Most of you will be familiar with the HTC Desire and its successor the Desire HD, well we’re pleased to introduce you to the latest in this line of popular Android phones, the Desire C.

The HTC Desire C is a great all round device with a smart design, easy access to content and fast connectivity.  Its vibrant 3.5-inch HVGA screen makes it easy to browse the web, view photos or connect with friends and family.

If you’re an avid social networker and like to keep your followers updated with photos then the 5 megapixel camera and instant sharing capabilities allow you to post any moment, seconds after it was captured. With the HTC Desire C’s deep integration of Dropbox and 25GB of free online storage for 2 years, you can securely back-up, browse and share thousands of photos, videos and documents, whether stored locally or in the cloud.

As always with HTC this phone features a powerful, yet studio-quality sound that’s enabled through the combination of optimized Beats Audio™ profile and hardware.  This integration provides a rich, clear audio experience whether you’re running to your favourite album or tucked away gaming.

The phone will run on Android 4.0 from launch with HTC Sense and is NFC enabled allowing you to read smart tags or beam information to other NFC devices.

We have lift off! The hotly rumoured Samsung Galaxy SIII has been officially announced. We’re excited to confirm that it will be available on Three, with pre-order opening tomorrow morning.

The Samsung Galaxy SIII will be available on The One Plan with all-you-can-eat data at £34 per month and no upfront cost. You can view the full details of the plan here.

In addition, everyone that pre-orders the Galaxy SIII with Three before the 30^th May will be automatically entered into a daily draw to win one of 26 brand new Samsung Smart TVs.

If you’re new to Three you can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy SIII by calling 0800 358 1799 or by visiting your local 3Store tomorrow.

If you’re already with Three and you’re eligible to upgrade, give us a call on 333 tomorrow from your Three phone.

Don’t forget to register for updates and information about the Samsung Galaxy SIII here.

Unfortunately, while you may well be sat on that beach, you’ll probably choose not to upload a photo because of the cost. It’s been a similar story for years, and one that’s driven many of you to keep data access on your phone switched off when you’re abroad to avoid running up a monster bill.

In the UK we’ve helped to bring worry-free internet to all our smartphone customers through The One Plan and our Essential Internet and Ultimate Internet plans, but abroad things are less than ideal – particularly for data.

As a smaller operator up against some very big players, at Three we often struggle to get foreign networks to offer us the best wholesale prices when our customers roam.

Put simply, the bigger a network is and the more countries it operates in, the easier it is for it to control prices. This is either because it’s customers can use  its own networks overseas or because it has the scale to do better deals with other big operators.

What’s needed to counter-act this is regulation that limits the maximum amount one operator can charge another – effectively a cap on wholesale prices. Get this right, and competition between rival operators will work to reduce the retail cost, meaning you’ll see lower and lower prices.

Last month Three, along with Which?, uSwitch, the Federation of Small Businesses and other key partners all signed an open letter calling on the UK Government to support the move to drive down wholesale prices by calling on European policy makers to set lower limits.

And the good news is that before Easter, EU chiefs did just that.

Their decision means that over the next three years the cost of using your mobile abroad should continue to fall. So, by 2014, a MB of data on your handset in Europe won’t cost anymore than 20 Euro Cents (still much more than at home, but it means that when you want to upload that photo to facebook on the French Riviera it will no longer be quite so prohibitive).

After 2014, EU politicians are demanding a further change called ‘Local Break Out’, which should bring down prices even further.  Local Break Out would mean that when you land in another European country, you’ll be able to select the local network of your choice to ‘roam’ onto after first being told exactly how much you will be charged.

The new regulations are a good start, but at Three we’d still like to see things move quicker and prices fall faster and more sharply.

That doesn’t mean to say that we aren’t taking these changes very seriously. We’re actively exploring how we can make the most of the EU Commission’s decision, but in our view, the regulation is still a long way from the kind of parity that will allow you to use data on your smartphone however you want, wherever you are.

That’s right, we’ve watched your tweets and Facebook comments flood in about which ‘One’ you’ve chosen, and how you intend to make the most out of its features.

We’ve been doing the same, and we’ve devised a little Twitter game to make the most of one key feature in particular – the authentic sound supplied by the Beats Audio experience, available on the One X, S and V.

If you’ve taken part in our Twitter events before, then you’ll be familiar with this bit. First things first, it’s all about keeping the date free and your eyes glued to our Twitter stream.  Get your diary and put a big circle firmly round Thursday 12^th April 2012, and make sure you’ve got access to a PC between the hours of 12pm and 3pm. Our game will last a full 3 hours, so there’ll be plenty of chances to win.

Here’s how it’ll work.

We’ve invited world-renowned beat-boxers MC Zani, Ball Zee and Lippicool into our studio for the day for what we think will be something of a musical extravaganza. Our three beat-boxers will perform 15 second mash-ups of three different tracks 27 times during the game, and it’ll be your job to guess the original artists of the tracks they’re covering.

If you think you know the answer, just use the hashtag #GuessTheBeat in your tweet alongside the names of the three artists that you heard in each round. If you guess correctly, you could be the winner that we choose at random during each round to win a prize. Simple.

We’ve got 27 rounds which, of course, means we’ve got 27 amazing prizes! So, if you guess the correct three artists for each of the 27 mash ups you could win either a HTC One X or S with a Three SIM pre-loaded with all-you-can-eat data, a pair of Beats Solo or UrBeats headphones, or £25 worth of Amazon vouchers so you can download all your favourite music.

And of course, if you’re familiar with any of our beat-boxers, you’ll know they’re a hard bunch to keep quiet, so there’ll be plenty of free-styling and battling between rounds to keep you entertained.

Last but not least, the legal bit! Don’t forget to have a read of our T&C’s before you #GuessTheBeat.

Good luck!

Just as you can with your own personal Facebook timeline, we’ve started to sprinkle our page with key dates from our history. From the opening of our very first store, to the Terminate the Rate campaign we supported to lower termination rates. We’ve tried to include as many of our proudest moments as possible.

Of course the area that gets me the most excited is devices – especially smartphones. And helping our social media team to plot all of our most significant device launches on our Facebook timeline has reminded me just how far we, and the products we choose for the Three network, have come.

It’s incredible to think that the enormous NEC E606 and classic Nokia 8210 were only available on the high street nine years ago. In the same year, Tony Blair was Prime Minister and still had three more years in office, and Mad World was Christmas No.1!

It feels like a lifetime has passed, but in truth, the speed at which the physical smartphone has evolved is really quite breath taking. For me, there’s one element of it that characterises this speed of change better than any other, and that’s the screen.

It’s the window onto your mobile world, and in the last 9 years it’s got bigger, gone colour and become interactive.

The screen of a phone, especially in the world of touchscreens, can be a crucial decider when it comes to the success of a smartphone, and it was arguably Apple’s very first iPhone that set the standard. At the time, its beautiful design and intuitive UI won the plaudits of the critics, but it was the iPhone’s high gloss, super sensitive glass screen that got the industry cooing.

Compare the 3GS with the LG Viewty which was available only 18 months earlier, and it’s easy to see how things have progressed.

Now, of course, it’s not all about iPhone. HTC, Samsung, Nokia and Sony have all produced stunning touchscreen devices in the last 6 months that require nothing more than a simple swipe to move from page to page.

The way a screen reacts to your touch is one thing, but its size is quite another, and measuring in at 5.3 inches, the Samsung Galaxy Note is an amazing example of how integral a screen’s performance is to the success of a device. Especially so when you consider that some blogs were celebrating how manufacturers could make tiny phones only 4 years ago.

Nowadays, there are two main types of touchscreen: capacitive and resistive. Resistive touchscreens, which are being manufactured less and less require pressure to work, this type of touchscreen came first. Smartphones like the Nokia N97, the LG Viewty and the Sony Ericsson Satio use this type of touch. The capacitive screen on the other hand works with your body’s own electricity field, which makes it more sensitive and easier to use – unless you’re wearing gloves, of course! Smartphones like the iPhone and Galaxy Nexus all use capacitive screens.

Brightness and clarity are also key. Super-AMOLED, Super LCD, IPS and retina display are all technologies designed to give you the crispest, most clearly defined picture on the market, especially important if your phone doubles up as your camera. And we expect innovation to continue in this field as 3D and HD on smartphones become more accessible.

In the grand scheme of things touchscreen technology is just one of the game-changing developments that we’ve seen in recent years. The quadcore processor in the new HTC One X smartphone provides a level of power that we’ve never seen before, and in addition to this, we expect to see Near Field Communication (NFC) become mainstream for mobile payments and smart tags in the next 12 months or so.

But for me, it’s the ever-present screen of a smartphone that provides the starkest reminder of how advanced the technology we use today is. The screen hasn’t just become a feature of a phone, in so many instances, it is the phone, and without it, all the technology that sits behind it is rendered almost useless.

Technology moves on so quickly in our world, and we’ve had great fun revisiting some of our favourites from the past.

Check out our Facebook timeline for your own trip down memory lane.

If you’re new to Three, or would like to take out a second contract with us, you can buy the new iPad online here, call us on 0800 358 4339, or pop into one of our stores. You can find out which ones have stock of the new iPad here. Don’t forget to bring some photo ID and a valid Credit or Debit Card, plus your Direct Debit details.

If you’re an existing Mobile Broadband customer, you’ll first need to check that you’re eligible to upgrade. You can do this by calling 500 free from a Three phone or 0843 373 0500 from any other phone. If you are, then one of our Upgrades advisors will be able to take your details, process your upgrade and confirm an expected delivery date for you. Just a reminder, if you’re an existing customer, your upgrade offer might be slightly different to the ones you see on our website.

The new iPad supports both HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA, two network technologies that offer fast wireless connectivity. We’re finalising the roll out the HSPA+ on our network which supports theoretical peak data speeds of up to 21Mbps (the majority of our sites already have this), and in the summer we’ll begin our roll-out of DC-HSDPA which supports the 42Mbps technical standard. You can read more about our plans here.

Don’t forget that even if you don’t choose to get your new iPad from us, you can still make the most of our leading edge network. You can connect your iPad with a Three micro SIM from £15 a month for 10GB of data. Or if you’ve opted for the Wi-Fi only version, you can connect to the internet with MiFi. Just 15GB of data for £18.99 a month.

All this on the No. 1 network for mobile internet on 3G tablets.

All figures from the independent YouGov Tablet Track report Wave 7 (February 2012). For more information go to http://three.co.uk/awards.

We’ve come a long way since December 2010, and today we’ve added another chapter to our data story with a brand new family of smartphone plans. It’s a change that we believe will bring worry free-internet to even more of you.

First, a bit of background.

The idea of completely unlimited data on your smartphone was revolutionary in the industry when we first introduced it, and to an extent, it still is. It was born out of the insight that for the majority of us, the world of gigabytes and megabytes is a confusing place. How much do I need? What happens if I go over my allowance? Isn’t it really expensive? Will I end up with a massive bill?

We also recognised that the term ‘unlimited’ had started to lose its meaning. The many and varied hidden caps, fair usage policies and out of bundle charges being enforced by operators had started to erode trust, and for a period of time, even we weren’t whiter than white. In theory, if the plan you’re on has an ‘unlimited’ allowance of some kind, you shouldn’t ever go out of bundle, right? Sadly, that’s not always been the case.

So we launched all-you-can-eat data, and along with the promise that we’d never let you hit a limit or go out of bundle simply by using data on your smartphone, we pledged that we’d remove all reference to unlimited allowances where we didn’t really mean it, including when it came to voice and text. Our aim was to offer transparency on our plans, so you could be confident that you knew exactly what you were paying for.

Unsurprisingly, completely uninhibited, unrestricted data on your smartphone was a concept that went down rather well with you guys. Many of you now opt for The One Plan when you decide to join Three or to upgrade, predominantly because of all-you-can-eat data and the peace of mind it gives.

So today, because we’re a network with data at our heart, we’ve made some changes to put data at the heart of our tariffs, too.

It’s a change that we believe gives the same level of transparency and peace of mind across all our plans when it comes to data, but we haven’t gone for a one size fits all approach.

Allow me to introduce our brand new tariff families. From Thursday you’ll be able to buy, or if you’re nearing the end of your current plan, upgrade to one of our Ultimate Internet Plans or to one of our Essential Internet Plans.

Both are designed to help you do everything you want to with the mobile internet on your smartphone, without the worry of a surprising bill at the end of the month. The One Plan, the original all-you-can-eat data plan which still includes tethering and Three-to-Three minutes as exclusive features, hasn’t gone anywhere, and our SIM Only plans remain the same too. But from Thursday, our Essential Internet and Ultimate Internet Plans will replace all other contract plans that are currently on sale.

Like The One Plan, our new Ultimate Internet Plans offer all-you-can-eat data for those wanting to fully embrace the mobile internet without feeling restricted or worrying about cost. These also come with 5000 texts as standard, and depending on your usage you can choose either 100, 300, 500 or 1000 minutes to any other network.

The Essential Internet Plans on the other hand, are designed for those that want to discover the mobile internet for the first time or are just occasional internet users. It too comes with 5000 texts as standard plus 100, 300 or 500 minutes, but offer 250MB of data with absolutely zero chance of out of bundle data charges.

You’ll receive text alerts if you’re nearing your data limit so that you always remain in complete control. If you do hit your limit, you’ll get another text to let you know and we’ll halt your internet access there and then, so there’s no chance of you going out of bundle.

In that text we’ll give you the option to boost your data allowance by another 250MB for £2, or to all-you-can-eat for £5, both of which last for 30 days. You should be back online again in no time. Or you can simply choose not to use the internet again until the start of your new allowance – it’s your choice.

Existing customers on our older tariffs that aren’t yet eligible for an upgrade can continue to add all-you-can-eat data to their plans for an extra £3 per month. The terms of your contract with us won’t change as a result of our new plans.

As mobile internet usage across the UK soars, the amount of data you get for your money when you choose a new price plan has never been more important. We can guarantee that you’ll never pay more than you expect to for data on any of our new plans.

No surprising data bills, no sneaky out of bundle charges. Just worry-free internet from Three.

We didn’t want to let the day slip by without engaging in a bit of birthday fun, so we’re inviting each and every one of you to take part in our very own bumper version of the age-old party game, Pass the Parcel.

First things first, mark out the 2^nd March 2012 in your diary (we know it’s the day before our actual birthday, but we thought you might appreciate a bit of light relief on a Friday.), and make sure you bookmark twitter.com/ThreeUK in your browser. That’s where you’ll be able to watch the action unfold live on video as it happens.

Our parcel is wrapped up in 333 layers of paper, for you to get one of those layers unwrapped, you’ll need to tweet the correct answer to one of the questions we’ll be posing between 9am and 3.33pm on Friday. We’ll need you to include the hashtag #ThreePassTheParcel, too. All the questions will be shown through our live video stream which will be at the top of our Twitter page but here’s an example:

@ThreeUK Who was the director of the film Nine? #ThreePassTheParcel

@YourName Guido Contini #ThreePassTheParcel

We’ll pick one random winner from everyone that’s tweeted a correct answer along with our hashtag, and we’ll peel away a layer of our giant parcel on your behalf. If we reveal a prize underneath, and you are the lucky winner, that’s what you’ll win.

There’s a twist though. Just like the original, in our game of Pass the Parcel not every layer holds a prize, so you’ll have to keep playing for the best chance of winning.

We’ve got 99 amazing mobile goodies to give away. Like the Nokia Lumia 710, BlackBerry 9790, LG Optimus 3D, Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, accessories and loads more besides. We’ve even got a handful of Sony Xperia S smartphones to give away EXCLUSIVELY before they’re even available in the UK.

The grand prize hidden under layer 333 is a white 16GB iPad 2 and one of our very own high speed MiFis – a winning combination in anyone’s book. The best bit about our final round is that anyone who’s tweeted our hashtag #ThreePassTheParcel and a correct answer throughout the day has a chance at winning the grand prize.

Friday’s questions will be a mixed bag of mobile tech and general knowledge, so there’s something for everyone. We’ll have themed rounds so you can focus in on your specialist subject, but if you want to swat up on your smartphone knowledge, it wouldn’t hurt to have a rummage through the info on our three.co.uk product pages (that’s a hint, by the way!).

We’ll announce all winners on our live video stream on twitter.com/ThreeUK, so if you’re watching you’ll know if you’ve won there and then. We’ll also re-contact all winners by Monday 5^th so that we can pop your prizes in the post.

That’s it! All that’s left for us to say is don’t forget to tune in at 9am on Friday 2nd to watch us here, and of course, you can have a quick read of our competition terms and conditions here.

Good luck!

Since we launched the UK’s first solely 3G network back in 2003, we’ve continued to invest and improve the technology that powers our network to bring you the best data experience.

It was for that reason that last year we invested millions in upgrading our network to the next generation of 3G technology:  HSPA+. HSPA+ currently runs on the 21Mbps technical standard, meaning people can now experience download speeds in excess of 10Mbps.

Now, once again, we are going to move the game on and bring another first to the UK market.

We’re now in the process of finalising our plans to roll out what’s being described in the USA* as 4G.

But let’s be absolutely clear – this isn’t 4G as in Long Term Evolution, or LTE as it’s also known.

Instead it’s the leading-edge version of HSPA+ 3G technology called DC-HSDPA (which stands for Dual Carrier High Speed Downlink Packet Access ), and it runs on the 42Mbps technical standard. So compared to standard 21Mbps HSPA+, this dual carrier technology offers customers twice the speed potential.

DC-HSDPA will deliver huge benefits for our customers. The obvious one is speed, with massive improvements in both download and upload speed. Because the technology uses dual carrier equipment – meaning it can latch onto two signals at the same time and transmit and receive double the data – it will also improve capacity across the network too.

Again, for our customers, this will mean more consistent speeds especially in busy areas and at peak times of the day. As our customers use more and more data, moving to DC-HSDPA will help us create the capacity to continue to offer a great service.

In fact we already have the technology up and running as a test along a small part of the M3 corridor and south west London.

The nationwide rollout is expected to commence later this summer.

As well as continuing the 42Mbps roll out, we’ll also be running our own Long Term Evolution (LTE) trial in the next few months to get ourselves prepared for this technology, when the spectrum needed to run it is made available.

The likelihood is that this leap is still more than a year away at the earliest. But in the meantime, we’ll continue our ongoing network improvement programme to ensure that whatever it is you want to do via the mobile internet, we are the network to be on.

*The 42Mbps Technical Standard has been described as 4G by T-Mobile in the USA: see here for further details: http://t-mobile-coverage.t-mobile.com/

15/03/12 – We’ve edited this post since we published it initially to make sure that the terminology we use to describe our network is up to date and consistent across all our marketing.

HTC may well have just stolen the show at Mobile World Congress. The company has just announced its flagship smartphone for 2012, the third in its One series of phones. It’s called the HTC One ^X and, you guessed it, it’ll be available on Three in the very near future.

This is the ultimate lifestyle phone. It supports a whole host of new features which are designed to help you make the most out of every moment. In fact it’s so jammed packed full of good stuff I literally don’t know where to start, but I’ll give it a go.

First things first, the design – arguably one of the greatest things about a HTC device. The One ^X is super slim measuring in at just under 9mm. It also comes with ‘bleeding edge’ hardware. This has nothing to do with the red stuff (thankfully), but it does mean that the screen takes up as much of the front of the phone as possible, allowing you to make the most out of the stunning 4.7 inch HD display.

If you enjoy taking and sharing your own photographs then you’ll find the One ^X hard to beat. It has an enhanced 8MP camera that’s seriously best in class. Its cutting-edge Pureview™ technology means it takes razor-sharp images, but the thing I love the most about it is its incredible shutter speed.

The One ^X takes pictures in under half a second from the lock screen – something pretty unique to this phone. No more blurry images, and no more missed moments. You can even shoot your very own HD creations, as well as set the camera to take burst mode shots. In layman’s terms this means you can snap up to five shots a second so you can choose the very best picture before you share it with the world. Last but by no means least you can also take stills from video mode. Seriously impressive. We’ve had a good play around with it out here in Barcelona and it really is something else.

The One ^X naturally runs on Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. It comes with the new and improved version of HTC Sense which is not only faster but more customisable too.

Beats Audio™ is present in the phone’s list of features, and Beats now also supports a great range of apps such as Spotify and Tune In radio.

On to performance, and the One ^X is fitted with a NVIDIA 1.5GHz quadcore processor. Any tech aficionado will tell you that in this day and age, power is everything. You want a phone that delivers you pages and loads screens in a fraction of a second, and the speed at which you can whip through the navigation of this device is almost unparalleled.

As you can tell, we’re pretty excited about this one, and we’ll share more details as soon as we can. Check out or sneak peek video for our quick hands on. Who’ll be first in the queue?