Orange Press Release

LONDON, July 12/PRNewswire/—Looking through photo albums makes you happier than chocolate, music, TV or even your favourite tipple, according to research revealed today by Orange. The results show that the mood of those viewing photographs was consistently lifted by 11% during mood measuring tests whilst the groups who tried to eat, listen, watch, or drink their way to happiness registered a mere 1% increase. The study, carried out for Orange by Peter Naish, Doctor of Psychology at The Open University compared the moods of people using four typical cheer-up treats with those browsing their favourite snaps. The tests demonstrate that looking through personal photo albums produces an improvement across all measurements including a person’s sense of relaxation, brightness, calmness and alertness and even their sense of being valued and popular - resulting in a higher happiness score overall.

In contrast, the pick-me-ups people commonly rely on were only successful in helping them relax: Wine by 14%, chocolate by 8%. Photo albums were proven to be a far more effective way of unwinding, with subjects recording an average relaxation score of 22% - substantially higher. So before reaching for the bottle after a hard day consider that apart from relaxation, wine and chocolate offer little additional benefits. In fact, the wine drinkers actually rated themselves as feeling 6% less satisfied after their drink. Only those that flicked through photographs showed a consistent positive shift across all measures of mood.

Now we are in the digital age, a lot of great photographs are being lost as people no longer put together traditional albums. With 63% of the UK public owning a camera phone, the Orange research highlights the vital role of online photo albums in documenting modern life. Pictures really are ‘happy snaps’ and the memories recorded on camera phones and digital cameras need to be stored and treasured as before.

Dr Naish a specialist in clinical counselling said, “I was aware of the potential positive effects of looking at personal photographs but I was surprised by its ability to produce shifts in specific factors, such as being more relaxed, calm or bright. Looking through a photo album has a far more beneficial effect than many traditional ways of unwinding and mood boosting - and it’s certainly a lot better for you.”

Rob Bramble, Head of Multimedia Marketing, Orange said, “The science says photo albums can make you smile, but so many digital snaps, particularly those taken on your phone, are often lost, deleted or not shared. Orange Photography helps people record their memories in an instant and create secure digital albums they can access and share from their handset or PC.”

Orange Photo Album safeguards happy memories. It is a new service that enables customers to instantly upload and share photos taken on a mobile phone to a secure and free online photo album accessible from anywhere with an internet connection www.orange.co.uk/photos. Orange Photo Album also helps people organise all their digital snaps in one place as users are able to store, add and edit digital camera images stored on their PC or Mac.

Orange Photo Album is available to all Orange pay monthly customers as a bundle or pay as you go customers for an upfront fee.

About Orange
Orange, wirefree and any other Orange product or service referred to in this release are trademarks of Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd. In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population, and offers roaming to pay monthly customers on 423 networks in 163 countries and to pay as you go customers on 160 networks in 79 countries. At the end of March 2006, Orange had over 14.9 million active UK customers. Across the world, Orange has 86.5 million customers.

In May 2005, Orange gained the top ranking for customer satisfaction among mobile phone contract customers in the annual J.D.Power and Associates 2005 UK Mobile Telephone Customers Satisfaction Study. It is the seventh time Orange has been ranked top by the study. In October 2005, Orange won the Mobile Choice Consumer Awards - voted for by readers of Mobile Choice magazine - for Best Network Operator for the fifth year running. In the same month, Orange also won Best International Mobile Operator at the World Communications Awards. The judges said: “Orange is so solid, you cannot expect more.”

Information about Orange can be found on the Orange website at www.orange.co.uk and media information can be found at www.orange.com

About Orange Photography
Orange Photography is a service that enables customers to instantly upload and share photos taken on a mobile phone to a secure and free online photo album. www.orange.co.uk/photos

As soon as a customer takes a photo on their handset, the Orange Photography service gives users an automatic prompt to send their shot to the photo album for sharing and printing. This auto-upload application will be pre-installed on the Nokia N80 (coming soon) and is downloadable to customers from Orange World with compatible devices (Nokia N70, 6680, 6630, 6230i).

The free online photo album comes with 200MB of space, enough for approximately 1000 medium-res photos. Users are able to store, add and edit digital images stored on their PC or Mac. The photo album is powered by leading online photo service PhotoBox.

The album can be shared with family and friends who can access images from anywhere with an internet connection - without any loss of quality. The service also includes the facility to print images directly from a computer or have them processed and delivered through the PhotoBox dedicated print service.

Unlimited upload of photos from the phone to the album with Orange Photography costs GBP4 per month (UK use only) and includes 30 MMS messages. Customers can take advantage of the free 1 month Orange TRY period available to new customers and receive 10 free prints upon registering for the online album.

All Orange customers with camera phones can send photos to their album to ALBUM (25286), using Photo Messaging.

About the research
The purpose of the study was to determine whether viewing favourite photos would produce more of a beneficial mood shift than other, more traditional, methods of mood changing, such as alcohol consumption.

A series of standard assessment techniques, widely used by psychologists, was used to carry out ‘before-and-after’ tests on three groups of people. The groups either looked at their photos, watched TV and drank wine, or listened to music and ate chocolate.

About Doctor Naish
Peter Naish is a Chartered Psychologist, obtaining a doctorate in Psychology from the University of Oxford in 1981. Since then he has been active in education, clinical counselling and research, carrying out extensive studies for the Home Office and Ministry of Defence, and employing hypnosis to assist the police. In addition to being an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, he is a member of two other learned societies: the Experimental Psychology Society, and the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis. He has published a large volume of research in professional journals, and also a textbook on hypnosis. Additionally, Dr Naish has taken part in a number of television and radio programmes, discussing that topic and other psychological issues.