Mr Pullen is taking us to Fresher's Week

Here’s an introduction to Daniel Pullen — a new recruit to Mobile Industry Review. Daniel is shortly heading off to Uni and I’ve asked him to give us a horse’s-mouth style viewpoint on just how the mobile operators pitch him during the Fresher’s Week (the introductory shenanigans popular at most UK Universities). Plus, I’ve tasked him to monitor the mobile trends he sees amongst his fellow students, so standby for more from Dan in the future.

Over to Dan:

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Hi all — I’m Daniel Pullen; I am 18 years old and currently living in Suffolk near to Norwich. I will soon be attending Sussex University in Falmer, Brighton, where key events such Fresher’s Week means that — in particular, Mobile companies — along with banks, sports brands and so on will be lining up to offer discount rates and freebies to new students. I am aiming to bring you reports of these across the coming months.

Over the last few years I have had a great deal of experience with mobile phones and other portable devices from brands such as Sharp, Motorola, Archos and Apple.

My current mobile contract is a Vodafone £35 a month price plan purchased from Phones4U with an LG Prada KE850 handset. My experience of the phone has been generally positive. The build quality is of a very high standard, demonstrated by the solid construction and reflective black touch screen.

The user interface has been relatively responsive and intuitive largely due to the large 3-inch screen and touch icons. The phone also has good quality music player, which is aided, by the micro SD slot, which can support capacities up to 8GB. However while using the phone I have become frustrated with the relatively poor camera (2 megapixel). Even my old Sharp GX took better pictures! Another issue is the phone’s occasional tendency to freeze after excessive use of the phone book application. Other drawbacks also include the lack of 3G support, tendency to pick up scratches and illegibility in heavy sun light.

I am very excited to be working with Mobile Industry Review and hope to have an exciting and productive input into the Website.

If any readers with University experience would like to offer me any advice, I’m all ears… Or eyes.

Daniel

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Thanks very much Daniel.

Now then. Advice.

I actually had a phone line installed into my room at University. Broadband didn’t exist and the halls of residences weren’t wired for internet. One or two were, come to think of it, but the connections were dirt slow.

So the first thing I did when I arrived was talk to the site administrator and get a BT engineer in.

And Rugby Shirts. I was absolutely amazed by the effect that a rugby shirt has on members of the opposite sex. Turn up to the Hall of Residence bar wearing a tshirt? Fine. Get ignored by every girl in the place. Buy a £20 Rugby Shirt in University colours and head off the bar… WOOSH. They’re on you like a flash.

One final thing. Practice your patter. The first thing everyone says to each other:
– What course are you doing?
– What A Levels did you study?
– What grades did you get?
– What hall of residence are you in / where are you staying?

Useful to have that speech all planned out.

By the way, here’s a picture of me and two of my good friends from Uni. We, er, weren’t studying on this particular day: