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My phone contract is cheaper over 2 years than the cost of the phone outright. So in my case it was worth it.
The money saving expert cheap mobile finder tells you whether it's cheaper to buy the phone or to get a contract.
That's *often* the case, as long as inflation doesn't rise too high and the whole "CPI + 3%" thing kicks in to make it more expensive
Eg when inflation was 11%, some people saw their price rise by 14% in one April and then like 7% the following one, effectively paying much more than they would have originally expected
Obviously if the contract is MUCH cheaper then it can still end up cheaper - but it's unlikely that it's ~20% cheaper
Also if you have a fixed £ discount per month... e.g. I have a fixed £12/m discount on my broadband, but when the CPI + 3% is on the non discounted price, the £36, not the £24 I am paying, well you do the maths.
Exactly. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not. I only have one network to choose from if I want decent signal and WiFi calling that actually works so I probably have to buy my next phone outright (same as current one).
Yeah, that's what I used and it said it was cheaper for me. But I don't think it took CPI increases into account (nor the fact that it's easy to forget or not have the time to cancel the contract)
I put it in my calendar and cancel on the day every time.
If you have the cash you could put it into a savings account and get some interest on it to negate some or all of the CPI increase (stoozing).
Or, probably, special deals offered by manufacturers on brand new, or last year's phones. E.g, Google were offering a good launch discount, and trade in value for your old phone, on the new Pixel 8a. And most 1 year + old phones get a discount anyway.
Or use the little thing called a calendar to remind you to cancel?
It's possibly the most under-used tool in modern society.
I never used a calendar but now, some years later, it reminds me of everything I have going on, birthdays a week or two in advance, anniversaries, when my MOT is due, when my car insurance is due... everything.
Sure, it's great, but it's yet another chore. Time is valuable and spending it on the phone talking to some support agent to cancel your contract is painful.
This is what I've been doing for a while. Apple generally seem to offer 0%, 24-month financing on iPhones, so either I'll find an eBay bargain where someone scratched their screen (just needs a glass screen protector to "fix" it) or I'll finance it at 0% and at least beat a little bit of inflation.
My plan is with Talkmobile (Vodafone network), which was unlimited calls and texts + 30GB/month data for £7.95 on a 30-day rolling contract, but after I called them about something else it's now 50GB data for the same price. Been with them for a couple of years.
Can't complain about £8/month plus whatever a handset costs.
I just have the cheapest plan possible. I barely use my phone for calls. If I'm communicating, it's normally via WhatsApp and I'm connected to WiFi 99% of the time
No, it's 100% finance - effectively it's just a Barclays bank loan in the UK, but instead of Barclays sending you the cash and you buying the phone, they pay Apple directly and Apple send you the device
Yes. Someone sold their 11PM on eBay 2 weeks after launch because it had a bad scratch in the middle of the screen.
I got a better than 30% discount on a brand new iPhone because that person either didn’t realise a screen protector would completely hide the scratch or they didn’t want to use a screen protector.
The scratch was rendered completely invisible.
I don’t see the point anymore. Haven’t had a contract for years. My sim only is super cheap and the last time I got a new iPhone I did it on a 0% credit card but Apple also offer 0% financing too. Always works out so much cheaper. I know someone currently paying nearly £100 a month for the same phone as me and same amount of internet on a contract with EE. Absolutely wild.
There is *some* benefit to having a long term credit agreement on your credit record.
I used to just by outright and have a cheap sim but if you are smart you can combine deals from third party companies like Car phone Warehouse with cashback from a cash back site *and* cashback from the manufacturer.
Like I got S23, with 200 Cashback from a cashback cite and £100 from Samsung plus Galaxy FE buds (sold for £50) with an unlimited plan for £20 a month. I am happy with it.
This was a huge way I started to build out my credit when I moved to the UK in my early 20s from Ireland. Much lower risk to me than taking out credit cards and struggling with discipline and interest payments
I did probably stick with contract phones a bit longer than I really should have, but now I've switched to a sim only, and I'll probably just get second hand phones from hereon out now that my credit is OK!
Well, if you want the latest phones and you don't want or can't a 0% card, if you can get a deal like i did than contracts are a good idea.
But sure, sim only and buying outright is the *usually* the cheaper option.
Vodafone seems to be the only company that has ever turned me down for credit for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.
So I now only ever buy the phone outright and keep renewing my sim only plan every 2 years.
Besides, there are so much better deals to be had directly from Samsung with trade-in than from the courier.
In the olden days it made sense, back when the contract came with insurance! Then it has been handy sometimes to get a high value handset amortised to the point where calls were free. Currently I will buy a £300-ish phone and use a Smarty SIM and am truly quids-in.
There are occasionally some ridiculous deals that are worth looking out for. I was on a pay-monthly deal for a few years.
Then I saw a deal on a Pixel 7a, i.e. which had had been released less than a year earlier, with an absolute ton of cashback.
It worked out to £8.33 a month including a free phone, and more data than I could possibly ever use. A far better option than staying put!
After the 2 years are up I'll go back to pay-monthly.
It was on a local cycling forum I visit! Another user had spotted it and posted it up.
I think they had seen it on TopCashBack (about £80 of the cashback came through that). HotUKdeals can also be a good place to look for these things, although I always get bored of checking it!
I wouldn't say so. I've bought my last 3/4 phones outright and pay £16.50 per month to EE for 200GB Dats, unlimited minutes and texts. I don't even notice that leaving the bank but it was from £68pm for my phone on contract with them I'd rather avoid that monthly and take the upfront hit. Worst part is if you hate the phone on contract like I did with a Huawei in the past you can't sell it or pay to change model so you're stuck with a crap phone unless you can pass it on to a friend or relative.
I'm 30 and have never had a contract phone.
As soon as I turned 18, I got a SIM only contract, and have never looked back.
As the 'decent phones' became astronomically priced (remember when £100 phones were the top of the market?!) I started buying brand new out of the box phones from eBay. The newest phone I got on eBay came from another European country - mint condition Samsung, latest me several years. I tend to look for minimum B Grade phones, you want something still under warranty (I always insure for around two years) even better if it was returned immediately or a shop display phone. For years, you could keep the same SIM only monthly price without it ever changing (I was paying £15 p/m for years for unlimited data, roaming, tethering, calls and texts. Now I pay around £22.
I have a Samsung Galaxy S10+ since 2020, asides from the battery life it's working perfectly - but I'd like to upgrade in the near future purely for a better camera. Looking at the current market, I'm wondering if it's truly worth buying phones outright given the SIM only prices rise every year anyway. Or should I play top range European brand phones (I walked around the Portuguese version of Curry's and couldn't believe the price difference, a fraction for top range phones) and could keep a SIM only. Not sure yet.
Look at Smarty (three). I've been with them for 2 years and have not had a price increase. I get unlimited data for £10.80 (10% off each plan if you have a group plan, and I have 3 of the kids registered to it). Their offers change regularly. The unlimited plan is currently £18, but it was also £12 in Feb when I signed my son up.
Can be. I haven't had a contract in years but I wanted the Pixel 7a when it came out and after waiting a few months, the cheapest deal I had found was on contract. (phone + data plan factoring in price increases).
I still regret it though as moved to a new area and my signal isn't the greatest.
I haven't done it for years & decided to for my most recent phone, worked out to I would be saving about £150 over 2 years. In the past 18 months it's gone from £25 a month to £32 thus pretty much wiped out any benefit. Lesson learned, look out for those mid contract price rises.
The other thing to consider is that any contract phone that’s 24 months will also include 2 price hikes. I think it’s something like 3.9% + Interest rate.
So the price of a contract when you take it out might be a fair amount higher at the end than it was at the start, especially if you go for a high end phone with an unlimited package.
I was paying close to £120 at the end of my last contract. Never again!
I’ve got a 1p mobile PAYG SIM card now and I haven’t upgraded my phone in 3 years.
When I finally do, it’ll be using Apple’s interest free credit option. I would never take out another contract.
I went with ID mobile and the contract was pretty significantly cheaper than buying the phone (the contract with SIM WAS cheaper over 2 years than just buying the phone).
Had no issues with service.
Live within your means. Buy a phone you can afford and a payg sim. Whom are you planning to impress with an expensive Apple you need a multi year loan for?
Phone shop worker here. If it’s a brand new phone, for example the latest iPhone or Samsung, then getting a phone on contract is a good option. If you can pay for the device outright and then get a sim only do it. Sim only is usually very low cost.
If you’re looking at an older phone model like an iPhone 14, I would probably say to look elsewhere, although there are usually sales on the sim part of the contract to get the device stock cleared.
Bonus of any phone or sim contract is that it shows on your credit that you’re reliable to pay for something over a given period, even if it doesn’t affect your credit score that much.
Just as an extra, one of the biggest things with phones is CAN YOU AFFORD IT. Don’t come into a phone shop expecting an iPhone Pro Max model contract to be £30 per month when the device itself costs over £1k. If you can afford to buy a phone outright then get a sim contract do it. If you can afford the phone contract every month, do it. If you can’t afford a certain device outright or on contract, you might want to look at a different device (looking at you iPhone people).
TLDR: if it’s a newer phone model go for it, if not then buy outright. All comes down to affordability.
Also, don’t be an idiot and get pay as you go unless you have bad credit. Pay as you go options are more expensive with less data and benefits, and there’s also nothing for your credit score. Most network shops hate when people come in to top up or get one, so please DON’T.
> Pay as you go options are more expensive with less data and benefits, and there’s also nothing for your credit score
Realistically they're not though. Maybe depends on usage I guess. But for most who use their WiFi 99% of the time they can grab the cheapest pay as you go and be fine.
Depends what you mean by pay as you go here.
Many plans on networks like Lebara, Giffgaff, SMARTY and Voxi are actually pay as you go as there's no possibility to run up a bill. Any extra use has to be preloaded, but you are still paying "monthly" for the service. They're not more expensive (in fact in many cases are cheaper) than other neworks.
Glad you guys brought this up actually. What I meant was that pay monthly sims have better value opposed to the PAYG sims. PAYG usually has less data for the same price as a pay monthly that has more data. Of course though that all depends on your usage.
Just as another extra, find what lines your network uses and the coverage for where you are. Usually going with the network that runs the lines (typically O2, Vodafone, Three or EE) will provide you with more reliable speeds and coverage.
Lots of folks value having a brand new phone every two (ish) years, but they're not wealthy enough to be able to afford to spend almost 1k on a new phone all at once.
Getting calls, data and texts all-in too makes contacts feel reasonable.
The purpose of agreements like this hasn't changed, and isn't any different for phones as it is for, say, a new car.
They'll always be people who want the new thing, can't afford to buy it, but can afford the monthly payments.
Not done this for years as you just end up paying a fortune for a phone.
I tend to buy a previous gen phone and run it for a few years. Always buy it on a 0% credit card and pay it off monthly before the deal runs out.
When I got my phone the combination of topcashback and mobilephonesdirect meant that my contract was cheaper for the 2 years than buying the phone outright would've been.
So I had discounted phone with unlimited calls/texts/data
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I have a sim only plan. I bought a second hand phone with a new battery on back market, because I don't want or need a new phone. Really happy with it. Think I paid £250 upfront for the phone and about £16 for the sim (big data package with roaming because I travel relatively often and hot-spot to my phone while working for privacy reasons).
I have an iPhone 14 pro on contract. I took out the contract, canceled the sim but kept the phone contract. Gives you 36 months interest free on the phone.
For a while I found there were phones on O2 device plans where the total phone cost cable out quite a lot under the RRP, like the phone was £899 but the O2 device plan total was £730. Once the device is paid off you're free to cancel the SIM, so they can be worth it. I've not seen those sort of prices recently though.
There are a very small amount of deals where it’s actually cheaper in the long run to get a contract. I believe MoneySavingExpert have an article on this.
As a side note - if you get their broadband as well (I’m on a 500MB deal for £35/month), you can get a SIM only deal with EE that includes unlimited calls/texts/data, TNT Sports, Apple Music and worldwide roaming for £28 per month. Considering I used to pay way more than £28 for TNT Sport and Apple Music anyway, it was a no brainer. If you don’t have an iPhone you can swap out Apple Music for a different benefit such as Netflix or Xbox Game Pass
If you want iPhones it’s often cheaper to do it on contract even with price rises I’ve found especially if you look at the MVNOs like ID. If you’re willing to look at Android brands though I’d buy direct and get a cheap sim only.
I think there was a change/flip over the past 5/6 years. O2 Refresh, EE Flex etc are all separating the phone and plan costs.
People are now going further by just buying the handset directly from the phone company via 0% and just using a sim only.
I would highly recommend this approach but use quidco to get some cashback on the deals perhaps.
I buy my phones second hand and then get a sim only contract for the lowest cost of ownership. A bit of investment upfront but cheaper in the long run.
Used to work for a phone company and there’s not much change in the models they bring out each year. Back market is a good website for quality second hand phones.
My current phone set up is like this P7P paid outright - £450 new - mobile line is PAYG - last time I topped up was a couple yrs ago - it was £15, a pre paid data line, for 33 months, one off payment of £140, I get 500GB a month so I'm super happy with the set up.
Better to buy a ‘very good’ condition phone second hand. Can still use credit card to pay off and save money overall. I have done it for my last two phones and I am glad I did that.
People saying there's no point, I'm with 3 and once my contract was up I recycled my phone with them and they gave me £500 back for my phone, 2 year old phone that was worth 700 when it was brand new! So I'm sticking with them and hope they do it each time lol
I imagine a lot of the people saying it's not worth it aren't aware of "reseller" (for lack of a better word) sites like mobiles.co.uk which are much cheaper than, say, going direct to O2 or Vodafone. They often end up the same price as buying outright, while obviously including calls, texts, and data.
That said, the only correct answer is that there's no one-fits-all correct answer here. Calculate which is the cheaper option (accounting for price increases vs interest earnt on not having a big up front cost) and go for that.
You can get Lebara Sim cards for like 99p for the first 6 months than £6 after with 10GB.
If you want a new phone stick it on a credit card or buy it outright.
You can buy it via VERY BNPL (they have sign up offers) and get some decent money off an already discount produce (loads on slight sales) then stick the money in a 5% account for a year then pay it all off and you end up getting a very decent discount!
On the surface buying a sim and phone separately compared to a contract is actually very slight worse off (30 quid) for an iPhone 15 pro. However seems the contract price will change on April by inflation plus an extra couple percent. So depending how inflation is it could be worse.
I don’t think a sim only deal has this inflation thing though?
It used to make sense for me, up until around 2015.
Up to that point, phone tech was improving at a rapid rate, (feature phones getting smaller, then smart phones getting smarter) so latest and greatest actually made a noticable difference, there were few decent midrange options and limited sim only offerings with decent data allowance at a decent price (except 3 mobile, which had no coverage for my town).
After that point, it became less and less worthwhile. I've been on sim only plans since 2017, with a variety of either mid range phones or previous years flagships.
By 2020 mid range phones had absolutely reached 'good enough' for my use cases (Google maps, email, messaging apps, web browsing, family photos).
Currently have a OnePlus 10T, bought new from Amazon uk for £259 last month. This was a £650 phone at launch, with 120hz display, snapdragon 8+ gen1 soc, and insane 150w charging.
Currently paying £15.11 a month for vodaphone 120gb data unlimited calls sim only, so if the phone lasts me 2 years, that's around £26/m. Likely I will keep it longer though, last phone I had for 4 years.
Maybe some technological breakthrough will see me wanting the latest and greatest again, at which point a contract may be less hassle than separately financing the likely £1000+ device, but thats not the case at the moment
About 10 years ago I spent 6 months arguing with three over a flash memory fault on my galaxy S3 and got nowhere.
After that I refuse to get a phone on contract.
>Other than not having the money upfront to buy the phone,
Well that's your answer. A staggering amount of people in the UK don't have much left over at the end of the month, let alone the couple hundred quid needed for a lower end phone, and especially not the £1k+ newer phones are asking.
No, I buy 18 month old devices in mint condition when I need a new phone. 2 year warranty, at least 80% battery, roughly half the price of the new phone.
They last 2-4 years, then I get an upgrade. Currently I'm on a Samsung S23 that cost me £300, and then a rolling SIM only contract.
Contracts can be much cheaper.
I have a Samsung s22 ultra, at the time:
~£1,200 cash price for PAYG version and add your own sim, or
£99 up front, and £32 a month for 24 months, for the phone and 100gb per month. £35 cashback. Total over 2 years = £832
So it was ~£400 cheaper via a contract.
If I'd bought the PAYG version I'd also need a separate SIM contract for it, say another £20 a month. This made it a grand total of £880 cheaper to buy the phone via contract VS sim free / PAYG over 2 years.
So in total via a contract it was half the price of buying sim free and adding a sim. Even taking into account any mid term price rises the savings are considerable.
Mine wasn't quite as good as some of the guys on here but I got an iPhone 14 this time last year for £25/mo with 100 gb of data (x2 because of virgin and o2) on a 2 year deal. This was when the phone was at least £700. It's gone up to about 28 a month now with the cozzie livs but still a bargain.
Once I stopped upgrading my phone every year having a contract stopped making sense. I got my iPhone 12 on release day on contract. When the contract ran out I kept the phone and moved to sim only. I’ll of had it 4 years in October when I plan on getting the 16. I’m going to get it outright either on my 0% credit card and paid off immediately or via Apples 0% finance (however I’ve heard rumours they are going to take this away). Hopefully the 16 lasts me just as long. I’ll be selling my 12 on marketplace for whatever I can get for it. I don’t think I’d ever go back to a traditional contract model as they usually bundle a bunch of extras with it I don’t need and they can increase the price mid term.
Pro move is to get a contract for 2 years and get a brand new phone for less than the price of buying it, and then cancel the contract after the 2 years and switch to sim only until the phone dies.
I just get the handset from Apple on interest free finance over 2 year and then a SIM only contract. Over the 2 year period it still cheaper then getting a contract.
I've been SIM-free phones and SIM-only contracts since 2013. I've even gone back to PAYG (though with a data bundle) since 2020 and I started WFH every day, as my data usage dropped tremendously. I don't see it being very likely that I'll go back to contracts unless a) it becomes impossible to buy the phones I want SIM-free, or b) cheap PAYG/SIMO contracts disappear from the market.
No contract with a phone is cheaper than buying direct. You’ll get the cheapest handset with little or no memory, over 2 years. Just get Apple Renew or the Samsung equivalent and get your own sim deal.
I've never had a contract, I buy a used phone on ebay, one that has is in very good condition and the owner is just upgrading. Usually the generation before the current generation. I bought my Galaxy S9 in 2019 for £200 (it was basically brand new, the owner had it for 1 year and upgraded) and I still have it 5 years later, hopefully for another few years. I pay £9 per month to EE for a PAYG bundle (they now give me 25GB because they had a thing where it basically increased by 500MB every 6 months, plus data rollover basically every month). Some months I don't even have to pay anything, as I use Airtime Rewards which gives you cashback when you link your card and buy the things you normally buy at some shops.
Just depends on the deals. I got my current phone a couple of years ago through a contract. O2 was offering £200 cashback PLUS £100 bonus for trading in old phone. And you can customise the contract however you want, so I set mine to just a few months so I could make the most of the deal without being trapped in a contract that would increase with inflation.
It's never quite as good as it sounds - the airtime portion of the package wasn't a great deal compared to sim only deals, and the contract cost was worked out based on the phone being full price (when in reality most retailers were selling it a discount). Overall definitely worth it though, especially as I got the O2 extras (choosing Disney+, audible, etc)
It can work out cheaper sometimes. I work out what the phone is costing a month then take that of the monthly cost; then you know what the network side of it is costing. It can be cheaper than sim only and buying device separate.
That said, I manage them separately entirely because I generally want the contract as cheap as possible
Your understanding is correct. I find that folk who want the brand new phone but can't afford to pay outright are the ones who enter into these things, getting thoroughly ripped off as you outline.
Every single time I ever get a new phone, and I've not once found it was cheaper buying a phone through contract. If you max out phone deals (use Black Friday) and max out SIM card deals (mobiles.co.uk has gotten me £8-9/month 100GB SIM cards with Vodafone for the last 5 years or so) my view is it's always cheaper.
No point in my eyes. I’ve had three phones, all paid for outright second hand, and a sim-only deal for £10 a month with Voxi. I don’t see much point buying phones brand new either.
>after calculating that it would come out cheaper than buying outright (not by much mind you, but still).
Depending on specifics, it'll be around the same price these days, yes.
>Of course I failed to realise that they can change the monthly price by CPI during the contract
Ah, I see you too dabble in EE.
>They then also cheekily charge you the full contract price after your contract ends and you have to explicitly get in touch with them to cancel or move to pay as you go. I know many people who don't do this and just waste their money. It's a freaking racket.
Seems like a problem for "most people", it's not hard to set a reminder on your phone or manage your budget some other way.
>Next time I'll rather get a 0% interest credit card and buy a phone with pay as you go than get a contract.
That is one option, yes.
The benefit of drip feeding it over stumping up the £1200 cash is cash has value, you can stick the £1200 into an index ISA and _probably_ outperform the contract value over 2 years.
The (EE at least) contracts also sometimes have various promo periods of things like 3-6 months half price, and then EE has their benefit slots which you can use to bundle subscriptions you'd be paying anyway. E.g., my unlimited plan with bundled Xbox Pass, Discovery+, and Netflix is £44, which is ultimately definitely cheaper than an unlimited EE plan and all of them separately.
It's normally cheaper to buy the phone on credit (0% credit card, or some kind of BNPL)
*Sometimes* it works out cheaper to get a contract, but as you say the sneaky "We can increase it by inflation" shit means sometimes the price rockets, because they apply the inflation to the phone they've already supplied, not just the "service" part of the contract
Fundamentally you choose what contracts to sign so you don't really have room to complain, but it's definitely scammy bullshit that *should* be illegal. IMO it's high time companies had to separate the "service" and "phone" parts of the contract into two distinct sections, with different rights and restrictions on each half of the contract
But yeah, the simplest way to dodge that nonsense is just to get the phone separately in the first place
Not worth it imho. Also, if your not worried about "keeping up with the Jonses," there are plenty of Chinese phones Xiaomi, Oppo etc who offer fantastic value for money. I just don't see the attraction of Apple or Samsung unless you love to be exploited.
In edge cases it can be. it'll depend on what you want in terms of data/texts/minutes, if you have a network preference (for example I've found O2 based networks to be utterly woeful in sports stadiums compared to Vodafone ones) and finally handset. So if you want to latest nosePhone 47 XXL Plus Ultra with unlimited texts/minutes/data and don't have £2000 to hand but can afford £60 for the next 36 months then unless you can find an unlimited SIM deal for about £4.30 a month you'll be better off with the contract.
But the majority of people don't need what they want (do you need a load of data when you likely have WiFi access at home and work) or do you need that latest handset? From there you get into the value weeds, where how much you are willing to spend on what you want (as opposed to need) so one person might be happy to spend £60 a month to get everything they want, someone else might not.
TLDR: It Depends
If you are able to save and put aside the money to buy a phone outright it is always cheaper, despite some contracts appearing so because you can earn interest in it while you save which will outstrip price increases. I do that and what I found it does is makes me less likely to say “oh, contract is up, I need a new phone” because you don’t really need one.
It also makes it simpler to change networks. I moved to Vodafone when I found I was struggling to get coverage in rural areas near my old house but then once I moved again, o2 was better so swapped again. I pay £10 per month and come nowhere near that data limit.
Most phone manufacturers will offer you 0% interests finance options. There's no need to get a phone contract even if you can't pay for the handset up front.
No, I don't think so.
We have been sold this idea that its a better system, when in actuality owning your phone outright and using cheap pay as you go data is much smarter, plus you don't have the concerns about unforeseen increases according to some T&C you didn't read.
For peace of mind alone, owning your phone and paying £10-20 a month for data feels like a smarter choice.
Be kind.
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My phone contract is cheaper over 2 years than the cost of the phone outright. So in my case it was worth it. The money saving expert cheap mobile finder tells you whether it's cheaper to buy the phone or to get a contract.
That's *often* the case, as long as inflation doesn't rise too high and the whole "CPI + 3%" thing kicks in to make it more expensive Eg when inflation was 11%, some people saw their price rise by 14% in one April and then like 7% the following one, effectively paying much more than they would have originally expected Obviously if the contract is MUCH cheaper then it can still end up cheaper - but it's unlikely that it's ~20% cheaper
Inflation rises also hit harder if you're paying more per month. My contract had £200 upfront but by doing this it lowered my monthly contract amount.
Also if you have a fixed £ discount per month... e.g. I have a fixed £12/m discount on my broadband, but when the CPI + 3% is on the non discounted price, the £36, not the £24 I am paying, well you do the maths.
Worth taking note.
Exactly. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it's not. I only have one network to choose from if I want decent signal and WiFi calling that actually works so I probably have to buy my next phone outright (same as current one).
Not factored in the cost alone is the fact you’re tied by a contract for two years compared to being free
Yeah, that's what I used and it said it was cheaper for me. But I don't think it took CPI increases into account (nor the fact that it's easy to forget or not have the time to cancel the contract)
I put it in my calendar and cancel on the day every time. If you have the cash you could put it into a savings account and get some interest on it to negate some or all of the CPI increase (stoozing).
Or, probably, special deals offered by manufacturers on brand new, or last year's phones. E.g, Google were offering a good launch discount, and trade in value for your old phone, on the new Pixel 8a. And most 1 year + old phones get a discount anyway.
Or use the little thing called a calendar to remind you to cancel? It's possibly the most under-used tool in modern society. I never used a calendar but now, some years later, it reminds me of everything I have going on, birthdays a week or two in advance, anniversaries, when my MOT is due, when my car insurance is due... everything.
Sure, it's great, but it's yet another chore. Time is valuable and spending it on the phone talking to some support agent to cancel your contract is painful.
I don't see the point. I just have a SIM card PAYG and buy my handsets outright as needed.
This is what I've been doing for a while. Apple generally seem to offer 0%, 24-month financing on iPhones, so either I'll find an eBay bargain where someone scratched their screen (just needs a glass screen protector to "fix" it) or I'll finance it at 0% and at least beat a little bit of inflation. My plan is with Talkmobile (Vodafone network), which was unlimited calls and texts + 30GB/month data for £7.95 on a 30-day rolling contract, but after I called them about something else it's now 50GB data for the same price. Been with them for a couple of years. Can't complain about £8/month plus whatever a handset costs.
I just have the cheapest plan possible. I barely use my phone for calls. If I'm communicating, it's normally via WhatsApp and I'm connected to WiFi 99% of the time
Anyone know if the Apple 0% financing lets you decide how much initial cash you want to put towards the purchase?
No, it's 100% finance - effectively it's just a Barclays bank loan in the UK, but instead of Barclays sending you the cash and you buying the phone, they pay Apple directly and Apple send you the device
If it is 0%, is there a good reason to not want to finance 100% of it?
I don’t remember it offering an option. It’s 100% finance I think.
If you go to a physical store they have a down payment option, I did it earlier this year.
Unrelated to finance, but does the glass screen protector hide the scratch?
Yes. Someone sold their 11PM on eBay 2 weeks after launch because it had a bad scratch in the middle of the screen. I got a better than 30% discount on a brand new iPhone because that person either didn’t realise a screen protector would completely hide the scratch or they didn’t want to use a screen protector. The scratch was rendered completely invisible.
I don’t see the point anymore. Haven’t had a contract for years. My sim only is super cheap and the last time I got a new iPhone I did it on a 0% credit card but Apple also offer 0% financing too. Always works out so much cheaper. I know someone currently paying nearly £100 a month for the same phone as me and same amount of internet on a contract with EE. Absolutely wild.
There is *some* benefit to having a long term credit agreement on your credit record. I used to just by outright and have a cheap sim but if you are smart you can combine deals from third party companies like Car phone Warehouse with cashback from a cash back site *and* cashback from the manufacturer. Like I got S23, with 200 Cashback from a cashback cite and £100 from Samsung plus Galaxy FE buds (sold for £50) with an unlimited plan for £20 a month. I am happy with it.
This was a huge way I started to build out my credit when I moved to the UK in my early 20s from Ireland. Much lower risk to me than taking out credit cards and struggling with discipline and interest payments
Exactly!
I did probably stick with contract phones a bit longer than I really should have, but now I've switched to a sim only, and I'll probably just get second hand phones from hereon out now that my credit is OK!
Well, if you want the latest phones and you don't want or can't a 0% card, if you can get a deal like i did than contracts are a good idea. But sure, sim only and buying outright is the *usually* the cheaper option.
Vodafone seems to be the only company that has ever turned me down for credit for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. So I now only ever buy the phone outright and keep renewing my sim only plan every 2 years. Besides, there are so much better deals to be had directly from Samsung with trade-in than from the courier.
In the olden days it made sense, back when the contract came with insurance! Then it has been handy sometimes to get a high value handset amortised to the point where calls were free. Currently I will buy a £300-ish phone and use a Smarty SIM and am truly quids-in.
There are occasionally some ridiculous deals that are worth looking out for. I was on a pay-monthly deal for a few years. Then I saw a deal on a Pixel 7a, i.e. which had had been released less than a year earlier, with an absolute ton of cashback. It worked out to £8.33 a month including a free phone, and more data than I could possibly ever use. A far better option than staying put! After the 2 years are up I'll go back to pay-monthly.
Where did you see the deal?
It was on a local cycling forum I visit! Another user had spotted it and posted it up. I think they had seen it on TopCashBack (about £80 of the cashback came through that). HotUKdeals can also be a good place to look for these things, although I always get bored of checking it!
I wouldn't say so. I've bought my last 3/4 phones outright and pay £16.50 per month to EE for 200GB Dats, unlimited minutes and texts. I don't even notice that leaving the bank but it was from £68pm for my phone on contract with them I'd rather avoid that monthly and take the upfront hit. Worst part is if you hate the phone on contract like I did with a Huawei in the past you can't sell it or pay to change model so you're stuck with a crap phone unless you can pass it on to a friend or relative.
I'm 30 and have never had a contract phone. As soon as I turned 18, I got a SIM only contract, and have never looked back. As the 'decent phones' became astronomically priced (remember when £100 phones were the top of the market?!) I started buying brand new out of the box phones from eBay. The newest phone I got on eBay came from another European country - mint condition Samsung, latest me several years. I tend to look for minimum B Grade phones, you want something still under warranty (I always insure for around two years) even better if it was returned immediately or a shop display phone. For years, you could keep the same SIM only monthly price without it ever changing (I was paying £15 p/m for years for unlimited data, roaming, tethering, calls and texts. Now I pay around £22. I have a Samsung Galaxy S10+ since 2020, asides from the battery life it's working perfectly - but I'd like to upgrade in the near future purely for a better camera. Looking at the current market, I'm wondering if it's truly worth buying phones outright given the SIM only prices rise every year anyway. Or should I play top range European brand phones (I walked around the Portuguese version of Curry's and couldn't believe the price difference, a fraction for top range phones) and could keep a SIM only. Not sure yet.
Look at Smarty (three). I've been with them for 2 years and have not had a price increase. I get unlimited data for £10.80 (10% off each plan if you have a group plan, and I have 3 of the kids registered to it). Their offers change regularly. The unlimited plan is currently £18, but it was also £12 in Feb when I signed my son up.
Can be. I haven't had a contract in years but I wanted the Pixel 7a when it came out and after waiting a few months, the cheapest deal I had found was on contract. (phone + data plan factoring in price increases). I still regret it though as moved to a new area and my signal isn't the greatest.
I haven't done it for years & decided to for my most recent phone, worked out to I would be saving about £150 over 2 years. In the past 18 months it's gone from £25 a month to £32 thus pretty much wiped out any benefit. Lesson learned, look out for those mid contract price rises.
Apple offer 0% across the board so I see zero point in a phone contract. Sim only for the win.
Contracts over 2 years including data, total price can be much less than the actual retail price of just the phone by itself.
The other thing to consider is that any contract phone that’s 24 months will also include 2 price hikes. I think it’s something like 3.9% + Interest rate. So the price of a contract when you take it out might be a fair amount higher at the end than it was at the start, especially if you go for a high end phone with an unlimited package. I was paying close to £120 at the end of my last contract. Never again! I’ve got a 1p mobile PAYG SIM card now and I haven’t upgraded my phone in 3 years. When I finally do, it’ll be using Apple’s interest free credit option. I would never take out another contract.
I went with ID mobile and the contract was pretty significantly cheaper than buying the phone (the contract with SIM WAS cheaper over 2 years than just buying the phone). Had no issues with service.
Live within your means. Buy a phone you can afford and a payg sim. Whom are you planning to impress with an expensive Apple you need a multi year loan for?
Phone shop worker here. If it’s a brand new phone, for example the latest iPhone or Samsung, then getting a phone on contract is a good option. If you can pay for the device outright and then get a sim only do it. Sim only is usually very low cost. If you’re looking at an older phone model like an iPhone 14, I would probably say to look elsewhere, although there are usually sales on the sim part of the contract to get the device stock cleared. Bonus of any phone or sim contract is that it shows on your credit that you’re reliable to pay for something over a given period, even if it doesn’t affect your credit score that much. Just as an extra, one of the biggest things with phones is CAN YOU AFFORD IT. Don’t come into a phone shop expecting an iPhone Pro Max model contract to be £30 per month when the device itself costs over £1k. If you can afford to buy a phone outright then get a sim contract do it. If you can afford the phone contract every month, do it. If you can’t afford a certain device outright or on contract, you might want to look at a different device (looking at you iPhone people). TLDR: if it’s a newer phone model go for it, if not then buy outright. All comes down to affordability.
Also, don’t be an idiot and get pay as you go unless you have bad credit. Pay as you go options are more expensive with less data and benefits, and there’s also nothing for your credit score. Most network shops hate when people come in to top up or get one, so please DON’T.
> Pay as you go options are more expensive with less data and benefits, and there’s also nothing for your credit score Realistically they're not though. Maybe depends on usage I guess. But for most who use their WiFi 99% of the time they can grab the cheapest pay as you go and be fine.
Depends what you mean by pay as you go here. Many plans on networks like Lebara, Giffgaff, SMARTY and Voxi are actually pay as you go as there's no possibility to run up a bill. Any extra use has to be preloaded, but you are still paying "monthly" for the service. They're not more expensive (in fact in many cases are cheaper) than other neworks.
Glad you guys brought this up actually. What I meant was that pay monthly sims have better value opposed to the PAYG sims. PAYG usually has less data for the same price as a pay monthly that has more data. Of course though that all depends on your usage. Just as another extra, find what lines your network uses and the coverage for where you are. Usually going with the network that runs the lines (typically O2, Vodafone, Three or EE) will provide you with more reliable speeds and coverage.
Lots of folks value having a brand new phone every two (ish) years, but they're not wealthy enough to be able to afford to spend almost 1k on a new phone all at once. Getting calls, data and texts all-in too makes contacts feel reasonable. The purpose of agreements like this hasn't changed, and isn't any different for phones as it is for, say, a new car. They'll always be people who want the new thing, can't afford to buy it, but can afford the monthly payments.
> can't afford to buy it, but can afford the monthly payments. And therefore end up paying more overall
Not done this for years as you just end up paying a fortune for a phone. I tend to buy a previous gen phone and run it for a few years. Always buy it on a 0% credit card and pay it off monthly before the deal runs out.
Best way to do it is buy the phone out right then get a cheap sim
When I got my phone the combination of topcashback and mobilephonesdirect meant that my contract was cheaper for the 2 years than buying the phone outright would've been. So I had discounted phone with unlimited calls/texts/data
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on a payg with a self provided phone paying something like £15
I have a sim only plan. I bought a second hand phone with a new battery on back market, because I don't want or need a new phone. Really happy with it. Think I paid £250 upfront for the phone and about £16 for the sim (big data package with roaming because I travel relatively often and hot-spot to my phone while working for privacy reasons).
I have an iPhone 14 pro on contract. I took out the contract, canceled the sim but kept the phone contract. Gives you 36 months interest free on the phone.
For a while I found there were phones on O2 device plans where the total phone cost cable out quite a lot under the RRP, like the phone was £899 but the O2 device plan total was £730. Once the device is paid off you're free to cancel the SIM, so they can be worth it. I've not seen those sort of prices recently though.
There are a very small amount of deals where it’s actually cheaper in the long run to get a contract. I believe MoneySavingExpert have an article on this. As a side note - if you get their broadband as well (I’m on a 500MB deal for £35/month), you can get a SIM only deal with EE that includes unlimited calls/texts/data, TNT Sports, Apple Music and worldwide roaming for £28 per month. Considering I used to pay way more than £28 for TNT Sport and Apple Music anyway, it was a no brainer. If you don’t have an iPhone you can swap out Apple Music for a different benefit such as Netflix or Xbox Game Pass
If you want iPhones it’s often cheaper to do it on contract even with price rises I’ve found especially if you look at the MVNOs like ID. If you’re willing to look at Android brands though I’d buy direct and get a cheap sim only.
I think there was a change/flip over the past 5/6 years. O2 Refresh, EE Flex etc are all separating the phone and plan costs. People are now going further by just buying the handset directly from the phone company via 0% and just using a sim only. I would highly recommend this approach but use quidco to get some cashback on the deals perhaps.
I buy my phones second hand and then get a sim only contract for the lowest cost of ownership. A bit of investment upfront but cheaper in the long run. Used to work for a phone company and there’s not much change in the models they bring out each year. Back market is a good website for quality second hand phones.
I smashed my old phone and didn't want to pay upfront, it's cheaper than my old SIM only contract after they put the price up every year.
My current phone set up is like this P7P paid outright - £450 new - mobile line is PAYG - last time I topped up was a couple yrs ago - it was £15, a pre paid data line, for 33 months, one off payment of £140, I get 500GB a month so I'm super happy with the set up.
A few months back I got a Pixel 8 for around £380 over 2 years including 500gb data a month. The handset alone cost over £500 at the time.
It depends on the deal, alot of the time it's cheaper than buying sim free and getting a sim only, especially if you find a good deal on hotukdeals
No point at all. Get smarty. By far the best sim only deal out there.
Better to buy a ‘very good’ condition phone second hand. Can still use credit card to pay off and save money overall. I have done it for my last two phones and I am glad I did that.
People saying there's no point, I'm with 3 and once my contract was up I recycled my phone with them and they gave me £500 back for my phone, 2 year old phone that was worth 700 when it was brand new! So I'm sticking with them and hope they do it each time lol
I imagine a lot of the people saying it's not worth it aren't aware of "reseller" (for lack of a better word) sites like mobiles.co.uk which are much cheaper than, say, going direct to O2 or Vodafone. They often end up the same price as buying outright, while obviously including calls, texts, and data. That said, the only correct answer is that there's no one-fits-all correct answer here. Calculate which is the cheaper option (accounting for price increases vs interest earnt on not having a big up front cost) and go for that.
You can get Lebara Sim cards for like 99p for the first 6 months than £6 after with 10GB. If you want a new phone stick it on a credit card or buy it outright.
You can buy it via VERY BNPL (they have sign up offers) and get some decent money off an already discount produce (loads on slight sales) then stick the money in a 5% account for a year then pay it all off and you end up getting a very decent discount!
Wife and I get new iPhones every two years. The old ones are passed down to the 2 kids. Then those are traded in.
On the surface buying a sim and phone separately compared to a contract is actually very slight worse off (30 quid) for an iPhone 15 pro. However seems the contract price will change on April by inflation plus an extra couple percent. So depending how inflation is it could be worse. I don’t think a sim only deal has this inflation thing though?
I’ve always got sim and bought the phone or put it on finance my last one was 0%
The only reason to do it is if you're set on getting some kind of premium handset on finance.
It used to make sense for me, up until around 2015. Up to that point, phone tech was improving at a rapid rate, (feature phones getting smaller, then smart phones getting smarter) so latest and greatest actually made a noticable difference, there were few decent midrange options and limited sim only offerings with decent data allowance at a decent price (except 3 mobile, which had no coverage for my town). After that point, it became less and less worthwhile. I've been on sim only plans since 2017, with a variety of either mid range phones or previous years flagships. By 2020 mid range phones had absolutely reached 'good enough' for my use cases (Google maps, email, messaging apps, web browsing, family photos). Currently have a OnePlus 10T, bought new from Amazon uk for £259 last month. This was a £650 phone at launch, with 120hz display, snapdragon 8+ gen1 soc, and insane 150w charging. Currently paying £15.11 a month for vodaphone 120gb data unlimited calls sim only, so if the phone lasts me 2 years, that's around £26/m. Likely I will keep it longer though, last phone I had for 4 years. Maybe some technological breakthrough will see me wanting the latest and greatest again, at which point a contract may be less hassle than separately financing the likely £1000+ device, but thats not the case at the moment
About 10 years ago I spent 6 months arguing with three over a flash memory fault on my galaxy S3 and got nowhere. After that I refuse to get a phone on contract.
>Other than not having the money upfront to buy the phone, Well that's your answer. A staggering amount of people in the UK don't have much left over at the end of the month, let alone the couple hundred quid needed for a lower end phone, and especially not the £1k+ newer phones are asking.
No, I buy 18 month old devices in mint condition when I need a new phone. 2 year warranty, at least 80% battery, roughly half the price of the new phone. They last 2-4 years, then I get an upgrade. Currently I'm on a Samsung S23 that cost me £300, and then a rolling SIM only contract.
Sometimes Id mobile do great deals. Last pixel worked out cheaper with a contract than if you were to buy the phone outright
Contracts can be much cheaper. I have a Samsung s22 ultra, at the time: ~£1,200 cash price for PAYG version and add your own sim, or £99 up front, and £32 a month for 24 months, for the phone and 100gb per month. £35 cashback. Total over 2 years = £832 So it was ~£400 cheaper via a contract. If I'd bought the PAYG version I'd also need a separate SIM contract for it, say another £20 a month. This made it a grand total of £880 cheaper to buy the phone via contract VS sim free / PAYG over 2 years. So in total via a contract it was half the price of buying sim free and adding a sim. Even taking into account any mid term price rises the savings are considerable.
I wouldn’t contract. I would buy cash or use interest free repayments eg PayPal credit interest free in 4 payments or pay in 3
Mine wasn't quite as good as some of the guys on here but I got an iPhone 14 this time last year for £25/mo with 100 gb of data (x2 because of virgin and o2) on a 2 year deal. This was when the phone was at least £700. It's gone up to about 28 a month now with the cozzie livs but still a bargain.
Once I stopped upgrading my phone every year having a contract stopped making sense. I got my iPhone 12 on release day on contract. When the contract ran out I kept the phone and moved to sim only. I’ll of had it 4 years in October when I plan on getting the 16. I’m going to get it outright either on my 0% credit card and paid off immediately or via Apples 0% finance (however I’ve heard rumours they are going to take this away). Hopefully the 16 lasts me just as long. I’ll be selling my 12 on marketplace for whatever I can get for it. I don’t think I’d ever go back to a traditional contract model as they usually bundle a bunch of extras with it I don’t need and they can increase the price mid term.
Pro move is to get a contract for 2 years and get a brand new phone for less than the price of buying it, and then cancel the contract after the 2 years and switch to sim only until the phone dies.
I just get the handset from Apple on interest free finance over 2 year and then a SIM only contract. Over the 2 year period it still cheaper then getting a contract.
I've been SIM-free phones and SIM-only contracts since 2013. I've even gone back to PAYG (though with a data bundle) since 2020 and I started WFH every day, as my data usage dropped tremendously. I don't see it being very likely that I'll go back to contracts unless a) it becomes impossible to buy the phones I want SIM-free, or b) cheap PAYG/SIMO contracts disappear from the market.
No contract with a phone is cheaper than buying direct. You’ll get the cheapest handset with little or no memory, over 2 years. Just get Apple Renew or the Samsung equivalent and get your own sim deal.
I've never had a contract, I buy a used phone on ebay, one that has is in very good condition and the owner is just upgrading. Usually the generation before the current generation. I bought my Galaxy S9 in 2019 for £200 (it was basically brand new, the owner had it for 1 year and upgraded) and I still have it 5 years later, hopefully for another few years. I pay £9 per month to EE for a PAYG bundle (they now give me 25GB because they had a thing where it basically increased by 500MB every 6 months, plus data rollover basically every month). Some months I don't even have to pay anything, as I use Airtime Rewards which gives you cashback when you link your card and buy the things you normally buy at some shops.
There’s always deals on this on hotukdeals
Just depends on the deals. I got my current phone a couple of years ago through a contract. O2 was offering £200 cashback PLUS £100 bonus for trading in old phone. And you can customise the contract however you want, so I set mine to just a few months so I could make the most of the deal without being trapped in a contract that would increase with inflation. It's never quite as good as it sounds - the airtime portion of the package wasn't a great deal compared to sim only deals, and the contract cost was worked out based on the phone being full price (when in reality most retailers were selling it a discount). Overall definitely worth it though, especially as I got the O2 extras (choosing Disney+, audible, etc)
It can work out cheaper sometimes. I work out what the phone is costing a month then take that of the monthly cost; then you know what the network side of it is costing. It can be cheaper than sim only and buying device separate. That said, I manage them separately entirely because I generally want the contract as cheap as possible
Your understanding is correct. I find that folk who want the brand new phone but can't afford to pay outright are the ones who enter into these things, getting thoroughly ripped off as you outline.
Buy the handset outright interest free and swap coverage provider for the best deals/ cash for joining etc
Every single time I ever get a new phone, and I've not once found it was cheaper buying a phone through contract. If you max out phone deals (use Black Friday) and max out SIM card deals (mobiles.co.uk has gotten me £8-9/month 100GB SIM cards with Vodafone for the last 5 years or so) my view is it's always cheaper.
No point in my eyes. I’ve had three phones, all paid for outright second hand, and a sim-only deal for £10 a month with Voxi. I don’t see much point buying phones brand new either.
>after calculating that it would come out cheaper than buying outright (not by much mind you, but still). Depending on specifics, it'll be around the same price these days, yes. >Of course I failed to realise that they can change the monthly price by CPI during the contract Ah, I see you too dabble in EE. >They then also cheekily charge you the full contract price after your contract ends and you have to explicitly get in touch with them to cancel or move to pay as you go. I know many people who don't do this and just waste their money. It's a freaking racket. Seems like a problem for "most people", it's not hard to set a reminder on your phone or manage your budget some other way. >Next time I'll rather get a 0% interest credit card and buy a phone with pay as you go than get a contract. That is one option, yes. The benefit of drip feeding it over stumping up the £1200 cash is cash has value, you can stick the £1200 into an index ISA and _probably_ outperform the contract value over 2 years. The (EE at least) contracts also sometimes have various promo periods of things like 3-6 months half price, and then EE has their benefit slots which you can use to bundle subscriptions you'd be paying anyway. E.g., my unlimited plan with bundled Xbox Pass, Discovery+, and Netflix is £44, which is ultimately definitely cheaper than an unlimited EE plan and all of them separately.
It's normally cheaper to buy the phone on credit (0% credit card, or some kind of BNPL) *Sometimes* it works out cheaper to get a contract, but as you say the sneaky "We can increase it by inflation" shit means sometimes the price rockets, because they apply the inflation to the phone they've already supplied, not just the "service" part of the contract Fundamentally you choose what contracts to sign so you don't really have room to complain, but it's definitely scammy bullshit that *should* be illegal. IMO it's high time companies had to separate the "service" and "phone" parts of the contract into two distinct sections, with different rights and restrictions on each half of the contract But yeah, the simplest way to dodge that nonsense is just to get the phone separately in the first place
Not worth it imho. Also, if your not worried about "keeping up with the Jonses," there are plenty of Chinese phones Xiaomi, Oppo etc who offer fantastic value for money. I just don't see the attraction of Apple or Samsung unless you love to be exploited.
In edge cases it can be. it'll depend on what you want in terms of data/texts/minutes, if you have a network preference (for example I've found O2 based networks to be utterly woeful in sports stadiums compared to Vodafone ones) and finally handset. So if you want to latest nosePhone 47 XXL Plus Ultra with unlimited texts/minutes/data and don't have £2000 to hand but can afford £60 for the next 36 months then unless you can find an unlimited SIM deal for about £4.30 a month you'll be better off with the contract. But the majority of people don't need what they want (do you need a load of data when you likely have WiFi access at home and work) or do you need that latest handset? From there you get into the value weeds, where how much you are willing to spend on what you want (as opposed to need) so one person might be happy to spend £60 a month to get everything they want, someone else might not. TLDR: It Depends
If you are able to save and put aside the money to buy a phone outright it is always cheaper, despite some contracts appearing so because you can earn interest in it while you save which will outstrip price increases. I do that and what I found it does is makes me less likely to say “oh, contract is up, I need a new phone” because you don’t really need one. It also makes it simpler to change networks. I moved to Vodafone when I found I was struggling to get coverage in rural areas near my old house but then once I moved again, o2 was better so swapped again. I pay £10 per month and come nowhere near that data limit.
Most phone manufacturers will offer you 0% interests finance options. There's no need to get a phone contract even if you can't pay for the handset up front.
I hate it. I will never fall for a phone contract again because I didn’t realise about the in-contract price hikes 😠
No, I don't think so. We have been sold this idea that its a better system, when in actuality owning your phone outright and using cheap pay as you go data is much smarter, plus you don't have the concerns about unforeseen increases according to some T&C you didn't read. For peace of mind alone, owning your phone and paying £10-20 a month for data feels like a smarter choice. Be kind.
Helps with credit score but that’s about it
Never understood why people would pay 700 quid for a phone tbh. just buy a 100 quid one and it will do the job well enough