Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi guys, I was wondering if the tech-savvy Beex hive-mind could figure out a good smartphone deal for me?

Some of you may remember my endearingly ancient flip-up humble Nokia phone from the BeexBQ, and how I proudly stated that it had served me well these last ten years. Well, it seems to be failing me now. When people call I cannot hear them, though they can hear me. Crazy, huh? So I fear its time to take the old phone out round the back of the barn with a shotgun and put the old gal out of her misery.

And invest in something new and shiny. Can any of you recommend a good cheapish contract for a smartphone? Say top level of £20-£30 a month for something nice? I don't really need a camera or anything like that, but a decent screen for surfing Flickr would be nice. Do you know of any good guys to go with and any evil fiends I should avoid at all costs?

I have absolutely no idea about this world 'o' phones, by the way. Even less than Mitt Romney.

I used to be pay as you go but I don't think I saved anything that way. And I don't even text or phone that much. Thoughts?

Last time I looked 3 were doing iPhone 5's with unlimited data for £29 a month.

That's what I'm getting in November when my contract is up.

Depends if you want iOS or Android really.

I'd get an old-ish phone for £notmuch.

A very quick search turned up A Sony Experia for £26 pcm: http://shop.ee.co.uk/4gee-26-plan-24-mo ... y/details/
and a iPhone4 for £21: http://store.three.co.uk/view/product/q ... AY_MONTHLY

I feel you'll probably be able to get better prices if you walk into a shop.

Usually find these pretty good for decent deals:

http://www.buymobiles.net/

Galaxy S3 on there for £21 with unlimited data. I love my one of them.

Don't forget the money you'll make by selling your DSLR and lenses.

How much do you actually use your phone? I'm perfectly happy with my free contract (from ovivo) on both my phone and tablet.
150 mins, 250 texts, 500MB data for the princely sum of fuck all. Getting redirected to an advert link if you browse the internet on your phone browser every 15 minutes can get a little annoying, but not annoying enough to make me want to pay for a contract again.

The what now?

http://www.ovivomobile.com

That plus a Nexus 4, happy days.

I'd say get a Nexus 4, there's not much better bang for your buck with any other high end smartphone.

Then get a sim only contract from someone like giff gaff.

Oooh. All exciting possibilities, thanks!

I've noticed that in the Carphone Warehouse they seem to have a good rate on an iPhone 4 for £18 p/m on a two-year contract. 250 minutes talktime, 5000 texts and 500mb data. How fast does bandwidth get gobbled up by a phone? Say I was to bop through a Flickr photostream on average half an hour a day, would that eat it up quickly?

Though that Galaxy S3 notion sounds pretty good too, Mark.

Apologies for idiot level questions. Been ten years since I've had to think about this!

Oops, maybe scratch that £18 idea. It's with TalkMobile and it looks like there's some unhappy customers out there...

I usually use about 300mb a month in data, and i'd say I was an average data user.

I dunno man. In the last full month period my phone measured I did 2GB of data but most of that's (a) downloading games and apps and (b) Google Music streaming; neither of which I would do over 3G if I had to worry about my usage. Taking those both out I still used just under a GB on normal stuff like surfing the net, checking RSS feeds, auto-uploading of pictures I took to Dropbox and then misc stuff like Gmail, Google Maps, etc. Through a concerted effort on my part I could ditch some of that if I really had to, but I'd be artificially constraining my use which is hardy the point and even then I don't know if I could get down to 300MB very easily.

Obviously all this is totally down to individual use patterns but I still really don't think 300MB is a lot and you don't want to take out a contract that ends up having less data than you want to use as you'll get heavily penalised for going over your allocation.

I don't stream music, so that would be a good chunk. I do browse quite a bit though, however I probably do equal amounts on my tablet, so you'll need to add some to the figure for that. 500mb would be reasonable for me, I expect.

I'm normally fine with my 500MB. I do work from home mostly though. If I was out all day every day I reckon I'd hammer my way through it in a week.

I won't get to access it during worktime, only breaktimes and otherwise at home I'm on't laptop, so I guess I'd be okay with that too.

Hmm, that's a point actually; I could probably drop some of my mobile data usage if I was more disciplined with the wifi. As it stands I don't habitually switch to wifi when I get in the door and only do so if I'm about to download some massive game or if I'm looking stuff up on the phone and the browsing speed is annoying me, but mostly I forget and just keep it on 3G. I'm so used to not having to care about it that I just don't.

I don't have to switch to wifi, it just uses it when it's available.

Well, yes, which is fine if you're happy to have your phone constantly scanning all the available wifi networks where ever you are; which is unlikely to be good for the battery life when you're out and about as I spend most of the day being. I keep wifi switched off unless I'm actively looking to connect which, I think, most people do.

It doesn't really seem to make all that much difference. I have the BT Openzone app on there too so it picks up wifi all over the place.

Am I right in saying that you can keep your wibbly-fi 'open' but turn off the "ask-if-you-want-to-use-a-wifi" and then you'll just connect to wibblies that your phone already 'knows' without having to 'connect' 'manually'? Apologises for all the technical terms, people who aren't au fait with the latest 'lingo'. Erm, mingo.

You are entirely correct.

It's still constantly hunting to see what wifi networks are in range though. You can use something like Locale on Android devices to say stuff like 'turn on my wifi if I'm near my house' mind.

Tech o/

\@

In my experience the difference between wifi being on and off on battery life is fuck all though.

I was abroad last week, so had roaming on (ie no data, just wifi) and my battery life at least doubled.

Yep, the data connection itself seems to draw a massive amount of battery power as I always get the same huge boost to battery life when I'm on holiday. Bear in mind though that I never said wifi drew more power than 3g or indeed compared them at all; just that when I'm in places when I'm not going to get a wifi connection anyway (i.e. wandering around Glasgow or whatever) then it's pointless having the power draw of the actual 3G connection and have my phone constantly pointlessly searching for wifi.

When I was on holiday I switched everything off except basic cell reception. I got 4 days out of the iphone without charging it, but of course I wasn't constantly checking it and fiddling.

The might have been a colorful phone launch yesterday..

I can recommend 3 as a decent network to go on with a smartphone, because they do a lot of unlimited data packages which really are unlimited as far as I've found and speeds are normally fantastic (my mobile data at home is faster and more reliable than my actual ADSL home broadband). Plus they're rolling out 4G soon and existing customers will get that service where available for free.

As for the phone, I'm on Android nowadays and I do loves it so, but iOS is great as a kind of starter smartphone because it's so simple to set up and use. The trade off is that it's in no way as customisable as Android, but being forced to do things the Apple way does simplify things a great deal. Also, there's significantly more apps and things available for iPhone than there is Android. Basically... if I were you, I'd probably be thinking more about grabbing an iPhone than an Android handset. But I'm quite positive someone else will now point out the many flaws in my advice here.

At a not so attractive price...

Our O2 account manager at work is suggesting that there could be a bigger difference in price between the 5S and 5C when bought on a contract than Apple's SIM-free prices suggests.

Either way I'd hold off making a decision until the new offers are made public.

No need for that, i'm already decided

Lumia 1020 drops tomorrow apparently. Probably fucking expensive though.

I thought they were announcing the dates tomorrow? Not actually releasing it?

Some reports say announcing, others say its launch. Lets be honest, it's not an iPhone, stock issues aren't going to be huge.

I am tempted though.

A friend who works for EE has confirmed that it will be released tomorrow yet he hasn't got any stock in.

If it's not an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, it seems that they don't care. I'm holding out for one though. I love my windows phone.