The phone upgrade debacle

[rogerzilla]

My phone is out of contract tomorrow.  I usually get a new Galaxy model every couple of years but zOMG the prices have gone up.  Most of this is "justified" by large data allowances, which are useless to me.  Home and work have wifi, hotels have wifi and if I'm visiting nice places I'm probably not dicking about on my phone.  I use 100MB a month of my current 8GB allowance.

I'll probanly just go SIM-only for a year.  They're quite happy to give a sensibly sized data allowance on one of those.

[andyoxon]

GiffGaff looks good for SIM free deals.  I (and whole family) went SIM free with IDmobile (3Mobile) for £5/month with a 2.25Gb/250min/5000txts, on rolling monthly contract.  Unused data rolls over to a max of 4.5Gb.  Need to check 3's 3/4G coverage carefully as not as wide as the likes of 'EE'.   

[woollypigs]

Look at the Moto G's, I think 6 and 7 is the key numbers now. I got a Moto G4 Plus and more than happy with it. Peli got the 6 atm because she dropped her Moto G4 plus and smashed it up. She got the 6 because the price dropped a bit as the 7 were coming out.

Then switch your number over to GiffGaff (which uses O2) even their £5 a month one is more than enough for your usage. I got more minutes and data than I know what to do with on the £7.5 a month. Since the whole family is on it the calls to them are free and not even counted on the free minutes you get. But even if they were I would have spare minutes.

A few times a year I up it to £10 as I know I will be out and about away from wifi, like when on holidays etc.

[Mr Larrington]

I still subscribe to El Reg’s e-mail digest and only yesterday they were extolling the virtues of some Google-branded phone.  I did not read the article but it shouldn't br hard to find.

[Mrs Pingu]

I liked my old Moto G3 but as posted on another thread in March I ended up with a Nokia because the new Motos are just too big. I like it, like the Moto it's fairly vanilla Android and not full of all the tat so beloved by Samsung.

[Kim]

Look at the Moto G's, I think 6 and 7 is the key numbers now. I got a Moto G4 Plus and more than happy with it. Peli got the 6 atm because she dropped her Moto G4 plus and smashed it up. She got the 6 because the price dropped a bit as the 7 were coming out.

I finally retired my Moto G4 because the lack of performance was impairing my ability to do things like take photos reliably and pay for electrons at motorway services.

I've now got a G7.  Main complaint is that it's Too Big, like all modern phones (though, to be fair, this does make the keyboard a bit more usable in portrait mode).  Second complaint is that it seems to suffer from the same obscure WiFi bug as the G4 (whereby if there's a router advertising IPv6 on the network, it randomly tears down the entire WiFi stack from time to time, closing any connections).  Minor grumble about the lack of an OLED screen, but that doesn't really matter in practice.  It's fast, the battery lasts for ages, and the Motorola bloatware is minimal and inoffensive.

Then switch your number over to GiffGaff (which uses O2) even their £5 a month one is more than enough for your usage. I got more minutes and data than I know what to do with on the £7.5 a month. Since the whole family is on it the calls to them are free and not even counted on the free minutes you get. But even if they were I would have spare minutes.

Note that they've just put their prices up.  You now get even more minutes and texts to not use, and the cost of PAYG data has gone up too.   

[woollypigs]

Yeah I saw, I'm thinking about dropping down to a fiver a month now. Before I often hit the max on the data on £5 so therefore £7.5.

The only issue I have seen with it is that Peli reported that it dropped Wifi and went to 4G, I didn't notice that. But I think it is because around here there's loads of WiFi hubs shouting about, we had to upgrade to get to 5.4Ghz (or what ever the number) to get away from the packed channels. So that we at least could use the laptops that got 5.4Ghz, sadly the phones and the Kindles don't but ...

[Kim]

My G7 has been rock solid on WiFi since I created a separate VLAN for buggy Androids with no IPv6 RAs on it.  That's using a Ubiquiti AP, which probably helps.

(The 2.4GHz band is extremely congested here during term time - perils of a student area.  Channel 13 helps a bit, as nothing will default to that, but there's still overlap with 11.  5GHz still has a decent amount of elbow-room, because it doesn't penetrate the old brick houses very effectively.)

[frankly frankie]

Then switch your number over to GiffGaff (which uses O2) even their £5 a month one is more than enough for your usage. I got more minutes and data than I know what to do with on the £7.5 a month. Since the whole family is on it the calls to them are free and not even counted on the free minutes you get. But even if they were I would have spare minutes.

Note that they've just put their prices up.  You now get even more minutes and texts to not use, and the cost of PAYG data has gone up too.   

But you don't have to buy a monthly bundle.  I put £15 on about 6 months ago and my balance is still well over a tenner.

[Kim]

Then switch your number over to GiffGaff (which uses O2) even their £5 a month one is more than enough for your usage. I got more minutes and data than I know what to do with on the £7.5 a month. Since the whole family is on it the calls to them are free and not even counted on the free minutes you get. But even if they were I would have spare minutes.

Note that they've just put their prices up.  You now get even more minutes and texts to not use, and the cost of PAYG data has gone up too.   

But you don't have to buy a monthly bundle.  I put £15 on about 6 months ago and my balance is still well over a tenner.

If you don't use your phone it's easy to get a good deal (I have a Three SIM in my tablet that gets used at about that rate).

Without a Goody Bag, even small amounts of data will now eat credit on GiffGaff.

[Canardly]

According to Virgin media I won a Galaxy s10 yesterday  in an anniverary click on this competition. This appeared to be genuine but who knows. When trying to access the postage page however I Received a blank screen due to Noscript. By the time I had allowed access to the page the whole thing had disappeared. Such is life. If it is a spoof it is a very clever one.