Mobile Phone News

Google Android phones are some of the hottest handsets on the market and we were really surprised when we recently looked to see how affordable they were. We just used our search facility, specifying that we wanted to see only Android handsets that cost under £10 a month.

Around a dozen handsets appeared - From the low end Samsung Galaxy Europa and LG Optimus Swift, to the Sony XPERIA X10 Mini and the HTC Wildfire.

Most of the deals are cashback offers, where you initially pay the line rental, then claim it back from the retailer.

For example, the XPERIA X10 Mini is available from mobiles.co.uk (part of the Carphone Warehouse) on Orange Racoon 20. This gives you 200 anytime minutes, unlimited calls to landlines and 300 texts per month, on a 24 month contract. The offer is for 14 months free line rental, giving you a total monthly cost of £8.33.

There are lots of similar £10 Android deals out there, just use our search facility and have a look!

The Nokia C6 is a decent spec. touchscreen phone, with a 3.2 inch resistive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, slide out QWERTY keyboard, Wi-fi and GPS (with assisted GPS for faster location finding). It comes in black or white.

At the moment, you can get the black version of this from mobiles.co.uk with 100 minutes, 100 texts and 1Gb of data a month on an 18 month contract for only £9.99 a month after cashback. If you'd prefer, you can swap the 1Gb of data for unlimited texts instead, for the same price.

Similar deals are available on Orange. A 24 month contract with 100 minutes, unlimited texts and 500Mb of data a month is £10.83 - Again from mobiles.co.uk.

As more and more touchscreen phones come on the market, it's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which ones are better than others. One of the key differentiators is the type of touchscreen used on the phone - Another is the size of the screen.

There are basically two types of touchscreen, resistive and capacitive.

Resistive ones tend to the found on the cheaper handsets (the exception to this is Nokia touchscreen phones, which are currently all resistive). These often require more of a "prod" in order to get them to work and they don't support multi-touch, where you use more than one finger to do things like zoom in and out.

Capacitive are the other type. These are usually more sensitive to touch and DO support multi-touch. This is the type used on the Apple iPhone.

So that you can tell which is which, we've recently been through all the handsets on our site, changing all the descriptions so that you can tell which ones are capacitive and which ones are resistive. We've also added in the screen size for any phones that had this information missing.

We hope this helps!

Three's new "The One Plan" tariff comes with 200 cross-network minutes, 1Gb of data, 5000 texts and an extra 3000 minutes of calls to other phones on the Three network. It's a 24 month contract, and prices start at just £25 a month.

This really is an amazing deal, considering the number of minutes and texts.

Example offers include the Samsung i9000 Galaxy S. This is a Google Android based handset (linking to all the top Google web based services), with a 5 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-fi and a fast 1Ghz CPU. The phone costs a one off fee of £20, and then £25 a month.

Similar offers can be found on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, the X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro, the Nokia X6 and even the Apple iPhone 8Gb (for £35 a month).

The Sony Ericsson Zylo is primarily designed as a music phone. It also has an accelerometer for automatic screen rotation and motion based games along with a 3.15 megapixel camera and easy access to Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

The unique thing about the music player on this handset is that it can play music in the lossless FLAC format - Giving you much better sound quality than MP3 files. Whereas MP3 format files discard some of the information in the original music, if you rip a song in FLAC then it should should exactly like the original CD.

Initially, the handset is only available directly from Three's own website, although we'd expect it to be available from other retailers soon.

Offers include a mix of 300 minutes and texts on a 24 month contract for only £13 a month. Or you can pay £15 to get a deal with a mix of 500 minutes and texts. Both of these tariffs include 500Mb of data to use each month and 5000 extra Three-to-Three minutes.

Although lots of the offers on this site are cashback contracts, we still have lots of cheap deals available for people who'd prefer not to have a contract with cashback.

Take for instance the Nokia 5230. This is a touchscreen handset with 2 megapixel camera, with a 3.2 inch touchscreen, assisted GPS and Nokia Maps. If you buy this from Beepy mobiles for £50, you can get a contract on Orange 5 for just £5 a month - Giving you 50 minutes and 50 texts a month. It's a 36 month contract, but Orange will offer you a new handset after 18 months.

Alternatively, there's the X6, another touchscreen handset from Nokia. This has a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, GPS, Wi-fi, an FM Radio, 3G HSDPA, TV Out and 32Gb internal memory. You can get this free on a 24 month contract from 3 for £14 a month on their Internet Talker 100 tariff - This gives you up to 100 minutes or texts and 500Mb of data a month.

The HTC Smart is now available from Buy Mobile Phones. It's an affordable touschscreeen phone with 3.15 megapixel camera, 3G HSDPA, an accelerometer for automatic screen rotation and more. It's available in black and white.

Offers start at £10 a month on O2, with 50 minutes and unlimited texts on a 24 month contract. This particular offer also comes with 5 months free line rental (which is a cashback redemption deal), taking the total average cost down to £7.92 a month. The phone itself is free.

Lots more tariffs are also available too!

The Samsung Galaxy Portal is a Google Android powered handset with 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.2 inch TFT touchscreen, accelerometer (for screen rotation), Wi-fi and GPS.

At the moment, Three's own online store has got an offer for this awesome phone at only £12.00 a month, with the phone for free. This is NOT a cashback deal. It's a 24 month contract, with 100 minutes or 100 texts and 500Mb of data every month included.

If you want more minutes and texts, then they also do a similar tariff with upto 300 minutes or texts and 500Mb of data for only £15 a month.

We've just added lots more free line rental offers to the site - All from Buy Mobile Phones. As usual, these are cashback redemption deals. You initially pay the line rental, but then claim it all back from the retailer.

Even the Samsung Tocco Lite is available. This is a touchscreen handset, with a 3.15 megapixel camera (with face detection), accelerometer (for auto screen rotation), handwriting recognition and a great 3 inch touchscreen.

Other handsets include the Samsung C3050 and a range of straightforward Nokia handsets.

The Nokia X3, a music focused slider phone with 3.2 megapixel camera is now available for under £12 a month on a 24 month contract.

The offer has a free 4Gb iPod shuffle, 1Gb of data allowance a month, 300 minutes and 300 texts. To complete the deal it also comes with £85 cashback (which you redeem by sending in certain bills).

For an extra £2 a month, the same offer is available with an 8Gb iPod Nano instead.

Even though all the 12 months free line rental offers have disappeared, buymobilephones.net have still got a large number of 18 months free line rental offers.

These are all redemption cashback deals, where you initially pay the line rental yourself, but them claim the money back from BuyMobilePhones by sending them copies of your bills.

Pretty much all the offers are on T-Mobile. Handsets include the Samsung C3050, Samsung J700, Nokia 2680, Nokia 1208 and more.

Since the launch of T-Mobile's new tariffs at the beginning of February, some retailers have begun to sell some really good value deals on Google's Android powered handsets.

For instance, BuyMobilePhones has the LG In Touch Max, with GPS, a 3 inch resistive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera and slide out QWERTY keyboard for £15 a month. This includes 300 mins and 300 texts and 1Gb of data a month. The offer also includes 7 months half-price line rental, taking the actual cost down to £12.81 a month!

Similar offers can be found on the Samsung Galaxy and T-Mobile Pulse.

T-Mobile are dropping 12 months tariffs tomorrow, as a result the excellent 12 months free line rental deals from buymobilephones will disappear. Order today or miss out.

UPDATE - 1st Feb 11:30am: buymobilephones.net are currently still selling the 12 months free line rental offers, but it's thought they are likely to disappear over the coming days!

The Samsing B5310 Genio Slide carries on from where the original Genio Touch left off, adding a load of new features on the way.

It seems to have all the features available in much higher end phones, including GPS, Wi-fi a touchscreen, an accelerometer for automatic screen rotation, full QWERTY keyboard and decent integration with lots of social media websites.

Buymobilephones.net is the first retailer to list the phone and stock is expected shortly.

The Apple iPhone is now available from Vodafone as well as Orange and O2. The Vodafone tariffs are priced broadly similar to the existing deals but benefit from much more texts for your money.

View Vodafone iPhone tariffs via the following link.

The Nokia N900 is Nokia's first high end handset to be based on the Linux based Maemo and it's finally in stock at mobiles.co.uk on tariffs starting from £25 a month.

It's got a large 3.5 inch resistive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-fi and lots of other goodies. So far, reviews have fairly consistantly praised the new interface and features of Maemo, compared to Nokia's normal Symbian based phones.

The X6 is Nokia's latest flagship music phone and their first with a capacitive touchscreen (no more styluses, just fingers). It's got a huge 32Gb of memory, and also comes with a 4Gb memory card, taking the total up to 36Gb - Great for all your tunes.

In the last few days, Dial-a-Phone has started selling the handset on a range of tariffs from £25 a month. The £25 a month offer has 400 minutes and unlimited texts on a 24 month contract. We think this is a pretty good deal for a phone like this, so if you agree, then check out the offers.

We've recently added the Huawei U7510 to the site, and thought it was worth a mention in the news section because of some of the great deals that Three have on this handset at the moment.

The cheapest offer is just £10 a month as Three is reducing the cost of it's £15 Texter tariff by a fiver. The phone is free on this tariff. It comes with 75 inclusive minutes a month and unlimited texts. As usual with Three, you get free Skype calls and Windows Live Messenger included too.

The U7510 has a 2.8 inch touchscreen, 2 megapixel camera, built in Google Maps, Google Search and has a home screen giving you instant access to all your favourite websites straight away.

Mobiles.co.uk have now started to sell the Apple iPhone on Orange as well as O2. The Orange tariffs are broadly similar to the O2 tariffs, so it is really a case of which network you prefer..

One interesting thing is an option to allow you to use your iPhone as a 3G connection for your laptop, called tethering. The equivalent O2 tariff costs £10 more than on Orange.

View all iPhone tariffs on Orange and O2 via the following link.

News item updated - 19/11/09

On October 16th, the Palm Pre was finally launched for sale in the UK. Touted as a potential iPhone competitior, the Pre certainly looks the business. It's got assisted GPS, Wi-fi, a touschscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard, 3.2 megapixel camera, 8Gb internal storage, an accelerometer (to allow applications to chnage from landscape to portrait, or for movement sensitive applications) and more.

O2 has got the exclusive rights to this handset, so it's not going to be available on other networks (at least for a couple of years).

At the time of writing, the handset is available from O2 directly and also from Dial-a-Phone.

BuyMobilePhones.net has now got lots of free line rental offers available on a range of T-Mobile tariffs, with good basic Nokia handsets. These are all cashback redemption offers, but basically mean that you end up with a completely free phone and free line rental for the duration of the contract (as long as you remember to claim the cashback).

BuyMobilePhones have been trading since 2001 and have a good reputation for being a trustworthy and honest retailer. They are one of the few T-Mobile accredited dealers (only around 20% of retailers achieve this) and are a 3 'Q' dealer (which stands for quality).

Mobiles.co.uk have started allowing pre-orders for the new Sony Ericsson Aino, with first stock due in on the 5th October. Initially, there's a range of offers available on the Orange network.

The Aino is unique in that it allows you to remote control your Sony PS3, allowing you to control and access media content remotely.

It's a neat looking slider phone with a touschscreen, numeric keypad, 8.1 megapixel camera, Assisted GPS, Wi-fi, 3G HSDPA, media player and lots more.

The Samsung B3310 is now in stock at mobiles.co.uk! All their deals on this phone are on the Orange network. Offers start at £9 a month (after cashback) for 100 minutes and unlimited texts on an 18 month contract.

The B3310 is a new, affordable, feature rich messaging phone with slide out QWERTY keyboard and a funky set of colours. It's also got direct access to Facebook and MySpace from the home screen.

Other features include an FM Radio, 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a media player (the phone takes microSD cards for more memory).

Basically, it's got everything a heavy messaging user could need at a decent price - Check out those offers!

We're pleased to announce the addition of a new phone search facility on the site.

Ever since we launched, you've always been able to find a mobile phone contract by specifying the number of minutes, texts, cost etc that you want. However, we've now added the ability to search based on the main features of a phone - the colour, number of camera megapixels, whether or not you want a phone with a clamshell or slider design, GPS, 3G and more.

You can see the new mobile phone features in the 'Search Phone Offers' section above or have even more options using 'Advanced Search'

We hope you like it!

Three have launched a range of SIM Only tariffs (no mobile phone included), all on 30 day contracts, all with unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls, unlimited Windows Live Messenger and free voicemail.

For £10 a month you can get 100 minutes and unlimited texts. The £15 tariff has 300 minutes and unlimited texts. There's also a "SIM Zero" tariff, where you still get the same Skype and Messenger features and the normal mobile phone operator benifets, but just pay for the minutes and texts you've used at the end of the month.

Sim only deals are perfect if you already have a mobile phone you like or want the freedom to change phones when you like.

We've recently added Virgin Mobile's own online shop to our list of retailers, because they've got some really (really) good value tariffs at the moment.

The headline offer is an 18 month contract for £8.50 a month, with 100 minutes and texts and a free phone. A range of handsets are available for FREE with this tariff, including the touchscreen LG Cookie, Nokia 7100 and Samsung J700.

The Nokia N97 mobile phone is now available to pre-order from Phones4u and mobiles.co.uk.

The Nokia N97 is Nokia's flagship mobile phone for 2009, with an iPhone like form factor, touchscreen, GPS, Wifi, 5 megapixel camera and more. However, where it differs from the iPhone is that is also has a nifty slide out keyboard - Removing the problems caused when trying to type on a screen, or in direct sunlight.

Definitely the hottest phone of 2009.

Vodafone have announced that from the 1st June to the 31st August this year, phone calls and texts will be charged at UK rates when customers are visiting 35 European countries, Australia and New Zealand.

So, this basically means that if you receive a phone call when you're abroad, then you won't be charged, if you make a mobile phone call when you're abroad, then you'll just pay the normal UK rates.

To get this offer, all you need to do is to sign up for Vodafone's free "Passport" roaming service.

The link below takes you to Vodafone's SIM Only contracts, these all have a 30 day minimum contract length and start at £10 for 100 minutes and 500 texts.

The new HTC Magic has just become available to pre-order from Mobiles2YourDoor, Dial-a-Phone and Phones4U and is exclusively available on Vodafone.

Initially available in white, the Magic is the second phone to be based on Google's new Android mobile phone operating system. Android comes with lots of pre-installed applications, most of which link to Google's online applications of the same name (Gmail, Google Maps, Talk etc.).

The phone itself has a great 3.2 inch touchscreen, Wifi, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera and HSDPA 3G Technology.

This week has seen a number of improvement to our search functions to help you to find the best mobile phone contract.. Perhaps the most interesting is that we now give you the ability to search for mobile phone tariffs that include a bundled data allowance for internet and emails on your phone.

Our new mobile phone search menu breaks down as follows:

Select Mobile Phone
Simply use this option to quickly jump to details and tariff info for a particular mobile phone.

Search Mobile Phone Offers
Use this option if you are not sure which phone you want but know the type of tariff you are after. You can specify the network, cost per month, contract length, minutes, texts, free gift and the amount of bundled internet data you require. Alternatively you can select all phones or use our even more advanced mobile phone search options.

Most Popular Mobile Phones
This shows our most popular mobile phones over the last few days. Just move your mouse pointer over each phone to see its name or click for more details.

Latest Mobile Phones
This shows the latest mobile phones added to our database. Again this works in the same way as the popular phones menu, just move your mouse pointer over each phone to see its name or click for more details.

Mobile Phones with a Free Gift
This is an area that remains un-changed from before. Just select the gift you want then you will be shown a list of mobile phones that are bundled with that gift.

We hope you find the new options help with your mobile phone contract search!

No change to the number one phone in this weeks top five mobile deals. The Sony Ericsson T303 is still at the top no doubt to it being a really great phone and on a 12 months free contract. The other 12 months free line rental offer on the Nokia 2600 also appears in fifth place.

THIS WEEKS TOP 5
1. Sony Ericsson T303
2. Nokia 2610
3. Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
4. Samsung J700
5. Nokia 2600

This weeks top mobile phone contract tariff goes to the O2 400 + 500. Popular phones on this tariff are Sony Ericsson C702, Sony Ericsson K810i and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

We expect lots of the mobile phone deals will change going into the new financial year. Suggest if you have been looking at some of the cheaper offers or the 12 months free line rental deals, then to buy soon as we have no idea how much longer such bargains will continue.

Lots of good mobile phone deals at the moment. Our stats are telling us that the most popular phone by far in the last week is the Sony Ericsson T303, most likely due to its great style and amazing low price.

THIS WEEKS TOP 5
1. Sony Ericsson T303
2. Samsung J700
3. Blackberry Curve 8320
4. Sony Ericsson W910i
5. Nokia 6300

Most mobile phone contract sales seem to be selling against T-Mobile Combi 30 on a 12 month contract. Popular phones on this tariff are the Nokia 2600, Nokia 7100 and the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Use our search boxes on the front page to find the mobile phone deals your looking for, or if you want a more in depth search to find some of the deals we mention here check out the ‘All Phones Page’ for our advanced search options.

Still quite a few mobile phone and free line rental deals on 12 month contracts

The free line rental deals are available with the Sony Ericsson T303, Samsung J700 and Nokia 2610 mobile phones

These free line rental deals are on cashback redemption contracts. You send copies of your bills to the retailer and they refund your line rental. You've got to be careful to remember to send your bills in on time, but if you do everything right, you should be able to enjoy a free phone and free line rental for a full year.

Sony Ericsson C510
HTC Touch Pro / TMobile Vario IV
Sony Ericsson W705
Samsung B2700
Nokia 2680

Also we have some popular mobile phones now available in other colours, see the deals for the Sony Ericsson C905 (Pink) and the Nokia 6600 Slide (Pink) mobile phones

We've had a couple of emails recently about the fact that not all of the mobile phone offers for mobiles.co.uk take you to the correct page on their site. Some people thought that the mobile deals didn't actually exist.

Unless mobiles.co.uk have removed a phone offer since we last updated our site (which shouldn't happen often), then if you look around their site you should be able to find the deal you are looking for. Often you'll be a taken to a page that has the correct mobile phone, but the wrong tariff. The usual solution is to just click on the link for the correct contract length.

The problem is that mobiles.co.uk only have landing pages for a sub-set of their mobile phones, so we just link to the best page we can. Even with this problem, some of their phone deals are just too good, so we wouldn't want to exclude them from our comparison.

The eagerly awaited Nokia 5800 XpressMusic mobile phone has been available to pre-order for the last few weeks, but is now in stock at most phone retailers.

This is an iPhone-like handset, with a 3.2 inch touchscreen display, A-GPS, Wifi, a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss optics and TV-Out. It also has an 8Gb memory - Enough to store a good few thousand songs.

To enter text, the phone has both an on-screen QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition (when using the built-in- stylus). It also has an iPhone like accelerometer allowing games to be controlled by tilting the phone and incoming calls to be silenced by flipping it over.

Nokia have priced this mobile very competitively, so it's pretty affordable compared to it's main competitors the iPhone and Samsung Omnia.

It's been available in some other countries for a few months now and Nokia have already sold over a million 5800 XpressMusic mobile phones, so it's likely to be in high demand now it's been released in the UK.

UPDATED
More 12 months free offers are now available on Vodafone with a Samsung J700, Nokia 6300 and a Samsung U600

Great news if you are looking for completely free line rental for 12 month on a 12 month contract! You can now get this amazing offer with a free Nokia 2610 on the T-Mobile Combi 25 tariff.

This is a cashback redemption contract. Basically, you send copies of your bills to the retailer and they refund your line rental. You've got to be careful to remember to send your bills in on time, but if you do everything right, you should be able to enjoy a free phone and free line rental for a full year.

As we've no idea how long this offer will last for, we'd advise you that if you're interested, then sign up ASAP.

An interesting new phone has just been released from Samsung, named the Tobi. Mainly aimed at children it contains cutting edge safety features that offer peace of mind to their parents. The phone will keep the kids interested with a 1.3 megapixel camera, games, 3 fun and friendly GUI's, including monster theme, snowman theme and ocean world theme. It also an eco-friendly phone as its made using recyclable and biodegradable bio-plastics made from corn by-products! We expect this to be a popular mobile phone purchase over the next few weeks.

Also a couple of new phone colours are now also available with the Nokia 5000 in Blue and Sony Ericsson W910i in Pink.

A few new mobile phones have been launched over the last few weeks, take a look at the Samsung Emporio Armani, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and a new pink version of the popular LG KP500 Cookie.

Also, we are quite pleased with our new site layout, if you have any suggestions or comments then please Contact Us.

The new Blackberry Curve 8900 has just become available from e2save and mobiles.co.uk.

It's got lots of the usual Blackberry features, but also includes a new 1400 mAh battery for even longer battery life.

Key features include GPS, Wifi, 480x360 resolution screen, Quad Band, QWERTY keyboard, 3.2 megapixel camera and more.

The Nokia 6500 Classic has been a popular phone for a while now, thanks to it's extremely thin form factor, 3G technology and stylish good looks.

However, it has previously only been available in Silver, Black and Bronze. Now though, O2 has started selling a pink variation of the phone, which we're sure will be even more popular.

We've still got around ten free line rental offers from Mobiles2YourDoor (part of the same company as the high-street chain Phones4U).

They've been with us for around three weeks now, and they are likely to disappear without warning, so if you're interested, then I'd sign up while you can.

Don't miss out, I doubt any more will appear for a while.

UPDATE 18/11/08: All the free line rental offers have now gone.

Phones4u and it's sister website Mobiles2YourDoor have changed some of their offers so that they're once again selling free line rental contracts (12 months free - 12 month contract).

These are cashback redemption contracts. Basically, you send copies of your bills to Phones4u/Mobiles2YourDoor and they refund your line rental. You've got to be careful to remember to send your bills in on time, but if you do everything right, you should be able to enjoy a free phone and free line rental for a full year.

The 12 months free line rental offers are available on the Sony Ericsson T303, Nokia 6300, Samsung U600, Samsung J700 and LG KC550 Orsay.

UPDATE 07/11/08: Lots of these offers have now disappeared, but some are still available for the Sony Ericsson T303 and Nokia 6300

mobiles.co.uk (part of the Carphone Warehouse Group) has announced that they now have Nokia's N96 in stock - Nokia's eagerly awaited new flagship phone.

The N96 takes the best of the Nokia N95 (GPS Satellite Navigation, Wifi, 3G, 5 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss lense) and adds more. New features include Geo-tagging of photos (take a photo and the phone adds GPS information to the photo, indicating where it was taken), 16Gb built-in memory, 2.8 inch screen, video accelerators (for ultra-smooth video playback), better battery life and even faster, more responsive menu operation.

Basically, it's similar to the original N95, but even better.

Three have just launched a few phones on a six month contract at only £15 a month.

Phone available include the Nokia 6120, Nokia 3120, Sony Ericsson Z610i and Sony Ericsson K610i.

All the contracts have no charge for the phones