How to make the most of your 3G phone

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	How to make the most of your 3G phone	By Jørgen Sundgot, 9 April 2006

It's fast, furious and... you really don't do much with it, do you now. From browsing to instant messaging, gaming and mobile TV, we tell you how to make the most of your 3G phone.

You've just gone and bought yourself a 3G phone and made your first few video calls - but after a while, the novelty starts to wear off. Then it's off to take a look at the paltry offerings from your operator's 3G portal, which in many cases is a rather anemic collection of generic news articles and a few streaming video clips. Surely, you think, there must be more I can do with this little mobile marvel of mine - and you couldn't be more spot on.

Get your surf on

Remember WAP? Easy now, put the brick down. Three years on, mobile surfing is a very different game - thanks to more powerful phones with better browsers. Unfortunately, little content has been adapted for mobile devices, and so the solution becomes to use a proxy solution which does the hard work for you; choose between Skweezer and - surprise - Google The best option bar none, however, is the Opera Mini browser which can be installed on virtually any recent Java capable phone and not only reformats but also compresses web pages on the fly to save you hassle, time and bandwidth costs. Genius!

Tippity-tappity

If reading isn't your thing, how about staying in the text-based realm and chatting it up with friends instead? Again courtesy of the prevalence of Java in mobile phones, you can easily keep in touch with all of your MSN Messenger, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger contacts by installing bluepulse. By using this application, you can pour your heart out while on the move and save a bundle as compared to using text messages - unfortunately, AIM isn't supported as of this writing.

Gooooaaaaalllll!

Although you might want to keep it down in public, here's your chance to catch a game of footie, watch the news or even your favourite reality series from beyond the comfort of your couch. If you're lucky enough to have a subscription with a supported operator, downloading either the Java or BREW version of MobiTV will let you enjoy a bundle of channels while squinting at your 2-inch plus screen. Granted, it won't replace your TV any time soon, but at least you stand a better chance at not missing out on something important.

Get ready for a quick bout of gaming

Last, but not least, the vast majority of phones do come with a few games installed, but unless you're exceptionally fortunate they're usually explicitly crap. For quality games, head over to Gameloft - a France-based mobile gaming house which covers everything from mobile versions of popular console games and movie licenses to unique one-offs. Games can be bought either via SMS or credit card, are compatible with a vast arsenal of handsets and offer a superb gaming experience with pretty graphics and high quality sound effects - where supported.