January 25th, 2012
In this article, we present a graphical visualisation of which networks provide the cheapest mobile tariffs.
Over the last few months, we’ve been carrying out an extensive investigation into which mobile networks provide the best-value tariffs. Part of that research has gone into developing new tools such as our Galaxy S II price comparison calculator, iPhone 4S price comparison calculator and our new Pay As You Go VS Contract price comparison website. In this article, I want to go back to basics and to answer the question: is there one mobile network which is consistently the cheapest? Do we really need price comparison websites or can we answer the question of the cheapest tariff without one? Are there any trends we can pick out?
Does the cheapest mobile network depend on the amount of calls I use or the amount I download?
Yes, very much so: it depends very strongly on the number of minutes you use and the amount of stuff you download. The following diagram visualises the cheapest network for a new BlackBerry Bold 9900 tariff. The number of minutes lies on the vertical axis and the amount of data consumed on the horizontal axis. In order to find the cheapest network corresponding to your usage, read along the relevant row and column to find a colour-coded box indicating which network offers the best value deal.
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January 19th, 2012
How do Pay As You Go tariffs and Pay Monthly contracts compare in terms of price, spend control, convenience and total cost of ownership?
With Pay As You Go, you'll need to top up your phone regularly with credit.
What is a “Pay As You Go” or “Pay Monthly” mobile tariff?
- “Pay As You Go” or pre-pay refers to any mobile phone tariff whereby you need to top-up your account with calling credit. You must top-up before you are able to make outgoing calls, send text messages or browse the internet. Typically, you are charged individually for each minute you spend on the phone, for each text message you send and for each megabyte of data you download. These charges are taken from your Pay As You Go account balance (“credit”).
- “Pay Monthly” or post-pay refers to a mobile phone contract (typically lasting 12, 18 or 24 months). Pay Monthly contracts have a set monthly price for which you’ll get an inclusive allowance of calls, texts and internet browsing. You’ll be billed at for your basic contract as well as any additional out-of-allowance charges incurred at the end of the month. These charges will usually be taken from your bank account automatically via direct debit.
To complicate things, a new class of Pay As You Go tariff has emerged over the past year or two. These tariffs aim to combine some of the benefits of Pay Monthly such as cheap calls, texts and internet whilst maintaining popular features of Pay As You Go such as the spend control and lack of 24-month commitment. Examples of “hybrid” Pay As You Go tariffs include Giffgaff Goodybags, Three’s “All in One” tariffs and O2 Simplicity. Attempts have also been made to bring better spend control to Pay Monthly such as T-Mobile’s “You Fix” tariff which prevents customers from running up additional out-of-allowance charges.
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January 14th, 2012
Ever wondered what the cheapest tariff for you is? Our new price comparison website searches across Pay As You Go and contract options.
We are pleased to announce the launch of PAYGvsContract.com – the new price comparison website from Ken’s Tech Tips which incorporates both Pay As You Go and Pay Monthly tariffs in one simple and easy-to-use price comparison website.
Why the need for a new price comparison website?
Over the past few years, the mobile industry has changed significantly. With the move towards expensive smartphones devices such as the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II, many of us now find ourselves forking out more than ever for our mobile phone calling plans. Additionally, it’s now commonplace to pay something for our phones upfront, even when we take out an expensive £35/month or £40/month contract – smartphones are seldom “free” even with these expensive contracts.
The second change in the industry is that many of us are now demanding the flexibility to upgrade our phones whenever we please. The combination of buying a SIM-free phone and taking a cheap tariff from a Pay As You Go provider such as Giffgaff provides a great-value alternative to a Pay Monthly contract, and is often comparable in cost to a contract (see our Giffgaff review). Occasionally these Pay As You Go plans even work out to be even cheaper than their Pay Monthly counterparts.
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January 11th, 2012
A Ken’s Tech Tips analysis shows 78% of books are available on Kindle but Kindle editions cost 10% more than print editions on average.
The Amazon Kindle was one of the most gifted items this Christmas and reading books electronically on devices like the Kindle is becoming more and more popular by the day. With the ability to hold your entire library in one portable device and the ability to download books wirelessly in an instant, it’s no wonder why the Kindle has been such a popular device for bookworms and readers this Christmas. However, contrary to popular perception, Kindle e-books actually tend to be more expensive than their printed counterparts.
In an analysis of Amazon.co.uk’s top 100 bestselling books, we found that 78% of Amazon’s bestsellers were available on the Kindle format. On average, e-books cost 10% more than their physical counterparts – primarily due to the additional VAT charged on sales of e-books. This is the follow-up to the study we previously carried out in December 2010 and June 2011.
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January 6th, 2012
Mobile phone price comparison websites are confusing and often suggest totally inappropriate tariffs, argues Ken Lo.
Can you really trust your price comparison website to find you the best value deal on the iPhone 4S?
There are a hundred good reasons for why we need to have price comparison websites. There are hundreds of different phones out there, each with many different tariffs, data allowances, flexible boosters, bolt-ons and more. The premise is that a price comparison website, if done correctly, would be able to search through these thousands of permutations to find the tariff that best suits your requirements and provides the best value (nobody wants to pay more than they need to). A turbo-charged price comparison calculator can provide a lot of value in helping to filter thousands of tariffs down to the most suitable ones.
Unfortunately, our analysis has shown that not all mobile phone price comparison websites are up to the scratch. In this article, I want to highlight some of the deficiencies which are common to mobile phone price comparison sites. Some of the key deficiencies we’ve found include price comparison calculators highlighting blatantly inappropriate tariffs as their top deals (for example smartphone plans with no inclusive data allowance or far too many minutes than is necessary) and the impossibility of comparing based on total cost of ownership. The article then goes on to formulate some suggestions for the “price comparison community”: techniques that we believe will help consumers to compare mobile phone contracts.
Full Disclosure: We have developed and currently operate price comparison tools e.g. for the Apple iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S II and SIM-only tariffs. Ken’s Tech Tips is due to launch a new price comparison website in the coming weeks. The design of the new website has been informed by our research into the problems that users often face using existing price comparison sites. We hope that the points raised in this article will help to improve the quality of price comparison tools available to British mobile consumers going forward in 2012.
January 2nd, 2012
Giffgaff are set to launch full support for BlackBerry devices this month. Access to BlackBerry web browsing, BlackBerry e-mail and BBM costs £3/month on top of your normal Goodybag package.
O2′s low cost Pay As You Go network, Giffgaff, is set to launch full support for BlackBerry devices this month. Due to the way that BlackBerry devices (including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Torch) are designed, BlackBerry owners must have a subscription to the “BlackBerry Internet Service” (BIS) as well as a calling plan from their mobile operator in order to use the full functionality of the device. Giffgaff’s £3/month add-on provides access to the “BlackBerry Internet Service” and hence adds full support for BlackBerry features such as web browsing, e-mail and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) on Giffgaff.
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December 30th, 2011
Ken’s Tech Tips looks back at the second half of 2011: the tariffs, the technologies and the smartphones.
This is the second part of our review of 2011. You can see part 1 of our review of 2011 here.
July 2011
July signalled the mid-point of the year: the turning point when the industry leaves the events of Mobile World Congress behind and starts to look forward to the IFA. We looked at the 3D mobile phones from Mobile World Congress with more critical eyes with our article on how the 3D displays on the LG Optimus 3D and the HTC Evo 3D worked. Neither phone has been a particularly big hit in the UK – the consumer response seems to indicate that 3D is seen as a bit of a gimmick and we didn’t see any further 3D mobile devices being announced at the IFA (though we had plenty of 3D televisions).
We also began to think about the mobile phone of the future: if 3D isn’t the future then what is? We thought that smartphones will be smarter in the future and will help us to travel better and to communicate better. The really exciting technologies to keep an eye on in the next few years are 4G/LTE mobile broadband, Near Field Communication and perhaps flexible displays.
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December 30th, 2011
The Samsung Galaxy S II, is available on all of the major networks in the UK. Our price comparison tool finds the best deals.
The Samsung Galaxy S II is currently the bestselling Android handset in the UK. It’s a great alternative to the iPhone 4S and is available on all of the UK’s major mobile networks. Sporting a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, a 1.2GHz dual-core application processor and Android 2.3, it’s available on 124 different tariff combinations across the major networks. Our price comparison calculator will find the best one for you.
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December 27th, 2011
If you already have your own smartphone, you could save about £180/year by switching to a SIM-only tariff for your smartphone.
If you already own a smartphone and don’t need a new one, a SIM-only tariff offers a low-cost bundle of inclusive minutes, texts and internet access to use each month. Compared to a traditional mobile phone contract, SIM-only contracts are around £15/month cheaper – that means you should see savings of around £180 each year on a SIM-only tariff. SIM-only tariffs only include airtime and do not come with a new handset. This makes them ideal for:
- Anyone who purchases their smartphone SIM free, on a Pay As You Go tariff or second hand from eBay.
- Anyone who already has a smartphone which came from a previous mobile contract. Your initial 18 month or 24 month contract has already run out but you’re happy to keep your phone.
- Anyone who has been given a handset by a friend or family member (for example an unwanted upgrade or an old phone).
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December 24th, 2011
Ken’s Tech Tips looks back at the first half of 2011: the tariffs, the technologies and the smartphones.
Data: We can't get enough of it. Smartphone data consumption skyrocketed in 2011 and Three were well placed to take advantage of it.
January 2011
January 2011 began with the UK’s challenger network Three adding all-you-can-eat data to their One Plan tariff. Since O2 scrapped unlimited data in June 2010, Three have been the only mainstream network to be pushing a tariff offering unlimited downloads and no download limits on their primary tariff.
According to Three, ‘The One Plan’ is the most popular tariff amongst their customers. This was validated by our Ken’s Tech Tips Worm studies in July and November: both studies showed Three gaining a lot of customers from their offer of all-you-can-eat data. At the same time, Three unfortunately began to turn off Orange 2G roaming at the start of the year which lead to a deterioration of service for some Three customers.
In January 2011, we also wrote about Giffgaff’s unique “Hokey Cokey” goodybag, how to use Google Calendar for free SMS reminders, Orange’s UMA service (calling over wi-fi) and looked forward to fourth-generation LTE networks.
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