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O2 - a great match for the iPhone. No, really!

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 15 November 2007

In all the hype about just how "reassuringly expensive" the iPhone is with an O2 contract in the UK, some of us may have missed the news that the said contract includes gold-plated texts. At least, from the information received through tech support, it seems they must be, because you only get 200 a month. So, how can you tell when you're running low?

According to a customer, "Oliver" who wanted to find out, it all depends. His request seemed simple enough:

Is there any way of finding out how many characters I’ve typed in an sms (or at least, be warned when I’ve gone over 160)

If not, will I just be billed 1 sms per text no matter how long it is?

Or if not that, will you give me more SMSes on my account so I don't exceed my limit of 200 by sending 160+ character texts by accident?

As far as anybody outside the charmed circle of Apple and O2 is concerned, the answer seems to be: "Leave feedback on Apple's site, and hopefully the top-requested features will make it into the next firmware release."

That valuable information took something like three days to elicit. In the process, conversations with tech support (remember, 1,400 specialist staff hired by O2 to cover this product!) included this gem:

Her: "What computer do you have?"

Me: "Why does it matter?"

Her: "A Mac, great..."

(It rather goes downhill from there, but this is from "honorary socialists for cat lovers dot com so...).