Mobile phone buyers guide

Choosing the right mobile phone and tariff for you can be a difficult task. You will need to consider some if not all of the following:

Tariffs

How often will you use your phone? Will it be just for emergencies or for regularly talking to friends and family?
What time of day will you make calls (peak or off peak – as explained later)
Would you rather have inclusive minutes to use every month or would you rather just pay for the calls that you use?

Phones

Are you interested in the latest phone which can send picture/video messages or do you simply wish to talk and send the occassional text message?
Do you want a “flip phone” or not?
Do you want a colour screen and/or the ability to play games?
Will you want to download the latest ringing tones to your phone?

These are only a few thing to think about but there are many more questions which you probably have.

Not all phones are available on all the networks, so you may also be limited in which network you do go for if the phone is the most important aspect.

Choosing the network

In the UK there are 5 mobile phone networks to choose from (Virgin Mobile uses the T-Mobile network):

The main factor for choosing a particular network is probably the coverage that they offer. If you buy a phone then you’ll want to know that when you want to use it you’ll be able to receive a signal. All networks provide this information to customers as shown by their coverage maps which you can visit by following the links above. 3 is the most recent network so has less coverage than the other four, but they do share another network if they themselves cannot provide coverage.

Choosing your tariff

All networks offer pay-as-you-go and pay monthly talk plans. If you are a light user who will only uses a mobile infrequently, then a pay-as-you-go mobile may be a better choice as you simply “top-up” your phone with calls whenever you need to, rather than paying £15 for example every month and not using it. Our simple mobile phone tariff calculator can help you decide which is better for you, although this is only a guide as your actual usage may be different. It’s best to over estimate your usage then we can calculate the estimated maximum that a mobile phone could cost you.

Choosing your mobile

With a pay-as-you go mobile you will have to pay for full cost of the mobile phone, whereas with a pay monthly tariff you can have many phones for free, or highly discounted. It’s best to shop around to find the best deal. You can try our find a new mobile section which lets you compare many mobile phones to find the cheapest for you.

Health and Safety

You may have read in the papers and seen on television report surrounding the safety of mobile phones. The Department of Health have an online guide to mobile phone safety.