O2 touts OTT tariffs for Nexus 4 exclusive O2 has upped the price of Google's anticipated LG-made Nexus 4 smartphone - for which the UK operator has a month-long exclusive - and customers have raised their eyebrows in disgust. While Google will sell the 16GB version Sim-free and unlocked for a generous £279, or an 8GB version for £239, in order to get the blower free, …
And the subsidy can be worthwhile (though I note that O2 are being cheeky buggers in this case). You just have to do your adding up when evaluating your options. In the case of the Nexus 4, I think I'd buy straight from the Play Store at that price. Even if it ends up being more expensive over the 24 months, at least I know I'll get my OS upgrade when Google upgrades, not when the idiot carrier gets round rolling them out!
The Nexus 4 is sold at cost or at a slight loss by Google so it's understandable that O2 want to make a bit of a profit...but this is pretty much daylight robbery. When will telcos realise that no one cares about them? - they are now simply just handset leasing and data pipe utility companies. O2 are amongst the worst offenders...O2 Priority? What? Get the network working properly, offer more than a measly 1Gb data per month, stop ripping people off with handsets they can get much, much cheaper elsewhere and then maybe we can talk about shopping vouchers.
Where's your evidence for this? Did you consider that maybe, just maybe, all other 'flagship' handsets are simply sold with insane margins (the most obvious example being the iPhone, of course). Maybe LG still get 10% margin on the Nexus 4 whilst selling sh!tloads more thanks to their association with the Nexus brand than the near identical Optimus G5 upon which it is based.
The pricing logic actually starts to make sense with the Nexus 4-7-10 family rather than the weird vortex of nonsense that is the iPod Touch - iPhone - iPad Mini - iPad irrationality.
iSupply pointed ut that the margins on the nexus 7 were tight as a ducks arse on the 8GB, around $40 on the 16GB and presumably the same for the new 32GB. The margins on the Nexus 4 will be similarly tight to expand market share and develop the Google Android marketing ecosystem.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Don't buy a month contract .. buy a phone outright using a cashback credit card (www.aquacard.co.uk will give almost anyone a 3% cash back card), ideally through a quidco.com link and then get a cheap sim deal from Three etc.
Running a £10 giffgaff (1GB inc. tethering) monthly rolling sim only deal you will have paid off the phone against the carphone warehouse deal (£31) in 13 months that gives you a saving of £231 on a 24mth contract and frees you up to change contracts at your leisure. I no longer see any reason to get free phone deals infact i have not for the last 12mths.
Ok so you only get 250mins and 1GB but still.
This is an O2 Rip Off. I agree with everything said. Don't forget the other network providers are just as bad but O2 really has taken the biscuit with this one. Even stupid enough to charge the same on monthly contract as more expensive phones such as the SGS3 and the HTC One X. No wonder they have to give away free TVs. Greedy and dumb O2. Good for Google.
The price does sound bonkers: you're paying a hefty premium for spreading the purchase price over two years. It does bug me that the networks still seem to be pushing people in that direction, locking in year-plus contracts and often reserving tethering for subscription packages not sim-only/payg.
I'm about to switch too - O2 have had a few too many data outages lately; £6.90/month will get me everything I need from 3, except for tethering not being permitted. Just north of £10, Orange have a plan where it's available at an extra £1 per day - useful for me, since tethering would be a rare "emergency" usage anyway - but irritating, particularly when paying for 500 Mb already.
I'll probably go with the £6.90 and tether with my tablet instead - apparently, being a "data device" anyway, the data plan for it automatically covers tethering, even when more expensive "phone" plans don't. Bizarre.
Price isnt so bad, only £155 over buying sim free. What stinks is the 1gb for that price, should be 5gb.
Paying £5pm for 300/300/3gb, so no way am i signup up for anything that changes that deal. For new smartphone users this deal isnt so bad, but wait a month for the other carriers to jump on board, should be down to £25 in no time.
All the carriers know that their business models are changing. Give it a couple of years they will be nothing more than a commoditised utility company. Data is the way. Sadly, they're still all in a semi cartel where none of them are prepared to offer truly decent data tariffs. Once one of them shows their hand, the others will follow pretty quickly though to save market share. There's no reason to not be offering 5/10/15gig tariffs right now for reasonable rates on 3G/3.5G.
Frankly, i'd forego on a calls allowance (skype will do) and texts (whatsapp etc) and just have a set data allowance per month, to use as i see fit. I can see this as the norm before the end of this decade.
As for tethering, it is practically gangster behaviour to specify how I can use my data allowance. I assume it is the operators bullying the manufacturers to build the opt out into the hardware.
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