back to article Orange outs iPhone 4 pricing

Orange has posted its iPhone 4 tariffs, but you'll need to spend big to get one of the handsets for free. £75 a month for two years, to be precise. Reduce the monthly spend and/or the duration of the contract and the smartphone will set you back between £29 and £229. That's for the 16GB version - the 32GB iPhone 4 isn't free …

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  1. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Not happy

    I'm not happy with any of the deals.

    I want a tariff with something like 60-100 minutes, unlimited texts and data. 600 or so minutes is overkill, I don't make many calls.

    I actually found a 3 SIM only tariff for £5 a month that just gives you data, I'd sooner pay for what i use rather than what I don't use. I can't seem to find this tariff now, it must have been a limited offer.

    1. TonyHoyle

      title

      The 3 sim only £5 tariff would be Sim Zero + the data bundle - i have it on a couple of phones.. if I'm done with them I just cancel the data bundle and just pay the £0 rental :p It's still available AFAIK.

      http://threestore.three.co.uk/sim/

    2. Danny 14
      Go

      Tmobile

      I pay £5 a month from tmobile for 100 mins, 100 texts and 1g of data (sim only) granted this was after a "phone up to leave" from them. I think it is usually £10.

    3. Simon Says
      Thumb Up

      giffgaff is your friend

      giffgaff £10 goodybag is a PAYG monthly bundle that gets you 100 mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data (and with them unlimited is actually unlimited). Even pairing it with the SIM free phone from Apple ends up costing you less than the cheapest cost of ownership from Orange.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'd

        I'd be cautious of "giffgaff" the free internet only continues until the end of june then it's 50p a day + 20p if you exceed 30mb that day, so it's an extra £21 a month if you watch a few youtube videos on it every day.

        http://giffgaff.com/index/pricing

        Of course imo £21 a month for "unlimited" bandwidth is a good price to pay. As long as it's a few gig a month "unlimited" and not a few hundred meg a month "unlimited"

  2. Keith Goddard
    WTF?

    How can they say unlimited???

    " 'unlimited' monthly Wi-Fi and data - unlimited up to 750MB"

    I hate that, surely they cant get away with using such phrases.

    1. The Original Ash

      What?

      Where have you been for the past decade?

      Limited is the new Unlimited. And by new, I mean your-kids-could-have-been-born-and-gone-through-primary-school-since-we've-complained-about-this.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Down

        unlimited oranges

        Orange have long been the leading proponent of the really limited unlimited... I think we all know about fair use policies in the tens of gigs, but Orange normally do Unlimited=500mb, which isn't fair use or anything like it, it's a very constraining cap.

        1. Danny 14
          Stop

          not really

          O2 unlimited "hidden real cap" is 200mb which is truly shocking on a smartphone.

          1. Adam T
            Alert

            O2 tethering cap

            O2's iPhone tethering is a good deal for £10/3GB, but they throttle the bandwidth if you download anything larger than 64MB (my connection goes from around 400KB to 40KB).

            Pausing the download and resuming after 10 secs or so, and you're back up to 64MB... so they couldn't even do that properly! =P

  3. MarkOne
    FAIL

    Or get a HTC Desire

    twice the phone at a quarter of the price.

    1. The Original Ash

      Desire?

      For a little more, get the Samsung Galaxy S i9000. 4" AMOLED screen, hotswap memory cards, 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, Android Froyo when it's out.

      http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9000_galaxy_s-review-478.php

      1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Happy

        Galaxy S

        I did, thanks. Arrives tomorrow. Can't wait.

        GJC

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      only if

      you dont mind poorer multi-touch, grainer images, fewer apps (and even fewer that are any good), and a battery that drains rapidly, and nowhere near as much storage built in....

      A Desire unlocked costs £400 at www.play.com

      Add a 32gig memory card: £90 at www.play.com

      That's £490.

      That's less than £100 difference compare to the orange sim free ipHone 4g or £120 difference from the Apple unlocked one.

      For that you get: A superior screen, better battery life, 4x the apps (and decent games thrown in!) a forward facing phone, and a bewildering array of peripherals.

      So no, not twice the phone at half the price...

      1. The Original Steve
        FAIL

        nope

        Think you'll find I get:

        Removable storage

        Flash support

        Skinable screen

        Any app that I want

        One of the best screens so far this year

        Confirmation that I'll be getting Froyo / 2.2 in a few months

        Equal multi-touch, battery life, image quality (on an iPhone camera? really!!!)

        Oh, and £100 to spend on what I want. (Although I paid NOTHING for my handset, £30 a month for 18 months with more everything than I could possibly need)

        Seriously - take off the blinkers dude, Android is a better platform, and HTC Sense UI is at the least on par with the iPhone UI.

        Look at the reviews of people that have used both.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          ..i have, and they tell me I'm right.

          Numerous 3rd party studies show the HTC phones mutli-touch sucks, and the iPhones beats all others.

          Same for image quality.

          Samsungs Galaxy S doesnt quite cut it in outdoor light either, check out the reviews and you'll see that unless you hold it right up directly dead on, you'll lose image quality rapidly.

          Any app you want? OK, where's your equivalent of iMovie? Or your equivalent of Pages, Keynote? or what about Zen? Or 90% of the games the iphone has?

          Flash support? None of the major VOD services work on phone anyway, and iplayer supports iphone natively. Beyond that, the only other major user of Flash is gaming, and 90% of flash games are available in superior form on the Apps store.

          Finally, flash, even in the newest Android beta from for Froyo isnt quite as usable as you might wish for.

          So I 'm not missing Flash, not one bit.

          Androind am fail.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      not so clean cut

      Enjoy being fucked about HTC for your updates then. I will not be buying an HTC again after the piss take that is the Hero.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    By my calculations

    That top bundle - less the price of the handset - is about £50 per month.

  5. Matt 13

    looks more like it...

    I thought the leaked vodaphone pricing yesterday looked a bit optimistic... this is more the bending over I had expected!

    200 for the 32gb phone on 35per month for 2 years! ouch!!!

  6. Adam Cooper
    Thumb Down

    Surprised much?

    There I was thinking that an increased number of Networks would encourage competition. Instead we've got all of them slashing "fair usage caps" and all of them upping the cost of ownership.

    Hurrah for the consumer.

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    £75? Bejebus...

    I think I'd rather save up the beer tokens and opt for the full-price of £499/£599 with Apple.

    Shove in an o2 Simplicity PAYG SIM, for which £10 a month get's you unlimited texts + unlimited web. Ok so you're bound by the crappy "fair usage" policy but hey; works out a damn sight cheaper than £75 a month over 2 years.

    1. behzad

      Careful...

      O2 have different (=pricier) simplicity tariffs for iPhone - http://shop.o2.co.uk/new-iphone/tariffs.html

      And with the micro sim, you can't just put any old sim in it. Makes you wonder if Apple was in some sort of deal with the operators to use micro sim.

      1. RichyS
        Thumb Up

        SIM + Knife = Micro SIM

        A Micro SIM is just a regular SIM with less plastic. So, if you're happy to wield a sharp knife at your regular SIM, you'll have no problem.

        O2 are even supplying their Micro SIMs with nice handy plastic caddies for using them in phones with normal SIM slots. Which basically means eBay will be awash with the caddies soon.

        1. behzad

          So does that mean...

          ...you can use non-iPhone tariff sim with an iPhone? Or do the networks have some means of detection that forces you on to an iPhone tariff? (Anyone here have experience with this?)

          1. Simon Says
            Black Helicopters

            Any, any, any, any, you can use any SIM...

            You can use any SIM you like in an iPhone (provided it's on the right network if the iPhone is locked). The only "benefit" of iPhone tariffs used to be the unlimited data you got with them, and on O2 the perk of Visual Voicemail support. Since now loads of other tariffs (including SIM free and some PAYG) have large data allowances (and unlimited in rare cases), it seems you may well be better off just getting the iPhone SIM-free or on PAYG and then choosing whatever PAYG/SIM-only deal suits you best, as the iPhone tariffs are getting ridiculous, especially as they seem to have very little subsidy included in them compared to comparable phones.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    err

    I don't understand why you would buy a phones whose soul point is that it is a mobile device for accessing multimedia content on the internet if you only have 750mb of monthly usage.

    On top of that there is no obvious way to purchase real additional usage becouse it's "unlimited" already. When will phone companies sort their lives out? The only reason they say "unlimited" is so mugs buy it without noticing the unfair use policy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      @AC - err...

      Err, do phones have souls?

      1. RichyS
        Flame

        @AC @AC

        My last Sony Ericsson phone had a soul. The black black soul of Beelzebub.

      2. Danny 14
        Joke

        yup

        All iphones have souls. They are the souls of previous apple user deceased. Its in the T&C of the iStore.

  10. The Graphite Raven
    WTF?

    How does this compare to the O2 plans and pricing?

    I'd love to move from my venerable 3G to the iPhone 4, but these plans are madness incarnate. The occult symbols on Knock's papers in the Murnau Nosferatu are easier to decipher than O2's website.

    So for my £35 per month, how much is an iPhone 4 on O2 vs Orange vs everyone else? Or haven't O2 published the up-front prices for the thing yet?

    Telecommunications is such a nasty racket ...

    1. Annihilator
      FAIL

      O2's website

      Erm, it's two clicks to discover the O2 price plans for the iPhone4, or even easier, sign up and they'll even email you the prices. They haven't announced their handset prices yet.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Well, there we go

    Rip-off prices from Orange, the world's most unbelievably shit technology company. I genuinely believe that anyone who pays these prices to be with Orange and their diabolical 'customer support', their bullshit about 'unlimited' data usage, and their dodgy network infrastructure, should actually be sectioned and considered for electro-convulsive therapy.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    £75 a month - that does it for me

    I am leaving this f**king country and taking my pens, pencils, erasers and gonks with me.

    For f**ks sake, it's £75 a month. £75!!!! If I ever meet someone who signed up to this, I will kill myself. I can't live in a society that thinks £75 a month for a phone is not something to spontaneously combust at.

    Goodbye y'all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Bargain

      75 quid per month to have one less person in the world who uses the phrase "y'all"? Sounds like a bargain to me ;-)

    2. .james
      Flame

      Don't come to America

      unless you want to be bent over & rogered brutally.

      Cable too. Un-fecking-believable. Nothing's cheaper here, but the weather is better (in LA)

  13. RichyS
    Unhappy

    How much?

    It's almost as though Orange don't actually want any iPhone customers.

    Currently looks like Vodafone are in pole position to get my business...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No, its not two clicks to see O2s plans.

    It isn't two clicks to find O2s plans. The prices just released by Orange include the price of the handset, O2s plans do not because the were published before Apple had released the pricing of the handset. At the time of writing Orange are the only UK operator to have published prices that inlcude the handset.

    I spoke to Apple at the weekend and they seemed to be under the impression UK mobile operators would release their prices the same day as Apple.

  15. quicksilver

    Vodafone pre-orders?

    I hear rumours that Vodafone (at least) will take pre-orders on Friday - anyone else hearing that?

  16. cliveski

    Snip, snip

    "And with the micro sim, you can't just put any old sim in it."

    You can with the help of a pair of scissors :-)

  17. lookingsideways
    FAIL

    Carriers shooting themselves in the foot?

    From what I can tell so far the carriers appear to be getting a bit greedy now.

    Works out a good few hundred £'s cheaper for me to stay with my current o2 simplicity contract and purchase the iPhone4 sim-free from apple than it does to go with one of these new deals where I have to go back onto an 18/24 month contract.

    Factor in the £173 recycle program from o2 and I can get the phone for about £60 over the course of a standard contract whilst still keeping unlimited 3g, non-charged mms and better minute/txt packages.

    No doubt most punters won't bother doing the maths though and the carriers will get the idea they can still keep ripping everyone off.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Stuff the customer, eh?

    I was interested until I saw the prices! I'll stick to my LG520 on PAYG thanks. Apps are bit naff, but unlimited data so long as I cough-up a minimum tenner a month ,suits me for the moment. I have PSP for playing games on the go thanks!

  19. Dan Wilkinson

    Damn My Staff Discount!

    I get a 30% discount on some freinds and family staff discount from a mate who works for O2. It's the only reason for staying with them, as they seem to have the worst data deals (after having the best) now. Having said that, paying for a more expensive tarrif and getting the phone for pennies and 30% off is even cheaper than buying the phone outright and putting a simplicity sim into it....

  20. Paul 185

    RE: only if

    Sure on a PayG plan it's "only" £100 extra, but buying a smartphone without a contract is pretty rare these days, especially with the target audience of these devices. So how do the actual contracts compare? Orange offer a HTC Desire for free at £30 a month on the same plan as the £35 a month iPhone 4. So that's £119 extra up front when purchased, then £120 over the 24 month period, valuing the Apple "cool tax" on this product at £239.

    Alternatively I phoned up orange when purchasing my HTC Desire, and was offered a discounted rate of £25 a month by the service rep when I pushed them a little. I've just phoned posing as a purchaser of the iPhone, and attempted a similar ploy, but the service rep said they aren't authorised to offer any discounts on the iPhone 4.

    This puts the total iPhone markup for the intelligent buyer at £359 (for the 24 month contract), or £138 per mm thinner.

    The term "better" in reference to the screen is arguable here, given the different technologies employed. I find my AMOLED display fantastic and very easy on the eyes (as it has no backlight). The contrast ratio on the iPhone 4 is frankly pathetic, and given it's usage of LCD technology, the blacks cannot compare to AMOLED. I haven't seen Super AMOLED, but from what I've read, it's set to dispel any notions that Apple has the best display tech.

  21. Gary Riches

    @all

    Giffgaff.com - £10 a month for 100 minutes, unlimited texts and truly unlimited data. Nary a fair usage policy in site. If you do sign up can you say vgslag sent you as I get a fiver for each one.

  22. 2586

    02 iPhone prices

    I took the time to work out how much each contract (apart from the 100minutes one) would cost over the duration of your contact, here is the blog post http://www.nickmetcalf.co.uk/2010/02-and-its-iphone4-prices/

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