Best/cheapest option to get an iphone with no contract

[WhyTwo]

I'm sure a similar question may have been asked before but my search didn't find it so...

I have a Blackberry funded by my work and am looking to get an iphone and use my work SIMM. What's the best/cheapest route for me to go to get an iphone with no contract?

[Rob P]

Cheapest? Ebay, if you don't mind a few year old one

[andyps]

Tesco?

[markda]

A few of my colleagues have gone down this road, some upgrade their partners contracts and talk them into giving them the phone The rest just go and buy one on PAYG for £450-550 (if you want the 3GS) or slightly less for the ageing 3G.

They aren't the most reliable of handsets, seen quite a few h/w failures so I wouldn't be too sure about saving £100 or so and buying a handset with questionable warranty on eBay, and it possibly break a few months later...

[Nat_H]

Tesco £440 (you get clubcard points, every little helps)

But it will be locked to their network.


O2 £455 (£440 + £15 to unlock to any network)

I went for the latter.

Edited by Nat_H on Wednesday 3rd March 13:27

[WhyTwo]

Thanks for the help. I had a budget of £350 in mind so maybe I need to up that by £100!

Anyone used Swoopo.co.uk before?

http://www.swoopo.co.uk/ended-auction.html?from=12...

I'm always of the mind that if it seems to good to be true it usually is...

[cyberface]

I've got two white 32GB 3GS iPhones for sale

Make me a sensible offer. Factory unlocked from the start.

[andyps]

cyberface said:

I've got two white 32GB 3GS iPhones for sale

Make me a sensible offer. Factory unlocked from the start.

The Nexus One is that good is it.

[cyberface]

andyps said:

cyberface said:

I've got two white 32GB 3GS iPhones for sale

Make me a sensible offer. Factory unlocked from the start.

The Nexus One is that good is it.

No, objectively, the iPhone kicks its arse. But the iPhone also drops a lot of calls and that, along with the Apple control freakery and the impression from Apple that if I want to *own* my iPhone then I'm a criminal hacker, has pissed me off enough to try something new.

The Nexus One is not as good as an iPhone, but it's good enough. And it's infinitely better as a *phone*. And as it's the usual open-source thang, it will only get better.

[[AJ]]

I use my phone a lot and I haven't had much of a problem with dropped calls. In fact, My last 3 generations of iPhones have all been better than my old Nokia N73, which used to drop calls (on Orange) every time it switched masts! I guess it can depend significantly on your network and geographical surroundings.

If you buy in to the Apple ecosystem, then there's nothing better than the iPhone. I use Macs at home and at work, with no need to jailbreak the phone, so it really is a no brainer for me.

Android does look like an excellent alternative if you're not a fan/unsure/ignorant* of the whole Apple thing though.

*

[cyberface]

[AJ] said:

I use my phone a lot and I haven't had much of a problem with dropped calls

I reckon it's an artefact of the jailbreaking process. I gave my old 3G to my girlfriend after I obtained the first 3GS, and restored that to Apple-fresh with iTunes. It was a factory unlocked phone and she's on Vodafone with me, but I didn't jailbreak her phone. She's using it as standard, and doesn't have many dropped calls. She was always complaining that she couldn't get through to me (on a jailbroken 3GS) or that it'd go straight to voicemail. It did, and wasn't just her either. She also said when she *did* get through, she could never hear me properly. Again, clients / colleagues had a hard time hearing me with the 3GS.

I bought a new factory unlocked 3GS, thinking it was a hardware problem. Same story.

I only like iPhones if they're jailbroken - there are a bunch of utilities on the jailbreak side that I simply can't live without - and an iPhone without jailbreak is a MUCH less attractive proposition to me. Since the jailbreak appears to affect the baseband performance (sample of three - many others on the internet report poor call performance / dropped calls on unjailbroken iPhones, so YMMV), I decided to try the Nexus One instead. This doesn't drop calls (same SIM, same geographical location, same cell towers) and everyone can hear my voice much clearer. It's also 'jailbroken' by default, and Google don't try to prevent you from getting a root shell on the device, so no 'hacking' is required.

Since my old 3G used to cause me the same amount of aggro, but my girlfriend hasn't reported problems at the same frequency, the software has to be implicated rather than the hardware, and it's reversible. My hacked-to-hell 3G was wiped and flashed with Apple-standard software for her, and suddenly it all works just tickety-boo.

The mk1 doesn't have this problem... a hacked-to-hell baseband on one of those still works well. I'm never getting rid of my mk1 iPhone for sentimental reasons, but the 3GS phones aren't 'special' enough to me as standard to need to keep them... and once I've got Android working adequately (which I have, more or less) I may as well sell the iPhones.

I love Apple kit (as everyone knows) but their control-freakery around the iPhone has left enough of a sour taste for a Mac bloke like me to actually leave the platform (well the iPhone part of it - there's no way I'm leaving OS X or the MobileMe sync service, which has been brilliant and even works well with Android)...