I am mobile phone illiterate, having used a simple PAYG Nokia 3310 for many years, mostly for texting or phoning once or twice a week. So when it failed (sensitivity dropped off so that it would get a signal only in high signal level areas) I decided a phone with a camera would be useful, and particularly wanted a camera that would close focus for documents.Occasional internet access away from home also appeals. The thought of even £13 per month let alone the £30 and upwards deals for some phones appalled me. So this is what I found.
Huawei G300 gets almost rave reviews for its value for money. Unfortunately locked to Vodaphone, but at £120 the idea appealed to me. Then I discovered they sell phones that have been returned within 7 days for £80 so got one and can't tell it from new. Knew nothing about unlocking but the internet came up trumps - someone on ebay takes the details and back came an unlocking code in less than 24 hours for about £4.60. All much easier than I dared hope.
Now I have discovered Giffgaff, who offer seemingly good network connection rates. Looks like I can do everything I plan to do for £5 a month - haven't yet looked if they do PAYG deals.
So it looks like I have a much better phone than any of the cheap deals and at what I consider a sensible price.
Sorry if this is all "old hat" to many of you, but I meet people paying huge amounts for phones they don't like. Being retired gives you time to research the market.
Now, how do I replace my 11 year old car?
Aretas.
ps If you think I have made a mistake do let me down gently!
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Don't know anything about the phone, but that's the company the US have accused of putting backdoors in hardware so the Chinese Government/Red Army/boogeyman can spy on you.
No idea of the truth or otherwise of that assertion.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sun 3 Mar 13 at 13:48
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Interesting. Will investigate - and stop all subversive activities until further notice. No wonder one shop I went on to ask cost of unlocking said he hadn't heard of the phone.
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i use the giffgaff 5 pound goody bag...i hour talk time plus 300 texts but time is accrued on incoming calls minute for minute, i used to have their internet service too unlimited for 12 pound a month
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IMO the phone is excellent and Huawei are no more and no less moral than any other company.
However, they are rather better at their jobs than most.
GiffGaff is an MVNO (no network of their own) operating on the O2 network (and thus its network share). The only area of GiffGaff that I would worry about and that could give you a problem would be billing and provisioning. And that's better than it used to be.
Don't forget, Giffgaff is essentially Telefonica (as is O2) which is one of the best service providers around.
The only slight issue is that the last time I looked you would have problems roaming abroad. That may or may not still be an issue, and was mostly cost related.
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>> IMO the phone is excellent and Huawei are no more and no less moral than
>> any other company.
>>
>> However, they are rather better at their jobs than most.
they would be, being owned by the Army of the PRC, they are aware of the rather drastic employee termination programme for poor performance.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 3 Mar 13 at 17:43
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There are many companies which would perform considerably better if one was able to execute non-performers.
British Leyland would have flourished.
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>> There are many companies which would perform considerably better if one was able to execute
>> non-performers.
>>
>> British Leyland would have flourished.
All the local graveyards would have been full tho.
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Job creation at its best....
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>> Don't know anything about the phone, but that's the company the US have accused of
>> putting backdoors in hardware so the Chinese Government/Red Army/boogeyman can spy on you.
>>
>> No idea of the truth or otherwise of that assertion.
In their commercial routers and switches, yes. Its common practise - Cisco used to do it. Except the US gov knew how to hack in, now they don't, thats whats missed them off.
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Lets hope that if it has voice recognition it's better than Siri on the iPhone.
This is what it's just made of an University Challenge question. Sigh.
Who is the owner of the Nuggets around Azle and and as they can buy racquetball queen Guinevere will the composers are playing all weapons in the face of the man with all that you're has the lightning thief I want the name of the character or characters on the plane?
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wow smart, thats too profound and out there for me.
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GiffGaff is an offshoot of O2 and is PAYG. Its deals are vastly cheaper than O2 itself - it costs me £10 a month for 250 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data. Used to be unlimited data but some users abused it, so you have to buy a £12 Goodybag for this benefit.
The Goodybag can be/is renewed automatically once a month and payment taken from my bank card; easy to set up on the GiffGaff website:
www.giffgaff.com
The website also offers useful information on how to unlock various makes of phones to allow use of GiffGaff SIMS:
giffgaff.com/unlock
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>> GiffGaff is an offshoot of O2 and is PAYG. Its deals are vastly cheaper than
>> O2 itself - it costs me £10 a month for 250 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data.
I get a better deal than that with Tesco Mobile, who also use O2's network.
£12.50 a month for 500 mins, 1GB of data, & 5000 txts - which to me is virtually unlimited as I probably only send a couple of 100 txts a month at most.
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When my 24m Virgin contract came to an end I went on a Virgin SIM only monthly rolling contract. They were kind enough to give me a loyalty bonus, so for a fiver a month ( had 600 mins, 1Gb data and a massive amount of texts.
Last week their sales force called me (one of them anyway) and I let him talk for a bit about my plan (which was showing on their system as £15) then said well you won't better what I've already got. And blow me down, he gave me 3 free months if I signed up for a year at £5 a month.
Anyway, we got talking and I found I could get the brand new waterproof Sony Xperia Z for £30 x 24m with 2500 mins, unlimited texts and data. It was delivered on Friday. Lovely, albeit rather large, piece of kit, but I am thinking of sending it back because the battery life is really poor, and charging is really slow. I think they must be aware of issues here - it's mainly due to it being a full 1020 HD screen - which is deeply impressive, but today it was on mains charger all day (14 hours) and only managed to raise the battery from 28% to 71% - hardly used it either!!
Last edited by: smokie on Tue 5 Mar 13 at 22:37
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>> I am thinking of
>> sending it back because the battery life is really poor, and charging is really slow.
>> I think they must be aware of issues here - it's mainly due to it
>> being a full 1020 HD screen - which is deeply impressive, but today it was
>> on mains charger all day (14 hours) and only managed to raise the battery from
>> 28% to 71% - hardly used it either!!
The battery or charger has a fault. I would ask for a replacement phone.
My current Galaxy Note 2 has a whopping 3100 mAh battery, and a 5.5" 1280x720 display, and even that will fully charge from flat from any standard mains USB charger in about 3 hrs.
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Smokie, if that's not charging up and using the charger provided then something definitely wrong with it. A lot of phones come with 1A chargers now (tablets 2A) and do take a lot longer to charge of a normal 0.5A USB supply. But in 14 hours they would still charge to full.
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Thanks both, I was in the office today and using a different charger, charged from 75% to full in a couple of hours tops, so I think you're both right, I need to make sure the charger is man enough. (Note the phone used 25% of charge during my 2 hour journey though, but the screen was on much of that time).
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New Smart Phone - Crankcase
