Yet another phone thread

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Pete
Posts: 7589
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

So, my extortionate 12 month iPhone contract is coming to an end and I'm wondering what to do now.

I have to admit not enjoying my apple experience having felt personally victimised by my phone on many occasions, whether it is it's I know best attempts at correcting my spelling or its refusal to let me do simple things like take a PDF from my dropbox and attach to an email.

So I have my eye on a Galaxy S4 however orange are being far from their usual pushovers when it comes to retentions. Aside from trying to convince me to go with EE (er but there's no 4G coverage in Dundee, oh yes you're right sir).

So atm their best offer is £29.99 for the phone and £31.40 a month for 2GB of data, unlimited texts and 600 mins. Given I only ever use 250 mins a month anyhow this seems overkill but they kept interpreting my "try harder" hints are "give me moar minutes" rather than "lower the price".

Plus 3 (yes, I know) are giving the S4 free with new contracts for £33 with 500 mins and unlimited data. So much for 13 years of loyalty.

So am now considering - given that the S4 is still quite new and pricey, getting a giffgaff sim and plonking it in my iPhone for a bit.

So there are two issues with this
1 - needing to pay Orange £20 to get my phone unlocked
2 - apparently iphones don't show the tethering screen on giffgaff unless you jailbreak it first


Other option is to buy a Nexus 4 outright and use giffgaff on that.

Am going to go to Carphone Warehouse and the like to investigate if they have any better suggestions but am not hopeful. TBH its more a pre-nandos timewaste.

Ideas?
"He has to be larger than bacon"
thegeek
Posts: 858
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 12.35

Just buy a Nexus 4. They're great.

Do take care with your choice of network though - the other half switched to giffgaff and found the coverage atrocious - strangely even in places where I was fine on O2.
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lukey
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You alluded to getting a Nexus 4, but broadly speaking, is there any reason not to just buy the phone you want and get a SIM-only plan on the network which suits you best? (being poor is an acceptable answer) You're always going to lose out when buying a phone on contract, the best you can do is mitigate it a bit.

Re: the Nexus 4, in terms of bang for buck, yeah, it's brilliant, but I'm not sure I'd recommend them for real life. We have a few for a testbed at work, and the build quality is pretty poor. The screens on them all managed to get scratched within a couple of weeks, among other issues with mushy lock buttons etc. I think some later iterations improved on some of the problems (the back surface was changed to give a bit more grip IIRC) but I wouldn't really want to be stuck with one for two or more years. Some of the other hardware sacrifices too, like a mediocre camera, will grate if that's what you're looking for. If you're willing to imprison the thing in a fortress case and don't care about taking high quality pouty photos for grindr, then yeah, go for it...
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Pete
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

lukey wrote:being poor is an acceptable answer
This is one of the reasons.
like a mediocre camera
Yes I note reviews have brought this up. I do want a quality camera.
high quality pouty photos for grindr
I'm not you sweetie x
"He has to be larger than bacon"
thegeek
Posts: 858
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 12.35

Ok, admittedly I have had a few problems with my Nexus 4 - dropping it and smashing the screen, in exactly the same way, twice, in the space of a month, for example. (Thank goodness for insurance.) The camera isn't the world's best, but it's still better than my previous handset. There's no denying that it's fantastic value for money, and having a stock Android device has its advantages too.
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

Funnily enough, I almost started a thread like this yesterday, but decided not to for fear of not wanting to see yet another phone thread :lol: My contract with Orange has also just expired and I'm looking at replacements.
So I have my eye on a Galaxy S4 however orange are being far from their usual pushovers when it comes to retentions. Aside from trying to convince me to go with EE (er but there's no 4G coverage in Dundee, oh yes you're right sir).
So atm their best offer is £29.99 for the phone and £31.40 a month for 2GB of data, unlimited texts and 600 mins. Given I only ever use 250 mins a month anyhow this seems overkill but they kept interpreting my "try harder" hints are "give me moar minutes" rather than "lower the price".
An S4 is also what I'm set on, and I'm also not too impressed with Orange deals. They seem to have decided that if I have an S4 then £35 / month is what I need to be paying and whilst they were happy to throw in more minutes and unlimited texts (no doubt in the certain knowledge that I won't use them) they weren't reducing the price without crippling reductions to the package - no happy medium seemed to exist. They also expected me to pay £29.99 for the handset and don't seem remotely interested that I can get better than that from O2 or 3 as a brand new customer - oh and get the handset for free too.

Orange have tried playing hard balls with me before in terms of what they will offer in the 'upgrade' window at the end of the contract but in the past they've always folded pretty quickly and come up with a decent deal once the contract has actually expired and it's become a retentions call as soon as I mention that I've been with them since 1999 and I'm sure they've made their fair share out of me (particularly when I stayed on PAYG until 2005 when my phone use had outgrown it years before and I was regularly topping up £50 / month for shit all use on a Nokia 3310 which I'd had for over 4 years).

What's an added concern to me now which never has been in the past when looking at a new contract is that since Orange led the industry into the concept that it's OK to increase the cost of the tariff during the contractual term, I feel a need to drive an even harder bargain than usual to limit the damage of what could well be two or three percentage-based price increases before I get the opportunity to ditch them again, making me even less likely to accept 'only' a few quid more a month because I don't know how much more that will be by the end of the term.

It does seem that this time they couldn't give a shit if I leave despite recently ticking chalking up 14 years of loyalty to them.
tweedledum
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Joined: Thu 04 Jul, 2013 18.35

I would go for a Nexus 4! My wife has one and its great!
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Pete
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

cwathen wrote:Orange have tried playing hard balls with me before in terms of what they will offer in the 'upgrade' window at the end of the contract but in the past they've always folded pretty quickly and come up with a decent deal once the contract has actually expired and it's become a retentions call
Yes this is exactly the issue I'm having with them. Usually they cave pretty quick but this time they were happy to say "we can give you your PAC code today if you'd like to move network". Again they were totally uninterested that Vodafone had a better deal nor did they seem interested in the 13 year loyalty thing. Thought I was getting somewhere when I made the girl laugh so much by answering "how did you find your iPhone?" with "I've felt personally victimised by it for 12 months which isn't what I want in a phone" but computer said no throughout the rest of the call.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
Dr Lobster*
Posts: 2104
Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14

I got my Galaxy S4 from Three with the one plan, I think its 36 per month unlimited everything effectively, with tethering. My sister got an S3 for less than 20 quid a month from carphone warehouse - also on three.

So I suppose see what they (and phones4u) can do for you in the shop. Don't forget to factor in the fact that some retard will also pay an extortionate price for your iPhone on eBay.

I will say as well, I did some calculations on whether buying the phone outright with a sim only plan would save me any cash, and I think it worked out a few quid cheaper a year, so not really worth doing when I would have to shell out over 500 quid for the phone now.
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marksi
Posts: 1892
Joined: Wed 07 Jan, 2004 05.38
Location: Donaghadee

Time I got a new phone too, after all, I'm still on a Desire. I think I was finally tipped over the edge into deciding it was time for a new one when it let me down this morning, refusing point blank to allow me to take a picture of a van belonging to a company called "Arsesport".

I don't want a Nexus 4, simply because I think it's too big. I do like the notifications LED bar on the Sony Xperia SP but the camera gets crap reviews. I'd like stock Android.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Critique
Posts: 980
Joined: Mon 17 Aug, 2009 10.37
Location: Suffolk

marksi wrote:Time I got a new phone too, after all, I'm still on a Desire. I think I was finally tipped over the edge into deciding it was time for a new one when it let me down this morning, refusing point blank to allow me to take a picture of a van belonging to a company called "Arsesport".

I don't want a Nexus 4, simply because I think it's too big. I do like the notifications LED bar on the Sony Xperia SP but the camera gets crap reviews. I'd like stock Android.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Stock Android is quite easy to achieve on most Android devices now - by downloading something like Nova Launcher you instantly get a stock-esque look, and there are a variety of settings to make it look closer to real Android. There are also apps that are designed to look and act like the stock messaging, contacts, clock and calendar apps, which you can of course set as default so the messaging app that came with your phone quickly - if it's purely the UI then you should be able to replicate it pretty quickly, and I don't think it's as much of a dealbreaker if it therefore doesn't come with stock Android.

If you want something good but don't like the excessive screen sizes I'd say that your best bets are probably the 'mini' versions of the big phones - the Galaxy S3 Mini (are we on S4 yet?), the One X mini (or whatever it's called) seem to be quite popular as they bring the features from the full-phone but scale back on a few things like the screen-size.
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