I'm about to come out of the worst deal ever with Orange EE and looking for a iphone 5s I work for the NHS so I understand that most phone company's do 20% I have £160 for upfront cost, I don't use more than 150 mins a month I would like unlimited texts and 1 to 2 GB of data

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Cheap 5s deals would only herald an unwanted new Apple era.

You need to buy the 5c.
That is the one more designed for deals.

Yawn! Entirely silly post!

Well, find a good 5s deal then.
I have only ever seen 5c discounts and 5s sameness.

'Refurbished' might just be worth a look.

Not sure I would call then god deals but if your willing to pay that amount up front you should be able to get a contract for around £27 a month meeting this criteria.

Best deals seem to be the £140 upfront, 500 mins, unlimited texts and data via tmobile.

Try looking at uswitch.com

So does that 25% discount even exist for the 5s ?

Don't see a 25% discount, I was looking at the deal that comes via mobilephonesdirect.co.uk.

500 mins, unlimited texts and data(no tethering) for £27 with a 139.99 upfront on tmobile.

I failed at linking direct.

I recently bought a 5c from Three. All you can eat data plus free 4G made it a no-brainer.

In my opinion the contract prices on Three right now are horrific. It's £174 cheaper to go sim only one plan (£15 a month) and buy the phone at £549.99 compared against buying the phone on the oneplan from Three for £99.99 and £41 a month.

If we compare a £37 ultimate internet 500 Three plan (the cheapest one I can see) against the tmobile deal above the Three price is £200 more in total cost over the 2 years.

Previously Three contract pricing has been some of the most competitive on iPhones, is that 4g network really free? Seems to me that new contract customers are getting a raw deal.

No 4g is an obvious downside, but not needed by a lot of people.

An iPhone 5s can be picked up for £549.

My bad that makes it even worse, I'll correct the above.

It's always cheaper to buy the phone outright, if you can afford it. Plus you can jump networks at any time!

Actually the best way to get an iPhone for most people would to get the 0% percent finance option from Apple directly which spreads it over 10 months and then get a sim only contract.

It hasn't always been, the oneplan sim only price drop from £25 to £15/£18 was a game changer when comparing contract and sim only total cost of ownership within Three.

The iphone 4 and 4s were both cheaper on contract with Three when compared to the same Three tariff sim only.

How you figure that exactly the phone is £550 plus say 15 month over two years comes to £910

The deal below for example is less than £800

http://www.buymobiles.net/basket/view

Plus the cost is spread out if cash is tight.

I'm not paying £709 (64GB) in one go for a phone. I couldn't justify it. I'd rather just pay a set amount every month on top of a smaller upfront fee (£130) which is what I did.

The only way buying outright is worth it IMO is up to something like a Nexus in price, where you seem to get screwed on contract.

It has become that way in recent years, yeah. Previously it was pretty easy to find cashback deals that put the cost of the whole contract below that of just buying the phone outright.

Sadly when the market reached saturation (insert obligatory recession blaming too) and everyone's acquisition budgets plummeted things changed. I actually now have to pay for service

Take out a loan?

No a contract with O2.