Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello! I need a new mobile phone, as my current one has developed the incredible ability to run out of power while charging.

I've been to Staples, and they have a Samsung B130 for £14.56, but it's on Orange. (And it doesn't allow PC connectivity, so I'd be stuck with the default ringtones. THE DEFAULT RINGTONES.)

I'd like an unlocked phone as I'm going to put an ASDA mobile SIM in it because I like the sound of 4p texts. ('course, if a different carrier has 4p texts OUTSIDE OF CONTRACT KTHNX, then that's fine too.)

Does anywhere sell unlocked phones nowadays? I thought we were in the future or something.

The Carphone Warehouse used to sell everything in an unlocked state, though a quick google check suggests that in the last year or two they've started locking them from some manufacturers. Boo!

Carphone warehouse phones are all unlocked except in unusual circumstances. They usually have a couple of nokias for £10-15 although to get it at that price you need to get a top up for whichever network is offering that price. £10 if you pay with a card. You don't need to ever use the sim with £10 in it if you don't want to and despite maybe purchasing the phone on orange or o2 it will accept any sim.

it's very rare that they do that to ones they sell in store, usually only online buys and even then it's not the norm.

Sounds pretty conclusive, thank you. :) Now let's have a looksee.

Money in the bank!

if your local tesco have any they were selling off a very cheap samsung for about £8.97 - my g/f bought one as a spare for her car - its locked to T-mobile but you can unlock it following some online instructions (which involve partially putting a sim in , switching it on then pushing the sim in the full way)- once its unlocked it stays unlocked.

a cheap / no camera / no frills phone but it does have a really long battery life on standby

I'm sure Asda were selling a basic nokia for about 5 / 6 quid or something ridiculous..

You terrorist.

Yeah, but you have to buy airtime with it, and it's locked.

ASDA sell locked mobiles for the normal carriers as well as ASDA mobile, but the A.m. locked phones (which would be fine) start at £50. :(

They had stuff like the Samsung KP170 (or is it Siemens?) for £10, locked on T-Mobile.

Have you thought of getting a new battery, or even a cheap unlocked phone off ebay? I'm sure there's people here who have an old phone they could donate to your cause.

I've probably got one banging around someplace.

I have an obscure phone, so replacing the battery isn't going to be cheap.

I'd rather have a brand new phone, because then the battery will be good. (And the 'other stuff' that the phone would claim to do would actually work.)

If this thread and the iPhone thread were ever adjacent on the forum index page, I fear they would annihilate each other and the resultant release of energy would tear the server to pieces.