Buying a Mobile Phone in Britain..

[anywebsite]

Orange San Francisco is a good cheap Android based phone available without a contract. It's similar to the Softbank 003z available in Japan. £99 in an Orange store, or cheaper if you shop around. It does everything an IPhone does & more for a quarter of the price.

 

A lot of people get mobile phone contracts here, then the phones work out cheaper (if you use them at all), you can get a fairly top end smartphone for around £25/month.

 

You might struggle to get a phone contract as a foreign student though, a lot of foreign students used to give false addresses & run up huge internal phone call bills without paying.

[anywebsite]

Think he was referring to Tesco Mobile.

 

Asda mobile are really cheap if you want payg.

 

Not sure if it's my old phone, but I'm ditching them, the call quality is horrible & seems worse during the day. I can hardly hear what people are saying & they can't hear me. It is cheap, but it's hard to have a conversation, so a bit pointless.

 

They don't do 3g data either & their phones cost more.

 

I'm switching to Orange.

[Radomu]

Orange San Francisco is a good cheap Android based phone available without a contract. It's similar to the Softbank 003z available in Japan. £99 in an Orange store, or cheaper if you shop around. It does everything an IPhone does & more for a quarter of the price.

 

A lot of people get mobile phone contracts here, then the phones work out cheaper (if you use them at all), you can get a fairly top end smartphone for around £25/month.

 

You might struggle to get a phone contract as a foreign student though, a lot of foreign students used to give false addresses & run up huge internal phone call bills without paying.

 

Is the pay-as-you-go better on orange than a monthly? My phoning habits might change when I'm alone in the UK, but I think I'll try to use skype for long chats. But just for emergencies.

 

 

Seems like a nice phone, by the way

[Radomu]

And what's up with the "phone tariffs"?

[anywebsite]

With Pay-as-you go you buy the phone & you buy calling credit which then gets used to make calls (or data, texts, etc). There's no contract & you pay everything upfront. If you have poor credit, or if you're a foreign student, it might be your only option. It's also cheaper if you don't make many calls.

 

With that particular phone, it's cheap relative to other pay-as-you go phones, but overpriced on a contract. You could get much better phones for a similar price on contract, if you can get a contract.

 

Contract deals are usually cheaper if you make quite a lot of calls, but with pay-as-you go there's no commitment to pay £25 every month. Neither is better overall, it depends on how you use you phone which is cheapest, they're just different ways to pay.

 

The mobile phone companies have confusing pricing systems which make it almost impossible to compare them. Which one is cheapest depends on how you use your phone. If you're going to be making a lot of international calls back to Japan, then you might be better off with one of the smaller niche networks that specialise in cheap international calls.

 

There are 5 networks, O2, Orange, Vodaphone, T-Mobile & 3. All the other providers resell services on one of those networks. They vary in coverage, data speeds, etc, but in the centre of Sheffield you should be ok with any.

 

Contract phones (should) require a credit check, so you might not be able to get one because foreign students committed a lot of mobile phone fraud in the past. You'd usually get a top end phone (for 'free') with a few hundred minutes of calls, data, texts for a flat fee each month. Contracts can be anything up to 2 years.

 

It's usually easy to change network, you just need to get another sim card. Some phones are sold sim-locked to that network, so you can't change network without unlocking them (often about £20). The Orange San Francisco I mentioned above is locked to Orange, but the lock has been broken & there are free unlock code generators online, so it's simple.

[Radomu]

With Pay-as-you go you buy the phone & you buy calling credit which then gets used to make calls (or data, texts, etc). There's no contract & you pay everything upfront. If you have poor credit, or if you're a foreign student, it might be your only option. It's also cheaper if you don't make many calls.

 

With that particular phone, it's cheap relative to other pay-as-you go phones, but overpriced on a contract. You could get much better phones for a similar price on contract, if you can get a contract.

 

Contract deals are usually cheaper if you make quite a lot of calls, but with pay-as-you go there's no commitment to pay £25 every month. Neither is better overall, it depends on how you use you phone which is cheapest, they're just different ways to pay.

 

The mobile phone companies have confusing pricing systems which make it almost impossible to compare them. Which one is cheapest depends on how you use your phone. If you're going to be making a lot of international calls back to Japan, then you might be better off with one of the smaller niche networks that specialise in cheap international calls.

 

There are 5 networks, O2, Orange, Vodaphone, T-Mobile & 3. All the other providers resell services on one of those networks. They vary in coverage, data speeds, etc, but in the centre of Sheffield you should be ok with any.

 

Contract phones (should) require a credit check, so you might not be able to get one because foreign students committed a lot of mobile phone fraud in the past. You'd usually get a top end phone (for 'free') with a few hundred minutes of calls, data, texts for a flat fee each month. Contracts can be anything up to 2 years.

 

It's usually easy to change network, you just need to get another sim card. Some phones are sold sim-locked to that network, so you can't change network without unlocking them (often about £20). The Orange San Francisco I mentioned above is locked to Orange, but the lock has been broken & there are free unlock code generators online, so it's simple.

 

As a rather silly (but practical) advantage, the Orange services seems to have a few perks, like 2 for 1 ticket for movies on a Wednesday, so I was considering that. The Orange San Francisco looks nice and I seriously doubt that I'll be phoning more than 300 minutes per month so a 22 pound contract may be good enough for me.

 

For international calls, I think I can use my email and skype as much as possible. So I'm not so worried about that part.

 

Thanks for a great advice. I might think more about it, but right now I'm with Orange.

[anywebsite]

The problem is, at £22 a month it's very expensive compared to other deals. You could easily get a much better phone, like a HTC desire for £25/month.

 

Whereas its under £100 on pay as you go & the cheapest i've seen the htc desire is £250.

 

So it's a good deal on pay as you go, that particular phone, but you could do a lot better if you're going to get a contract.

 

Also, you're not coming until September, all the new model phones for this year will be released in the next few weeks. Deals change monthly, so don't pick a phone yet.

 

LG is releasing a 3D one next month & there are 5 or 6 big manufacturers releasing new android smartphones around the same time. Faster dual core ones, bigger screens, 3D, as well as some cheaper ones.

 

Android is taking the smartphone market away from iphones. Lots of manufacturers are using it, it's now the most popular smartphone os & growing quickly. They're cheaper than iphones, there's more choice & they provide more features. So you'll want an Android phone in September, but we don't know which one yet.

 

There are a few other extra more hidden perks with Orange & the other networks too. It varies a lot depending on how you use the phone & if you take advantage of the perks & extras. They aim to make the pricing so confusing that it's impossible to work out which is cheapest. The mobile phone networks have always operated like that here.

[NerdArmy]

In my opinion the HTC Desire on 3's 'One Plan' is a brilliant deal.

 

Its £30 a month but you get completely unlimited data usage - this includes letting tether it. This means you can use it as modem with your laptop (the same as you would with a 3G dongle). I typically get about 2.5 to 3.5 meg download speed with mine.

[denlin]

o2 do a good deal on payg - they have two tariffs £10 and £15 and the more expensive one has lots of free calls and texts, check their website - you can pick o2 handset up pretty cheap

[Radomu]

Hmmm, I guess everyone prefers different things... I heard that 3 has the fastest connection, though.