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........
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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.
It's not that they don't want to accept it in cash, it's they cant legally accept it in cash in case you are money laundering,
I think the limits on cash are 10k for property purchases (land / houses) or 5k for anything else, anything over those limits is meant to be sourced from a bank account so it's traceable.
> they cant legally accept it in cash in case you are money laundering,
The Money Laundering Regulations 2007 requires that "High value dealers" need to be registered (section 26). A high value dealer is someone who regularly receives 15,000 euros (yes it is UK regulations and it is defined in euros) or more in payment for goods or services (section 3 subsection 12). There is no restriction on the amount of cash they can accept for a transaction.
"There is no restriction on the amount of cash they can accept for a transaction."
Interesting... the UK seem to have done something right this time. The regulations you are quoting are EU-wide stuff, as you can see from another post of mine (seems I got the figure wrong), but clearly in other countries they just couldn't be bothered to make it so that you were not forced to enter in a contract with a third party (the bank), which is something I'm a bit dubious about the legality thereof.
> they just couldn't be bothered to make it so that you were not forced to enter in a contract with a third party (the bank),
The regulations might be the same, it is just that the dealer (or whoever) doesn't want the expense of handling large quantities of cash because:
1 Their insurance would significantly increase.
2 A safe and a secure area would need to be set up for handling and counting the cash.
3 Arrangements for pick ups by armoured cars would have to be made.
Overall, not accepting cash for high value items would have little impact on their business, whereas, accepting cash might significantly increase their costs.
"Buying outright is always cheaper. But there's a reason people don't walk into car dealerships with £15k in a suitcase."
...and where I live, that's because paying in cash for anything (traceable) over, IIRC, €10K gets you a free background check courtesy of the local finance ministry. In the end I got the dealer to cover the cost of a bank transfer.
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My sister in-law an existing Orange customer has just pre-ordered a 32GB with unlimited data for £41 a month and £140 for the handset. I'm looking at going from an iPhone 4 on O2 for an iphone5 but there's not many offering unlimited data plans in my opinion needed for LTE so I don't get data plan anxiety, so probably going for Orange too. Any idea how much data FaceTime uses per minute and can you do this over LTE?
Facetime uses about 3MB/minutes. It will work over both 3G and LTE, *providing* your cell company allows it.
Look at 3 or T Mobile if you want unlimited data. T Mobile are owned by the same parent company (EE) as Orange and they are merging the brands. £149 and £41/month buys you a 32GB phone and unlimited everything with them.
Three on the other hand will give you a 32GB phone with 2000 minutes, 5000 texts and unlimited internet for £89 down and £39/month. That includes tethering BTW, T Mobile don't permit that.
I expect eventually the government will rule that mobile phone contracts are loans and force APRs to be shown. Not that it'll make much difference as the people who would ignore the APRs are the ones who will take a phone for 'free' on a 50 quid a month contract for 2 years.
That aside I think it'll be 12 month contracts for me from now on, and I'll steel myself to view anything over a tenner a month as a debt I'm repaying. I'd rather it was always cheaper to buy it outright, but while it isn't always the case, I guess I can tolerate having a contract and having to do the sums on it. When the SGS4 comes out I think I'll do the sums and end up on a contract again...
Quite a difference between 500 and 200 minutes as well. I would imagine a lot of people use around / more than 500 minutes a month and bet they get very expensive outside your contract rate. Think last time I looked extra minutes were 25-35p per minute so 6-8 minutes out of contract and you have paid that £2 difference.
I'm with Vodafone and have been for a long time. I took a contract out and was catagorically told that I woud not be charged to connect my laptop to an iPhone. Then I got billed for "tethering" My old phone (windows 6) didn't give a shite if the data was from the phone or from a BT connected laptop and still doesn't.
I like Vodafone because they have a 2G network which I use most of the time when I'm not using data and am pretty reluctant to move off their network but when the contract is up for renewal I'm going to look around.
Tethering charges are something that the cell networks wanted to be able to do, so Voda lied to you when they said they were't going to charge you. Some networks do, some don't, but Android devices not reporting that they are tethering isn't something you should rely on.
Modern phones are much better at 3G talk/data time than they used to be, so switching back to 2G is no longer something you need to worry about.
I was in the Harlequin today, and they've like opened a whole new shrine to it. My life will be all for naught lest I get this latest gadget.
What will I do, if I end up with one after my friends? What will they think of me? Never mind about that. How will I cope to be the only one without the "Hi Five"? I'm just crying at the moment at the sheer possibility.
I wish they could restore Steve Jobs, maybe we could get Richard Attenborough in to do a Jurassic Park on him. But you tell people, and they just don't understand. They think it's not important. Well I've got two words for them. It is! It is important.
Someone told me that Apple are being outsold two to one by Samsung now. They only did it to make me upset. And I don't believe it anyway. It can't be true. One guy even said he was waiting for a surface in the shop. He told his daughter we were all tw@ts. Well let me just say that my friends and I spent all day in the Harlequin store, playing with display versions of all the products that I've already got one of, and he just didn't get it. Tables out of that kind of wood don't come cheap, you don't put rubbish on that kind of wood.
These peasants that prefer a surface, just because you can run a dev environment, SQL Server, Web servers, Flash and so on, and because they have internet connectivity, virtual machine capability, usb ports, and can drive a monitor without some kind of extra black box. Well they've no idea of the value of the style that black Apple box confers on people.
I sometimes despair at my fellow humans. They don't know what style is. They don't realise that computers don't need to run things their owners want. I long for the day when they realise that someone, someone very special, knows much better than they do, what they need, and is happy to ensure they don't get what they deem their customer doesn't need. This is why they're so expensive. It's because they have to go to great lengths to ensure you don't get anything Steve doesn't think you should have. This costs money. This is why I'll never buy Microsoft. Their products just do too much.
I bought a 4s from gumtree, on a £22 orange contract 500min/ultd txt etc
Id rather pay someone for there phone than know all my money is going to the greedy phone companies who have forced all these prices to go up purely just cos they can.
dont think I need 4G, most of the time I just use wifi. I think 3g is good enough. I guess they can sell faster speeds to the kids who need to access facebook faster and wank about one direction on twitter
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