dual core 1GHz processor.  The Super AMOLED screen ensures that glare is kept to a minimum and the battery life is not compromised by constantly running bright, crisp colours.  That’s good news if you’re out of the office for long periods of time, and need all the battery life you can get your hands on.

A great feature Samsung have included is ‘Find My Mobile’ which is a whole management system that encrypts sensitive data and allows the device to be tracked in the event that it’s lost or stolen.  Or perhaps business owners might want to use it to track their staff?

The Samsung Galaxy Advance

It also includes a 5MP camera with flash, and a secondary front-facing 1.3MP camera for video calling.  Available in 16 or 32 gigabyte memory variants, you can also insert a Micro SD memory card to add up to a further 32GB.
Not forgetting its aesthetically pleasing design with rounded edges, without even laying a finger on it yet, it looks smooth and great to touch.

So as you can see, there are a few different Samsung Galaxy models to choose from, all of them (including this one) have some amazing features, so how do you know which one to choose for your business?  Which one is your favourite?  Which one will help you to be most productive?  Well it all comes back to what type of eggs you prefer. 

Some businesses like the Galaxy Pro thanks to the QWERTY keyboard, lots of plumbers and builders prefer the tough Galaxy Extreme, but the most important thing to remember is they’re ALL Samsung Galaxy smartphones, so here at connectingbusiness.com we like them all.

If I’m being honest though, I prefer NEXT clothes; they last longer and don’t lose their original shape.  I’ve got a great pair of jeans that I bought years ago and they still look good now.   I can’t say the same about my ASDA clothes, they eventually lose their shape.  Similarly, I bought a lovely pair of leather shoes from NEXT five years ago and they still look brand new.

But as I don’t want to take out a bank loan every time I want a new shirt, I stick to ASDA and accept that it won’t last forever. 

This sort of behaviour occurs all over the world in thousands of different formats, there’s always a small business that makes a cheaper version of something you want.  But should we always accept the cheaper version?  Or should we bite the bullet and splash the cash?

ZTE 9VA Light Tab 2

In an example, ZTE (a Chinese company that manufactures mobile phones and other electrical items) have announced a new tablet to go on sale in the UK in February.  To be called the V9A Light Tab 2 (we seem to have missed the first one?), and will operate on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform with a seven-inch screen.  Internal memory is just 4GB but is expandable with a memory card.  It all sounds great.

It’s expected to retail for £235, which is a great deal cheaper than a lot of other tablets and laptops/netbooks available at the moment, so why wouldn’t you want one?  It could be a great device for your business, as it comes with Wi-fi and 3G; sales reps could use it instead of laptops?

But you see there’s a problem.  And it can be summed up best by a quote from another blog about this Light Tab 2, they say “The current king of the tablet world is the Apple iPad 2”.  That’s actually their opening sentence, I was a bit shocked but after thinking about this for a while, I can see why they did it.

Undoubtedly, the iPad is the most popular tablet on the planet, and it’s also one of the most expensive.  Can ZTE tempt customers away to their cheaper Android device (which apparently is not able to be upgraded to the latest software version)?  Surely the functionality will be the same as on any Android tablet, which many businesses are very familiar with.

If we think back to my clothes, and replace ASDA for ZTE and NEXT for Apple, logic says I should buy from ZTE.  However, as an item of clothing can be less than £20, less than £10 in some cases I don’t mind spending a little now and then and getting something that might last, what… a year?  However tablets are hundreds of pounds and bought on a one-off basis which I would expect to last for several years at least, so if I’m spending that much I’m going to want the good stuff.

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong?  Not everyone can afford an iPad, not all businesses want or even like the iOS software, in which case the 9VA Light Tab 2 could do very well indeed.  As what is known as an ‘entry level’ tablet, this ticks all the boxes.  It looks nice, has a good camera on the rear, has a 1.4GHz processor, and is running Android.  The question is, where do you prefer to buy your clothes from?

connectingbusiness.com MD Andy Tow

I think we can safely say that convergence is here and will continue to grow throughout 2012.  Tablets are favoured by many business people now and we believe they will continue to be the device of choice for people on the move.  Laptops are starting to be relegated to home and office based use as a result and the Cloud will help this process even further as people start to trust the security of the web and in turn Wi-Fi (as long as the correct cloud-based products are used).

BlackBerry and Apple are leading the way in this arena and this will become a challenge for the networks as more of our calls and information moves to web based applications.  4G and LTE (Long Term Evolution) will help this development and so the key will be how the networks manage data going forward to ensure that it can continue to be monetised.

Although the mobile market is saturated, there is still a long way to go with smartphones, so those that can help to educate businesses in these new technologies and services will be the winners.  All of this means that ‘stickability’ will be really important and so the shift will move from acquisition to retention.  We all know that in a declining market people ‘hang tough’ and so the desire to move to another network just for a couple of pounds is just not worth the hassle. 

We will also see an increase in consumerisation which means that work and social boundaries will merge even more.  All businesses will need to allow their employees to communicate via social networks, especially as this is now an excellent marketing tool and businesses can widen their communication by utilising their own employee’s networks.

Products such as BlackBerry Balance will help IT managers manage this by maintaining control and security at the same time as allowing employees to access work emails on their own personal devices. Nokia and Microsoft are also going to be the ones to watch in 2012 as they have finally launched a device and platform that can integrate simply with the leading office based system in the World, i.e. Microsoft Office.

And finally, I can’t end this piece without mentioning Apple as, even with the sad demise of Steve Jobs, we know that there will be even more exciting iterations of iPhone and iPad to come in 2012.