In the UK all the mobile telephone companies competed to spend billions on 3G licences but have hit one problem after another in bringing the joys of 3G to the consumer. Enter the Pogo. A nifty looking design from a British start-up that delivers the benefits of 3G (namely surfing Everything in its full colour glory from the back of a taxi) over current mobile networks.
The device is shaped like a blue pillow, 150mm across its diagonal, 24mm deep and weighs about 250g. Almost the whole of its front is covered by a 3.8" colour touchscreen.
So far, so good. The clever bit is that when you request web pages, it gets them from a central proxy server that strips out all the bumph normally contained in a web page and compresses it before sending it over the 9.6kbit* connection that a 2G mobile network can maintain. Neat. And available in the UK now.
The downside is you are buying it in the certain knowledge that it will be obsolete in less than two years. What is more the data calls will probably make your monthly phone bill reach unheard of proportions.