Sky Mobile, coming to Ireland

Just to give an update, Sky Mobile delivered the phone early morning today using DPD, phone is SIM free and in-original Apple packaging. In-comparison my dad pre-ordered the iPhone 17 on Bill Pay with Vodafone using his upgrade and they cancelled his order without letting him know so no phone was delivered today, no email, no text message.

It's great, I already prefer it to my 15 Pro max, it's so much more comfortable to use. The 6,5" size is also not too big and not too small, surprised they didn't try this screen size before, sounds nice for marketing too. The battery life is holding up nicely for what I do, and the single speaker people complain about I don't even notice unless I am watching a video in landscape, which I rarely do because you can tell it only comes from one side of the phone.

I suspect the Air is a concept or test for the folding iPhone coming next year hence it wasn't called the iPhone 17 Air. I wonder if the folding iPhone will be called the "iPhone Air 2" or "iPhone Air Fold".

I went into Select and picked up each phone. Having Pro phones for the past few years (13, 15) and the before that, the Air is the first phone in years that feel new. Maybe similar to the X but it really did feel like a new new phone.
The trade offs are tough for me though so as much as I want to hold and use the Air, I use the multiple cameras of the Pros too much to give up. Let’s see what they do with the Air. I agree it’s a testing zone for a foldable but I can see them running with a slab and foldable in future - hopefully with a better camera solution.

I'd be willing to try Sky Mobile again, it's been 6 months since I left with my main SIM, and the 12.99/month price does look attractive, however a 12-month contract does not.

Had to go to Vodafone and now pay 20-month for the eSIM for the iPhone Air which kind of sucks but I need the Vodafone reliability and coverage, shame I only have 100 texts and 100 minutes of calls instead of unlimited, but thankfully the most important thing I still have is unlimited data.

Shame that a 12.99/month plan from Clear Mobile gives you more benefits than a plan from the main company.

The sacrifices of eSIM only.. :( I'd go with GoMo but just can't deal with the Eir network due to their aggressive DSS.

No it’s still a 12 month contract, €12.99pm for 12 months. Then switches to monthly at €15pm. Interestingly, if you google “Sky Mobile Ireland” a sponsored post is at the top that says the offer ends in 2 days.

I made a comment about this in another thread regarding GoMo having issues so I'll just copy and paste it here.

GoMo operates in Ireland using the eir network, which employs Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology on some of its sites to manage 4G and 5G traffic on the same frequency bands. Specifically, eir uses DSS on the 1800 MHz (n3) and 800 MHz (n20) bands, which can lead to congestion and potentially lower speeds compared to dedicated 5G bands because the spectrum is shared between 4G and 5G users. While eir has deployed 5G on 85 MHz of the 3.6 GHz (n78) band in urban areas for better performance, the use of DSS on other sites, particularly in the 1800 MHz band, is a known characteristic of their network deployment strategy. This shared spectrum approach is considered by some to be an aggressive use of DSS, especially when compared to networks like Three, which uses dedicated spectrum for 5G on all its sites.

That being said, I regularly get much better speeds on Eir than on 3 … have both due to work and personal accounts.

..

Have you tried this -

Apple:
Settings > Mobile Service > SIM Applications > Abroad.

Android:
Sky Menu App or SIM toolkit > Roaming > Abroad.

It could take a few minutes to connect after setting it.

Will do. Thanks for that. Is that setting some peculiar Sky Mobile thing or latest iPhone thing? I never had to do anything like that in all my years with Vodafone and iPhones.