UKC

Hello, sorry, I know there are loads of similar threads but I wanted my own
My Vodafone contract is drawing to a close. I have always been on a pay monthly tariff and always with Vodafone and I have no particular reason to leave them.
Currently £20.50 per month for...er...not sure, probably 500Mb data, unlimited texts and 300 minutes. My actual usage never gets anywhere NEAR this, I maybe make about 60 minutes of calls in a month, barely any data useage (just email, Facebook, bit of web searching, use it as a SatNav, usually WELL under 100Mb). This tariff was set up 2 years ago with a Samsung Galaxy S2 (it was a £26pcm tariff which they discounted for me).
I lost that phone and got myself a Huawei Ascend G300 which is "adequate for my needs but a bit frustrating (though I never upgraded whatever Android is on it)" and has a cracked screen.

My options:
1) Keep this phone and go SIM-only either with Vodafone or GiffGaff or A.N. Other at your recommendation
2) Upgrade (or not even upgrade but just "sidegrade") the handset on another contract.
3) Buy another handset and go SIM-only

I am quite used to paying £21 a month to Vodafone and getting a shiny new handset, and every time I've done the calculation for this approach (#2 above) vs. #3 above, it has worked in my favour to do this.

I don't really want to go much ABOVE £21 pcm though, and certainly no £30+ tariffs, as tempting as some of those handsets are.

I've not looked around too much at stuff. Vodafone so far have offered me Sony Xperia L at ~£21 pcm or Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini at about £17pcm. I see that Tesco are offering a Galaxy Fame (?) with a free Hudl at £20 pcm, on Three network iirc.

Are these all duffer handsets that they are trying to get rid of?

Anyone got any advice based on my usage requirements?
A decent camera would be nice, the Galaxy S2 had a good one and I admit that I miss it (the one on the Huawei is awful).
I am drawn toward Sony as they seem to be good with cameras and they make nice shiny adverts that I keep seeing at the cinema But I am open to all recommendations.

Thanks.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I vote option 1

In reply to Blue Straggler:
The S3 Mini is a fairly solid handset, albeit a bit slow, but the Fame is a real slug. It's frustrating to use and I wouldn't touch it if I were you.

SIR only and an unlocked phone is usually a good way to go. You can get a Galaxy S3 for less than £300 nowadays and the Nexus 5 is also a great option.

Generally speaking any Android phone which costs less than £150 - £200 is going to be a pain and not worth the money.

In reply to Only a hill:
*SIM only. Typing on my phone!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I side-graded to a Sony Xperia earlier this year and I'm very happy with it. But then my previous phone had been an HTC Wildfire which was absolute shite.

Thanks for answers so far.

So the base GiffGaff goodybag (which be sufficient for me) is £7.50 per month, that would be £180 across 24 months. I guess I would either have to get my Huawei unlocked from Vodafone, or go for a Vodafone SIM only deal (I think their cheapest is £9pcm) or buy a new handset.

In the "buy a new handset" scenario, Alex (Only A Hill) suggests that I should pay £300 for a decent one if I do this.
So we are on £480 including an initial capital outlay.
On contract, that would be £20 per month. Yes I'd be locked into that contract with that provider and I'd need to see whether the equivalent (or superior) handset is available. So far, if Vodafone are offering me an Xperia L, that's a little "poor" as that is not a £300 handset, right?

In reply to Blue Straggler: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/14/motorola-moto-g-review-be...
?

In reply to Blue Straggler:


I think you'd find most android phones and improvement on what you have. My motorola was £150 a year ago and I like it, compared to the Huawei phone we have for work. From both your postings I would guess Alex is more demanding in his phone requirements.

I think it's best to decide what phone you want and go from there.

For £21 / month I would want a top of the range handset on a minimum usage deal.

I've got this from O2 every other year.

If you want to be stuck with an old android handset with limited function then spending more than £100 for the phone and £5 / month is too much.

In reply to Papillon:

I think you are right although my "poor" comment regarding the Xperia L was not so much about the handset itself but about the tariff in comparison with going SIM-only .

I assume the Nokia Lumia 520 is a total duffer as Vodafone appear to be giving it away for not much more than a SIM only deal!

In reply to Philip:

Yup I got that with Vodafone 2 years ago, I was upgrading from a troublesome and faulty Nokia 5800 and had initially planned to get something low-grade based on my basic requirements but saw that the Galaxy S2 (at that time one of the "top three" alongside an HTC and the contemporary iPhone) could be had for not much more than any realistic "downgrade".

In reply to Blue Straggler:

My mate has one and he likes it, and reviews are good.... I think it's just the Windows 8 thing that puts people off. TBH, if you aren't into apps it may be worth a look.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

How much do you actually want to do with your phone?

My phone is coming up for 4 years old but still does everything I need.

In reply to Papillon:


You could well be right - I do have a low tolerance for lag / other issues!

I agree with the poster who mentioned the Moto G. I think it's the best budget Android you can buy at present.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Not sure what you should do about handset, Mrsthedog and I switched to sim only with GIFFGAFF when I could leave them becasue I don't like their tax arrangement and some other customer service stuff. A really nice side effect is that Giff Gaff are very cheap. For your needs the recurring goodybag would probably cost about a tenner or maybe less. so in two years you would have saved £264 to spend on a handset.

Personally we love giffgaff and I just hope my phone lasts a while yet becuase I haven't been saving the difference in contract.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The 520 is surprisingly good in terms of speed and fluidity, although the camera is poor and Windows Phone can be an acquired taste.

In reply to ebygomm:

It is a good question and unfortunately an open-ended one. My Huawei does everything I need, but it sporadically does it very badly e.g. randomly disabling mobile data (usually when I am flustered and wondering why the SatNav won't work) or turning off autorotate or altering other non-obvious settings which have obvious ramifications. I don't like any of the keyboard options on it. Maybe all these issues can be solved in software?

In reply to Only a hill:
Cheers. My arithmetic was lazy I guess, it is about £120 more (over 24 months) than a SIM only deal, and the handset could be bought for about that much, as could a Motorola. Looks like the gap is closing a little bit then, compared to at the time of my last two upgrades.

I don't really want to splurge £300ish as a capital outlay right now, I just went over budget a bit on holiday

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I was fed up of spending £35 a month on my phone so when my upgrade came about I declined it and left.

over the 2 years I would have paid a total of £840 for my phone where as I bought a Nexus 5 for £330 and pay £12 a month which over 2 years costs me £618 plus I only got 500MB on orange and now I have unlimited data so I am actually getting more for £222 less

In reply to tprebs:

Cheers. I will do some proper arithmetic like yours later. This is the kind of thing that this thread was intended to prompt...thanks all! Keep them coming...

In reply to Only a hill:

I have a Lumia 920 which I an really pleased with. Camera is excellent and the phone a doddle to use and so far no funny business (6 months ownership)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Lumia 520 is pretty much the most capable phone you can get for the money. If you're looking to save money and aren't too worried about bleeding edge performance it's a good option, it doesn't suffer the performance problems that you get with a lot of low end android phones and generally offers a very polished experience. £90 new and unlocked on ebay (combined with the £7.50/month gg sim youd be saving £235 over two years!)

In reply to Only a hill:

I've barely acquired the Android taste! So I possibly wouldn't see much difference. I am not an apps person. Angry Birds Star Wars is about my limit...I suppose a nice music player app that I can easily create playlists with, would be good.
Sounds like the lack of love for Windows phones might be driving the price down and I might benefit from this - is that about right?

In reply to remus:

Thanks, I was looking at a £13 pcm tariff on Voda (100Mb, 100 mins, unlimited texts), might be able to haggle them down or get more data and mins at that tariff. That's £42 more over 24 months, with the bonus that I can get the Vodafone store to sort out a load of faff (transferring content etc) that would take me ages to get around to doing, and probably 12 months of warranty that might be simpler to effect than if I bought the unlocked one off eBay. Is all that worth £42 to me? Possibly...

In reply to Blue Straggler:
>I suppose a nice music player app that I can easily create playlists with, would be good.

Just asked my mate, he says the music player you get with it is fine.


I reckon.

In reply to Blue Straggler: get a Vodafone sim only deal for £9 a month and buy a second hand iPhone 4S from eBay for about £180. One went recently for £165.

In reply to icnoble:

Interesting. What generation are they on now? I have never yet dabbled in the world of the iPhone, I thought each generation magically rendered its predecessor nigh on useless so as to force us to keep upgrading or something...

Ta!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

A few months ago I went onto a sim only deal with talk talk £7.50 a month 500 mins unlimited text and 1 gig data a month.

Downside is 12 month contract and the £340 I paid for a Galaxy S4 from gumtree


cheers

Gaz

In reply to Blue Straggler: I've got a £9 vodafone sim only on a secondhand iphone 5, 300mins talk, 500 texts and 250mb internet which they have for some reason changed to unlimited, so for the 1st year £450ish the 2nd £108 and then change if needed. It beats getting a phone on contract.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

For my 12 per month with Giff Gaff I get unlimited texts, unlimited internet and three hundred minutes plus unlimited minutes to GIFFGAFF numbers. I can stop anytime so if I want to stay out of a contract until my phone dies but use a contract to buy my next phone I can do that.

If you are going sim only I would go Giff Gaff. Vodafone wanted me to tie in with a contract for 12 or 24 months rather than a rolling contract I could cancel which it sounds like you've been offerred but you get less and you're stuck with it.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If you're willing to keep paying about £21pcm, and are very low useage, check out a nexus 5. Vodafone do it on £21 for 24 months with about 250MB data, 300 minutes and unlimited texts. Over the contract that's £504.

A similar sim only deal is probably £10pcm, so £240 over the two years, so the phone is £264 - slightly cheaper than the RRP. The nexus 5 seems like an excellent buy at that price point. Fast processor, 4G when it comes out (not on that contract, but you can upgrade to a 4G sim-only after two years), and no vendor cruft taking up space. The downside is only 16GB storage, no card slot, and no removable battery.

Alternatively, get the sim only deal, and blow £264 on a new cam every three months.

In reply to puppythedog:

I agree that SIM only with Vodafone is not competitive with GiffGaff.
The GiffGaff "business model" looks splendid but I am still wary, I know more than one person who dumped them due to frustration at frequent signal outage. Which network do they piggyback?

In reply to Jack B:

Thanks, nice post indeed, I will consider this. I like the Freudian slip at the end (I think a "the" before "£264" was required )
Heard good things about the Nexus 5, but still looking at various Nokia Lumia deals (Tesco have a good one but I'll need to read reviews on the handset - it's a better handset than the 520, I forget which one exactly)

I don't think I saw that Nexus deal on the Vodafone website but that's hardly surprising, that website can be a bit flaky!
Cheers

In reply to Jack B:

Hi Jack. A question I HATE to see people ask, but here goes - have you got a link for that?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Buy a used iPhone 4S 16Gb on eBay for £250 from one of the major phone resellers.
Get a Grade A copy, which'll come with at least 3, 6 if you look around, months' warranty.

And go SIM only.

(The 4S is the oldest to have the 8 meg camera, and to be upgradable to IOS 7.)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Sorry - now I see that it is via Carphone Warehouse! Ta

In reply to Dispater:

Thanks, that is interesting on a low-end GiffGaff I admit. (at £7.50 pcm that's £340 over 24 months or at £12 pcm it's £538...)

On contract:
Nexus 5 is £504 over that period
Lumia 920 is £420
Lumia 520 is £312
Motorola Moto G is £300

Interesting to lay out the arithmetic like this, it helps with choosing between handsets.
For fairness, let's look at keeping the handset that I have on a SIM only deal:
either £180 or £288 over 24 months (looking at £7.50 and £12 GiffGaff respectively)

ta! Food for thought, I have a few weeks to ponder things.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'll just add, I was instinctively hostile to Jobs' control freakery bedeviled iCosystem.
As such, I tried Android, Blackberry, Nokia, and Windows OSs, before finally giving an iPhone a go.

I wish I'd tried it first. Head and shoulders the best OS on any phone I've used.

In reply to Dispater: re iPhone - me too!
Blue, join your local Facebook buy and sell groups, iPhone 4S regularly pop up for 140 ish on ours and you'll be able to play with it before you buy

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Hi Blue, they piggy back o2 for their network.

For me one of the biggest differences with GiffGaff compared to other networks and particularly vodafone is you don't have to tie in for 12 or 24 months. The only way (when I was looking) to get a reasonably cheap price for what you use on SIM only is to i.e. in for 24 months, with Giffgaff you get the cheap contract effect but can cancel it at any time.

this way you can put off a decision you could keep your phone for just a few more months on a cheap deal and then go for a contract if you wanted or you could save the money over a contract time or even over the life of the phone. A good iPhone seems to last about 3 years or more in my experience with my friends and mine, so the cost could be split over 36 months not 24.

I got really annoyed when all the contracts started being 24 months, it seems unjustifiable to me apart from to pay for very swanky phones, if you are not paying for a swanky phone and you are not getting cheaper bundles why would you sign up for a long contract?

Thanks all. A growing chorus of "iPhone 4 / 4S" is interesting, as of course is the notion of going GiffGaff on my current phone for a few months and then deciding.

Capital outlay may be an issue as I went overbudget on my holiday and I also appear to be in need of a new fridge for Straggler Mansions, so even £140 could be tight, which is pushing me toward contract again. Sigh.

In that arena it looks like Motorola Moto G vs. Nexus 5 vs. Nokia Lumia 920 BUT I won't rule out the iPhone just yet.

In reply to Blue Straggler:


Narrowed it down to Lumia 920 vs. Nexus 5.

The Nexus 5 looks a better deal, £84 dearer spread over 24 months, and looks like £84-worth of improvement over the Lumia 920 (I've read a few head-to-head comparisons). Anyone want to sway me one or the other? Both look capable. I realise that I have digressed somewhat from my OP and my talk of "want a basic handset for around £12 pcm"

In reply to Blue Straggler:

do you want to buy a HTC One S with a small crack in the bottom of the screen (small crack than in your current one)

In reply to Mikkel:

Possibly! I have not looked at HTC at all...

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Liz just reminded me the one i got spare is the Encredible S
And you should look at HTC phones

Did some legwork yesterday and turned up Lumia 520, £8.50 per month at Carphone Warehouse! You can barely go SIM-only for much less than that. On TalkMobile. Are they "one to avoid"? Apparently they piggyback Vodafone, does that mean they have the same coverage as Vodafone? Obviously it's the "lower end" of the handsets that I am looking at but compared to a £7.50 per month SIM-only deal e.g. Giff Gaff, the phone costs me £24 which is less than it would cost to fix up the screen on my Huawei! So that would be my "low cost" option I guess, unless TalkMobile is a big no-no.
Otherwise it remains a choice between Lumia 920 and Nexus 5 (with Lumia 625 as an inbetweener)

(or Mikke's HTC! So much choice!)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I use Talk Mobile on PAYG. Yes it is Vodafone and works as well as friend's pure Vodafone. Assistant told me there might be some lag in signal if you're in a very busy area and Vodafone signal is taking a lot of traffic. Never had a problem though.

In reply to Stuart (aka brt):

Thanks, online reviews look OK. I just need to decide whether I can live without a decent camera on the phone (the 520 does not even have flash). For a £200-£300 saving over 24 months, I can probably live with this!

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath....
So finally in the blue corner we have Lumia 620 "nearly-new" handset, and in the red corner, Lumia 920. Both on 24 month contracts with Vodafone, the former at £10.40, the latter at £15.75 so that is a £128.40 difference over that time period. Spec comparison
http://versus.com/en/nokia-lumia-920-vs-nokia-lumia-620

(I can get a 710 on the same deal as the 620, but I don't know much about that phone)

The 920 tariff is more generous (300min, 250Mb vs 100min, 100Mb) though that may be irrelevant given my light usage.

I am leaning toward the 920, will just have to have a ponder about whether it is £130 better FOR ME than is the 620

Thanks for everyone's help narrowing it all down.

I have to say that Vodafone's retentions department was very courteous, straightforward and helpful, they did not try to steer me toward any other products apart from mentioning the Lumia 710 in passing, they did not try to get me to sign up to anything today (well I am an existing customer so I suppose it didn't really matter) and they did not badmouth any of their competition even when unable to beat a price (their best on the 520 was £9.75 rather TalkMobile's £8.50)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

And finally. Lumia 920 "nearly new" handset £12.75 per month (free handset) on aforementioned tariff. So the price differential between this and the 620 has shrunk to £56.40 i.e. it more than halved. That £56.40 is certainly worth it for the higher spec. Again Vodafone were helpful and courteous. I guess the upgrade and retention department are trained to bend over backwards in order not to lose a customer, even though I was not haggling or being particularly "cheeky" with demands.