[pete137]

When I first got my iphone many years ago it was on a 12 month contract, £18 a month and for the technology at the time represented great value. Now I see new iphone contracts with minimum 24 months at £30, £40 or even higher. Who on earth would want to commit to a 2 contract which ends up costing you nearly £1000, when there are so many cheaper contract free options available these days. If you know what your doing you can easily find a different make, same spec iphone 6 import at a fraction of the cost. I would never go back to apple now.

[Lyceum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pete137

When I first got my iphone many years ago it was on a 12 month contract, £18 a month and for the technology at the time represented great value. Now I see new iphone contracts with minimum 24 months at £30, £40 or even higher. Who on earth would want to commit to a 2 contract which ends up costing you nearly £1000, when there are so many cheaper contract free options available these days. If you know what your doing you can easily find a different make, same spec iphone 6 import at a fraction of the cost. I would never go back to apple now.

No. You can't. Name another make import (or other make at all) that runs iOS?

I'm not disagreeing with you btw I think paying £30-£40-£50+ for a phone contract is mental but some people, myself included prefer iOS.

You'd never go back to Apple? Great for you. But thankfully we live in a world where not everyone has an identical opinion. And if you want iOS you have no option but to buy an iPhone.

I always buy my phones outright and go sim only. I started doing that when contracts moved from 12 to 18 months.

But at the end of the day people have the right to spend their cash on anything they want to. My Aunty spends £200 a week on bingo. My uncle spends £120 a week on cigarettes. Both IMHO stupid wastes of cash. But it's their cash and they can spend it on whatever they hell they like.

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pete137

When I first got my iphone many years ago it was on a 12 month contract, £18 a month and for the technology at the time represented great value. Now I see new iphone contracts with minimum 24 months at £30, £40 or even higher. Who on earth would want to commit to a 2 contract which ends up costing you nearly £1000, when there are so many cheaper contract free options available these days. If you know what your doing you can easily find a different make, same spec iphone 6 import at a fraction of the cost. I would never go back to apple now.

So because you don't want an iPhone no one else should? Interesting concept...

Does the same also apply to someone wanting a flagship Android phone like an S7 edge at launch?

I suppose if everyone used the same cheap phone made in unknown Chinese factories the world would be a better place, Same should apply to cars, houses, clothes, watches...

Only the cheapest will do, doesn't matter how crap it is made or how long it lasts!

There will an executive order signed tomorrow, everyone is to drive a Tata Nano, it is much cheaper and does the same job as a Ford, BMW, Porsche or even Ferrari.

[ShaunIOW]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

So because you don't want an iPhone no one else should? Interesting concept...

Does the same also apply to someone wanting a flagship Android phone like an S7 edge at launch?

I suppose if everyone used the same cheap phone made in unknown Chinese factories the world would be a better place, Same should apply to cars, houses, clothes, watches...

Only the cheapest will do, doesn't matter how crap it is made or how long it lasts!

There will an executive order signed tomorrow, everyone is to drive a Tata Nano, it is much cheaper and does the same job as a Ford, BMW, Porsche or even Ferrari.

BiB To be fair, some of the Chinese makes of phone are very well made, high spec and very good value, and you'll find some are made in the exact same factories as iPhones.

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShaunIOW

BiB To be fair, some of the Chinese makes of phone are very well made, high spec and very good value, and you'll find some are made in the exact same factories as iPhones.

Only the branded ones, the closest to what you infer is probably ZTE (but even their flagships aren't £100), the likes of Cubot, Doogee, Elephone, Star, iNew, Bluboo etc are all a big drop in both build and component quality. That's why they cost so much less, not some magic powder that makes them so much cheaper than an iPhone or flagship Galaxy, Xperia or HTC.

[ShaunIOW]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

Only the branded ones, the closest to what you infer is probably ZTE (but even their flagships aren't £100), the likes of Cubot, Doogee, Elephone, Star, iNew, Bluboo etc are all a big drop in both build and component quality. That's why they cost so much less, not some magic powder that makes them so much cheaper than an iPhone or flagship Galaxy, Xperia or HTC.

I've had a go with a mates Oppo Find 7a and it's very impressive - well made and solid, very fast, high spec, very good camera, lots of useful features like replaceable battery and microsd card slot, superb screen and very loud speaker.

[aurichie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyceum

No. You can't. Name another make import (or other make at all) that runs iOS?

I'm not disagreeing with you btw I think paying £30-£40-£50+ for a phone contract is mental but some people, myself included prefer iOS.

You'd never go back to Apple? Great for you. But thankfully we live in a world where not everyone has an identical opinion. And if you want iOS you have no option but to buy an iPhone.

I always buy my phones outright and go sim only. I started doing that when contracts moved from 12 to 18 months.

But at the end of the day people have the right to spend their cash on anything they want to. My Aunty spends £200 a week on bingo. My uncle spends £120 a week on cigarettes. Both IMHO stupid wastes of cash. But it's their cash and they can spend it on whatever they hell they like.

My iPhone cost £900 with AppleCare+ insurance. I'm spending £18 a month on a sim only deal. So the cost is about £1332 over 2 years.

An EE 24 month contract for my phone with similar allowances would cost £45.99 a month with £149.99 for the phone upfront. So the cost would be £1,253.75 over 2 years, add on £110 for the AppleCare+ and the the cost is only 30 odd quid more on contract over the full term of the contract.

You could look at the EE contract as a two year loan with very minimal interest.

I personally hate contracts so will continue to buy outright and do sim only deals. But the savings I make are not necessarily very significant. I don't think it necessary means people who are happy to do 24 month contracts are doing anything mental.

If the choice is a phone contract or lumping the upfront cost on a credit card you hope to one day pay off, the phone contract is the more prudent payment plan.

[Smufter]

I've just pre-ordered a new Huawei P9 on Voda.
£29.00 up front and £25.00 a month over two years.
Bundle deal comes with a "free" W1 smart watch (which the Missus will pinch) that is selling for £289.00 on Amazon at the moment.
Seems a bit of a bargain to me........

[dearmrman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pete137

When I first got my iphone many years ago it was on a 12 month contract, £18 a month and for the technology at the time represented great value. Now I see new iphone contracts with minimum 24 months at £30, £40 or even higher. Who on earth would want to commit to a 2 contract which ends up costing you nearly £1000, when there are so many cheaper contract free options available these days. If you know what your doing you can easily find a different make, same spec iphone 6 import at a fraction of the cost. I would never go back to apple now.

There isn't much difference in price between a contract and sim only plan if you shop around when you take the cost of the phone into consideration. You will probably find those with sim only plans end up paying more as well, because they are quite possibly more likely to buy a new phone every year.

[daleski75]

Buying sim free gives you the freedom to pick and choose whatever network you wish when you wish (if you go for 30 days) but yes the overall cost nowadays is not that much cheaper really but at least you are not locked into a 24 month agreement.

I hope one day Apple bring their upgrade program to the UK as I think a lot of people would snap it up specially as you can still upgrade every 12 months and still have the ability to pick whatever network you want without the £619+ upfront cost.

[prking]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aurichie

My iPhone cost £900 with AppleCare+ insurance. I'm spending £18 a month on a sim only deal. So the cost is about £1332 over 2 years.

An EE 24 month contract for my phone with similar allowances would cost £45.99 a month with £149.99 for the phone upfront. So the cost would be £1,253.75 over 2 years, add on £110 for the AppleCare+ and the the cost is only 30 odd quid more on contract over the full term of the contract.

You could look at the EE contract as a two year loan with very minimal interest.

I personally hate contracts so will continue to buy outright and do sim only deals. But the savings I make are not necessarily very significant. I don't think it necessary means people who are happy to do 24 month contracts are doing anything mental.

If the choice is a phone contract or lumping the upfront cost on a credit card you hope to one day pay off, the phone contract is the more prudent payment plan.

As well as costing more, (non Apple) EE branded handsets do not receive the security patches that other networks and manufacturers send out which mean you are more vulnerable to potential attacks. EE are also much slower than the other networks at rolling out operating system upgrades. So there seems very little reason to buy a handset with a contract from EE.

[daleski75]

Quote:

Originally Posted by prking

As well as costing more, (non Apple) EE branded handsets do not receive the security patches that other networks and manufacturers send out which mean you are more vulnerable to potential attacks. EE are also much slower than the other networks at rolling out operating system upgrades. So there seems very little reason to buy a handset with a contract from EE.

I second that my mate has a S6 from EE and is stuck on 5.1.1 with the November security patch.

[aurichie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by prking

As well as costing more, (non Apple) EE branded handsets do not receive the security patches that other networks and manufacturers send out which mean you are more vulnerable to potential attacks. EE are also much slower than the other networks at rolling out operating system upgrades. So there seems very little reason to buy a handset with a contract from EE.

Yeah that doesn't affect me because I now only buy iPhones, and that's one of the reasons - Apple supports it with security and software updates for many years and everyone gets them at the same time.

I have experienced precisely what you say in the past when I got an Xperia S contract. When sony did eventually make some updates available we had to wait 7 months to get them from the carrier. Never again!

I also would be less inclined to do a contract on an android phone because you can usually get great deals on them unlocked if you wait a few months. Whereas iPhones prices stay high for a very long time and the contract deal holds most of its value.

[pete137]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigabit

Whilst I agree with the concept of this post, it just comes across as trolling. Therefore I've reported it.

What on earth ? Just my opinion (which you agree with in "concept"). If anything I wrote offended you then im shocked.

[finbaar]

Is a tenner a week a "lot" of money to most people in work? I don't think it is. And we are all able to make our own choices.

There is a certain type of ignorant buyer though who thinks by buying an iPhone (or Samsung come to that) they are getting the best and that there phones are not mass produced in factories in China the same as all the rest.

[Gigabit]

A tenner a week isn't a lot but £2.50 a week is lot less than that still.

[Cloudane]

Just my opinion, at the moment it's not good value for money to take out a contract (unless like EE the higher data tariffs are *only* on contract, forcing heavy streaming users into it) if you can afford to buy a phone outright or on a 0% credit card and go SIM-only. I'd already pay extra for the freedom of not being tied to a fixed contract for 24 months - to actually end up paying less when you do the TCO calculations makes it a no brainer IMO.

The ideal way of doing things in my view is let's say you want to get a new phone every 2 years: divide the cost of the phone you want (including accessories) by 24 and - without fail - put that into a virtual 'pot' on a spreadsheet every month. If you want, minus off the projected cost of selling the old one, but I don't bother - if it survives 24 months, great, 'free' money. You might do the same for a laptop across 5 years etc. Then just buy outright at the end of the period. No more getting ripped off by interest on loans, which is basically how phone contract work now. Technically, you end up better off in the long run.

Different people with different financial needs though. It's hard to switch your personal finances from debt-based to saving-up-based; I'm almost done with mine but it does take a lot of financial discipline and maybe some temporary downgrades and holding-off to build up the funds the first time. (Let's say you're on a 2 year contract i.e. 2 year debt, to save up for your next phone you need to pay twice as much for 2 years. Multiply that by your number of debts). Furthermore, you have to have the discipline to (within reason - emergencies are emergencies, you try and account for those ahead of time too) treat {balance - total value of saving-up 'pots'} = 0 as "skint" instead of treating balance <= 0 as skint.

[david16]

And the term "free phone" really means deposit free, not a free phone.

It’s just a small saving really similar to a sale price of a sim free phone you buy outright out of Amazon or Argos e.g.

If you are paying 45.00 per month over 24 months contract, even though you paid nothing up front, you are still paying for your iphone despite you believing it’s a free iphone. And you wonder why people think or believe they are being seriously overcharged, or even conned. Free ipad from vodafone for being a loyal customer anyone? and in this case these customers were definitely conned as they were put onto a new 24 month contract for agreeing to taking the "free" ipad.

"Free phone" is really misleading. Time the sellers were forced to stop using the free phone term

[aldoH82]

I got my s7 edge on contract from Carphone Warehouse on EE so the handset is sim free and I get updates direct from Samsung. Total cost over 2 years will be £1260. I think the phone sim free is something like £639 so taking that off, I am effectively paying £25.88 a month for the mobile network use part of the contract. I have 10 GB of data and looking on EE’s website, the closest sim only they offer is 8 GB for £27.99 a month so I am actually better off overall by being on the contract.

Of course if I’d got a cheaper phone I could have saved money but my last phone was a Moto X Play which I bought outright and quite frankly I was disappointed in it and personally I prefer to use my money to get a top end phone.

[konebyvax]

But 24 month contracts are just propping up the ridiculous prices of (particular flagship) phones in the UK. Which can't be a good thing in the long term. You only have to look at what you can get for as little as 130 quid from China (my Meizu MX4 Pro would be a very good example but the whole Xiaomi range also comes to mind here, especially the Note 3 Pro with Snapdragon 650 and full metal build for similar money ) to come to the conclusion that we get royally shafted in the UK. And prices are kept artificially high by offering these overpriced phones essentially on the never never.

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by konebyvax

You only have to look at what you can get for as little as 130 quid from China (my Meizu MX4 Pro would be a very good example

of how they stuff old technology into these bargain basement phones.

Quote:

LTE band 1(2100), 3(1800), 7(2600)

2013 wants its phone back...

[konebyvax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

of how they stuff old technology into these bargain basement phones.



2013 wants its phone back...

Crikey, 5.5 inch QHD screen with 546ppi, 3GB RAM, real HiFi DAC, 20.7mp Sony rear camera, 3350 mAh battery, 73.7% screen to body ratio. I must have missed the iPhone with these sort of specs. Do you have a link?

[ShaunIOW]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dearmrman

There isn't much difference in price between a contract and sim only plan if you shop around when you take the cost of the phone into consideration. You will probably find those with sim only plans end up paying more as well, because they are quite possibly more likely to buy a new phone every year.

I think it depends on the phone and the SIM only deal - I paid £345 for a SIM-free Sony Z5 Compact and have a EE 30 day SIM only deal for £11.99pm (unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, 4Gb data, 200 mins to 08 numbers), so that works out at around £26pm over 24 months - I doub't I could get a 'free' phone on contract with that tariff for that price.

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by konebyvax

Crikey, 5.5 inch QHD screen with 546ppi, 3GB RAM, real HiFi DAC, 20.7mp Sony rear camera, 3350 mAh battery, 73.7% screen to body ratio. I must have missed the iPhone with these sort of specs. Do you have a link?

What's it got to do with iPhone? this is an Android phone, I've got a mainstream Android phone from 2012 that manages to have a radio chip modern enough to give proper UK LTE.

The only comparison to iPhone that is probably relevant is to the iPhone 5 that was also handicapped with crap LTE compatibility.

[konebyvax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

What's it got to do with iPhone? this is an Android phone, I've got a mainstream Android phone from 2012 that manages to have a radio chip modern enough to give proper UK LTE.

The only comparison to iPhone that is probably relevant is to the iPhone 5 that was also handicapped with crap LTE compatibility.

OK, Android. What's the other spec on your 2012 phone? You seem to be majoring on LTE but if your network doesn't work on the Meizu you simply don't buy it. But AFAIA the only 4G network that doesn't work on it is 02 and who would want 02 4G anyway?

Now, the spec I mentioned that you seem keen to ignore. Do you really think it's old technology? I mean, you did read my link before you replied. Didn't you?