iPhone 5: UK pay-monthly tariffs compared With fanbois eager to pre-order an iPhone 5, networks have started to tout their predictably expensive tariffs so here's a comparison table to highlight what's on offer. Of course, there are plenty of rates either side of those mentioned below, with varying minutes and data allowances, but in the interests of a fair comparison …
I bought an iphone 4S outright, I have a sim only contract with Orange that costs me £15 inclusive per month, the total cost to me over 2 years will be less than £890. I have unlimited texts, never use all my minutes and have a data plan and coupled to the phone, unlimited home broadband for an extra fiver a month.
No I will not be upgrading to the iPhone 5, because the differences between the two when the 4S is upgraded to iOS 6 they will pretty much do the same thing. OK, so the new one is a little faster and has a longer screen and may have a more refined camera?
As for LTE, maybe next year when the better more stylish 5S or 6 hits the shelves with NFC.
This phone is just a disappointing stop gap.
"iphone users will be stuck with this ugly, tiny 4in until at least 2014"
I remember it was only a couple of years ago when phone manufacturers were struggling to make them as small as possible! Now we're expected to lug mini tablets around in our jeans pockets.
I suppose the trend will reverse again once the screens reach 9" across and everyone will be scrambling for the new, smaller models...
O2 Pricing link,
An iPhone 5 at £36 per month - down payment £100
Galaxy S3 at £36 per month - down payment £20
http://www.o2.co.uk/iphone/iphone-5
http://shop.o2.co.uk/mobile_phones/Pay_Monthly
Both give unlimited minutes, texts and 1GB data.
Given that (historically) can sell an iPhone on for the downpayment price... it isn't so expensive compared to the competition.
OK, here is how to get to cheapskate heaven:
My Huawei G300 Ascend cost £100; the new phone I'm about to buy on a 24-month contract sells for £110 (incl rebates) more than the total full-term line rental cost, (with 300 mins pm, 250mb pm data, a bunch of texts, no charges for data overuse), so it should touch wood work out at minus 50 pee per month for the next couple of years, assuming I don't go over my minutes...
No back then...
1) Mobiles were much more expensive than today in total cost of ownership for talk time received.
2) Landlines rentals (don't have a landline) and friends and family discounts still made for expensive monthly phone bills.
3) People paid the best part of a £1,000 for a computer that would be obsolete in 2 years.
It wasn't better.
1. At most there was only one mob per family.
2. Only one landline per family....most people still have this
3. Show me where I can pay £1000 for a PC today that will not be out of date in 2 years.
Now everyone in the house has a mobile on £30 or so a month....now when I was a kid at school I had a part time job....the money from which I could spend as I pleased.....most school kids now do not have jobs but do have the latest mobile........
This post has been deleted by its author
Wrote :- "People paid the best part of a £1,000 for a computer that would be obsolete in 2 years."
Depends on what you mean by obsolete. To play cutting edge games maybe. But a PC that does what I want lasts for many more years than that, until a hardware part fails (when I replace only that part).
I paid £1200 for a PC in 1995, but I used it largely as it was (with relatively cheap memory and CPU upgrades and a second larger HDD) for about 6 years. Since then I have only bought new components, and I still have some 1995 bits in my PC today (keyboard and FDD)! My present PC averages about 5 years old
Yes but back then only rich people HAD mobiles... it was a status symbol to have one at all.
Also not everyone had a PC either... these days it's more common for each person in the house to have a PC/laptop/tablet rather than the house PC. And most people didn't get a new PC every 2 years any more than they do now.
I wonder if O2 are only "coming soon" because they've made the same error of judgement over sim cards as giffgaff.
Traditionally if you want a micro sim from Giffgaff your request is forwarded to a giffgaff member who cuts a regular sim down to the correct size and pops it in the post. Of course this isn't possible with the new nano sim and now giffgaff gave announced they will have a solution in place in the "coming months".
Being that 4 out of 5 countries' courts said otherwise, why do the fanbois insist on picking the ONE result that went their way? Same reason they pick crApple in the first place - totally blinkered. I note crApple still haven't complied with the UK court order to post a message on their homepage stating Samsung didn't copy them.
I'm on a 24 month contract now, with an iPhone 4.... I may as well get a 5 and flog it on fleabay for a few hundred quid as my contract ran out last month and I'm on a lowered tarriff anyway.. plus Orange are getting 4G LTE early anyway.
Providing of course that Samsung don't attempt to keep it off the shelves by suing them for use of LTE patents?!
I just realised.. Apple have me over a barrel with iTunes. I'm pretty sure all my music purchased through iTunes is DRM, someone please (hopefully) do feel free to correct me!
"I just realised.. Apple have me over a barrel with iTunes. I'm pretty sure all my music purchased through iTunes is DRM, someone please (hopefully) do feel free to correct me!"
Consider yourself corrected :-) Hasn't been DRMed for a while, try playing a track in a media player of your choice to check.
Unfortunately I cannot afford to buy outright. Last year I think the 64GB worked out at slightly under £800 for the 12 month contract (12 months @ £46, and the phone for £230). That wasn't far off the £700 purchase cost, considering I then got plenty of minutes, texts and data as well. It seems that O2 lost money on this deal, but to only offer 2 years?! Vodafone's 12 month deal isn't far off I suppose, but I'd rather stick with O2.
In practical terms the 5 offers a speed increase and the minor screen size increase, but the connector and SIM change and inevitable locked phone for 6 months are all a pain. I'll be sticking with the 4S unless O2 pull something out of the bag, which seems unlikely.
Visual voicemail is pretty crap and a poor excuse for a bad network - better your callers get through first time. I was on O2 a few years ago and had visual voicemail - never had so much voicemail due to poor coverage. Now on Vodafone and hardly get anyone needing to 'go to voicemail'.
I could have had more data or minutes for the money but what I have is more than enough (the SIII guzzles data but it's on WiFi for anything heavy duty). Now, what does interest me is not so much the iPhone 5 (nice though it is) but LTE itself. I will be interested to know what, if anything, EE/Orange will offer to those of us who are only six months or so into their contract. Of course, by the time LTE is widely available, buying myself out of the existing contract will be around £250 but it will be interesting to see if EE will allow me to buy a phone outright or offer a discount on the rest of my existing contract,
Back when Orange launched 3G, they gave those of us who'd recently started a new contract (and who'd expressed an interest in advance) a get out jail card and a bloody awful 1st gen 3G blower. The world was a different place back then :).
> But there's a reason people don't walk into car dealerships with £15k in a suitcase.
£15k fits into an envelope (bit bulky though) and the reason you don't walk into a car dealership with cash is that they wont accept it (the main ones at least). They don't want the extra costs associated with handling large amounts of hard cash.
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