kingandy | Shiny Shiny Toys

Mobile phone contract renewal time has come around again! To recap: Last time I took the £5/month discount, and bought myself a new phone 7 months later, so my current phone is only about a year old. I'm reasonably happy with it, though the screen is getting a bit scratched up (as I always thought would happen with a slide phone - largely because I put it in my pocket with my keys. This is why I always went with a clamshell before). I'm not using the camera very much but it is on occasion useful.

However, T-Mobile are offering me shinies. I can get a T-Mobile Vairy Touch or Samsung Tocco Lite completely free. (Actually, now I check the PAYG prices, the Tocco is marginally more impressive Naturally they're pimping their own T-Mobile phone more than others, but I don't really think a £40 phone is worth giving up the monthly discount.)

In fact this year I'm being offered a £6/month discount if I pass up on the phone, so in a year I'd save more or less what they're asking for the Tocco ... and considering it's an 18-month contract, financially the discount is clearly a better deal.

But ... I'd have toys. I'd have toys now.

Mmmmmm toys.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You want an Android phone, there are several different ones available but they all make good toys. Oh and put your keys in your other pocket.

What Alex said.

I've recently got an Android Pulse (£180 PAYG) and it's rather nice.

They'll give me one of those for £77.23 apparently.

I think I'd save about £5 by taking the discount and buying it myself.

That's not in the list of upgrades, so I guess that's a vote for "Take the discount and buy a PAYG phone later".

Wait, Android is an operating system. BE MORE HELPFUL

It's not an operating system, it's a platform :-)

Anyway Wikipedia is your friend. There are more phones coming out every month so you may be better served waiting a few more months.

FWIW my phone is the HTC Hero (T-Mobile G2 Touch IIRC) and I like it very much. As a loyal customer of T-Mobile I got £30/month contract over 24 months with 800mins + unlimited texts + Web'N'Walk. Doing the maths it worked out cheaper than buying the phone myself. Other deals may vary.

As an existing T-Mobile customer? Hmm.

They want me to pay £180 to upgrade to a T-Mobile G2 Touch. This is probably because my account still has the Friends & Family 50% Line Rental thing that I got off Polley when he was working for them.

I think I'm still better off with the £6/month discount. It gets applied after the 50%, so it will take my £30/month line rental down to £9 ...

The maths isn't hard. What would your contract length be with both options?

18 months, so that's a saving of £108 right there. It's about the same as paying for the Pulse (£180 - £77 = £103 saving), and a darn sight better than the free Vairy (saving £39 ha ha ha).

The HTC Hero is technically worth it, as it's apparently £350-£400 on PAYG, so it would be a £200-ish saving. But I don't really need a full-blown organizerphone, I've got my iPod Touch for that...

T-Mobile treat their existing customers like shit. They wanted to charge me a similar amount for my G1 a year ago, so I quit my contract and went in again as a new customer and got it for free.

Yeah, I know, it's the state of the industry. It's very competitive, so they all focus their efforts on attracting new customers.

If I didn't have the half-price deal, I probably would have switched providers half a dozen times by now...

Shiny Shiny Toys

Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!

Re: Android!