Mobile Network Comparison

It’s hard (and sad) to believe it, but summer is already over. It was a busy belter for sure, and we got some great weather but the days are already getting longer and the kids are already back at school. Before you know it, the shops will be playing carols and you’ll be thinking about making the first batch of mulled wine of the year. But before that happens, let’s take a while to look back at the best mobile stories from the summer.

We’ve had some great headlines over the last couple of months. Not least the various leaks about Apple’s new iPhone 5S. While we are fairly certain about the name, very little else is known for sure until secretive Apple makes an official announcement. There are strong hints there will finally be a 128GB version as well as a new gold-coloured option though. Stay tuned as we’re expected to hear much more tomorrow.

There were also lots of juicy rumours about new Android phones and tablets such as the Motorola Moto X, the Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and and the stunning Samsung Galaxy Note III with its massive screen. Full official details are due any day now. But one of the most intriguing things about having a large screen is the possibility for gargantuan 4K screens at an unbelievable 640 ppi resolution as they are now supported in the latest version of Android Jelly Bean 4.3. Android as a digital ecosystem is also doing incredibly well as it has been reported that their sales account for almost 80% of all smartphones these days.

In other news, we saw the launch of the first phone running the shiny new Firefox OS as well as plenty of new devices running Windows Phone OS. BlackBerry is still on the decline, however.

But what else has been happening? Here’s a round-up of the five very best articles and news stories from the Mobile Network Comparison blog.

Sainsbury’s and ethical business

At the beginning of the month, we reported on a new virtual mobile network being launched by Sainsbury’s. However, after a while, it became clear that there was more to it than it first seemed. The choice of CEO Justin King to use Vodafone as their network provider deserves some scrutiny as he’d repeatedly made statements saying that businesses should pay a fair amount of tax back to the state and not try to avoid their ethical responsibilities.

However, Vodafone are well known in the UK for their complicated arrangements for evading tax payments. Despite taking in over £40 billion in revenue and paying out billions to shareholders, Vodafone didn’t pay any tax at all last year. Check out our full story for details of their tax records and the issues with Justin King going into business with them despite his strong claims about the rights and wrongs of businesses’ tax affairs.

Revealed – the great mobile tax con

Continuing our reporting into UK networks’ tax avoidance, we wrote a detailed article covering exactly how much mobile operators are paying in tax. This article revealed shocking facts such as the fact that foreign-owned EE has 25 million UK customers but spends almost 150% on paying shareholders than the total 2013 budget for all NHS A&E departments in the country.

For more details on how much money mobile companies are making, how much they are paying their executives and how much tax they are contributing and paying back to society, you can’t miss this post.

Lenovo A789 review

This summer we also published our first ever mobile handset review. The Lenovo A789 is typical of a Chinese phone that’s not available directly on the UK market – much cheaper than the norm but packing an impressive specs list and a unique feature set including great ideas such as dual-SIM capability and a built-in FM transmitter.

We got our hands on one and played around with it for hours and hours to work out its best pros and cons. Our full review includes a detailed critique of the hardware, specs, design and operating system of this great value phone.

iPhone 5S to have fingerprint scanner

This post looked at one of the most interesting leaked features of the new iPhone 5C – a fingerprint scanner built into the touchscreen. We looked into industry claims that using fingerprint scanners on phones will change the way we use technology forever. Our analysis not only went into detail about the likelihood of this being confirmed for the new iPhone but also unravel some misconceptions and truths about privacy and security on iOS.

PAYG showdown: 321 vs Giffgaff

Finally, we wrote a massive 1,100 word post on Three Mobile’s groundbreaking new 321 tariff. This new deal slashes prices and offers what seems to be the UK’s best value PAYG price-plan with calls just 3p, texts coming in a 2p each and mobile data costing a cheap-as-chips 1p/MB.

But is it really the best value option for you? This detailed price comparison post does what we do best and really delves into real world costs to see if there are any better ways to save money on your mobile. If you want the actual cheapest deal available, don’t miss this read.

We hoped you liked our look back at the summer’s mobile stories and went back to have a look at our best articles. Let us know your favourites and if you think there’s anything we missed out in the comments below 🙂

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We’re now well into March and it’s time to have a look over the previous month’s news from the world of mobile phones.

In February we’ve had some interesting technology headlines. The month started off with lots of new Android phone rumours and the announcement of HTC’s new M7 flagship smartphone. The HTC CEO Peter Chou revealed it before Chinese New Year and took some photos with its massive 13 MP camera. It was later revealed that the official name will be the HTC One and it will come with a 1080p display, a quad-core 1.7 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM.

Other Android phones announced were the new Intel x86 powered phones and the Samsung Galaxy IV strongly hinted for an April (or even March) release. Just in time for Android Key Lime Pie which is due soon after.

We also got rumours about new Windows Phone devices, the Lumia 520 and Lumia 720. Both will have 1 GHz CPUs and half a gig of RAM and will be fully announced later at Mobile World Conference.

February saw iTunes hit 25 billion song sales. That’s a lot of albums. In other Apple news, the Exchange calendars bug was fixed with the release of iOS 6.1.2.

RIM also launched their new version of their mobile OS, BlackBerry 10. They also announced their new handsets, the traditional Q10 and the touchscreen Z10.

But enough of that. Continuing our round-up, here’s our selection of the very best articles and news stories from February. If you missed them the first time round, they’re well worth going back to take a look at.

Bill Gates: We were wrong about the iPhone

In this post we looked at an interview with ex-Mircosoft CEO and tech kingpin Bill Gates. In it, he hinted that Microsoft is willing to admit that they completely misjudged the smartphone market. Microsoft were initially very dismissive of the iPhone when it first came out but since its massive success, they have been desperately trying to play catch up in the mobile field. And not just because they are struggling with the dwindling importance of their traditional strong point – desktop computing. Only time will tell whether they are too late.

4G auction falls short and 4G auction winners and losers

It’s been a long time coming by Ofcom finally completed the final round of the much-anticipated 4G mobile spectrum auction. In the end, there were a couple of surprises but some people were most shocked by the fact it raised over £1 billion less than expected. We contributed some analysis as to why the auction was such a flop and how this is going to affect George Osborne in the run up to the next budget. Our other article went into more detail about just how much spectrum each company bought, whether you’re likely to get a better signal now and how it shifts the field for the nationwide roll-out of 4G services.

Data to be more important than voice in 5 years

Finally, thanks to a report from the GSM Association we took a peek into the future where mobile data is predicted to change the way we live. The pervasiveness of high-speed mobile internet access around the world is expected to make a huge difference to our lives especially in healthcare, transport and education. Could there really be savings of £250 billion just from mobile phone networks?

We hoped you liked our look back at the month of February 2013 and checked out our favourite articles. What were your favourite news stories?

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Wow, what a year 2012 was. Felix Baumgartner smashing into the record books with his 24 mile space jump, the amazing success of Team GB and their 65 medals at the London Olympics, austerity hits the Eurozone while €100 billion of Greek debt was written off, the Queen’s Jubilee and of course the violence in Syria.

Of course, a lot went on in the world of mobile phones too. Some of the biggest news events of the year include the launch of the long-awaited iPhone 5 and the reports that Nokia has finally lost its crown to Samsung after fourteen years at the top.

That’s not all. RIM got a new CEO, HTC changed its focus after a dodgy 2011 and the 4G auction got delayed again and again before we got a brand new mobile network with EE who finally brought 4G to the UK. Also, the latest version of Android was adopted quicker than ever and the Apple App Store had a gargantuan 20 billion downloads!

Phones-wise, we also had the release of the mighty Samsung Galaxy SIII, the Nokia Lumia 800, HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. And who can forget the hilarious and dangerous iOS 6 Maps débâcle?

Here are our favourite mobile stories that we reported on in 2012. We’d say it’s definitely worth going back and checking them out. Are you read for the year 2012 in review? Enjoy!

10. How mobile phones can help in disasters

Let’s start off with a good story. At the end of the year, we reported upon how the senior advisor of Save the Children Francis West is hoping that mobile technology can help more in disaster relief. He claims just having mobile phones will not be enough – you also need accountability, preparation and collaboration to make an effective difference. Definitely worth a read.

9. Vectone Mobile exposed: dishonesty and astroturfing

After receiving several suspicious comments in a row to our Vectone Mobile article, we decided to take a closer look. After some investigation including some IP address sleuthing, we thought we were getting somewhere. Then we looked up some of the email addresses left with the comments on the back-end of the site. What we saw amazed us! It seems that the Head of Online Marketing and Sales at Vectone was going around the articles on Mobile Network Comparison, acting as if he was a customer of Vectone. He was posting multiple comments praising Vectone with no mention whatsoever that he earns his living by trying to promote the company. Busted! We also found evidence of them signing up to phoney accounts to leave similar false forum posts elsewhere and manipulate the opinions of potential customers. The icing on the cake was when we found a post saying “And they suck. It’s a joke!” and managed to trace the IP address to the Vectone offices! Surely one of the most humiliating exposures of astroturfing in 2012?

8. O2 outage liveblog

When O₂ was first hit by an outage on the afternoon of 11 July, we had no idea what was in store for us. Social networks such as Twitter were full of reports from users having trouble (those who had an alternative broadband connection to get online with) and people were reporting issues with Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile too. It took some hours for O₂ to acknowledge the issue but when they said it would be fixed “asap” we thought that meant an hour or two max. By 9pm the outage had hit all the major news networks such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph and then the O₂ website itself crashed. We were the only website liveblogging the whole thing

What we assumed was going to be a short story turned into a total marathon. O₂ reportedly had over 200 engineers working on the problem and by about 8am, some users were managing to regain connectivity on 2G only. After blogging all through the night, we continued to cover every aspect of the story as everything came live again about 3pm the next afternoon. Finally, over 30 hours and 4,00 words after the outage began, we were able to close down the liveblog and start to analyse the fallout. But we weren’t content to leave it like that…

7. What exactly caused the O₂ outage?

Even two weeks after the massive O₂ outage, there’d still not been any proper explanation for how things went quite so catastrophically wrong. Like many others, we were really frustrated by O₂‘s response. They did not take responsibility for the outage or apologise and their compensation offer was insulting. Worst of all, they never really explained what caused such a monumental failure.

Unperturbed, we asked around our industry contacts to see what we could find out. We were the only mobile blog to go in depth and delve into the ins and outs of the structure and logistics of a modern mobile network. By uncovering how O₂ actually runs, we were able to give the explanation they failed to provide about exactly what probably caused the biggest outage in years.

6. Ovivo interview part 1 and part 2

Ovivo Mobile are a new network that launched with a pretty amazing selling-point – they are completely free! We were quick to learn more and were the first to interview CEO and founder Dariush Zand. Click through above to learn about this novel new business model (and stick around for more news on Ovivo in 2013).

5. Giffgaff payback hits £1 million

There’s many good reasons Giffgaff have consistently been rated our #1 network by our readers. Over the few years they’ve been running, they’ve made a big effort to reward their loyal customers and one of the ways in which they do this is to give out free credit and cashback to users and charities. In the middle of 2012, this “payback” smashed all previous records as the total paid out reached over £1 million. This is compared to just £27,000 two years previously when the scheme first started. We reported on the evolution of the payback scheme and its potential future.

4. EE’s 4G pricing released

Many people were critical of EE’s 4G pricing plans when they were first announced back in October. However, the main complaints were simply that it was a bit more expensive. We delved a bit deeper and wrote an in-depth analysis of the price scheme and what the tariffs would mean for you. By giving EE a chance to defend themselves we got a better idea of the point behind the figures but still concluded that the data limits and general fee structure was completely indefensible.

3. Samba Mobile: a first look

This was one of our most commented-upon blog posts ever. In it, we announced a brand new mobile broadband provider called Samba Mobile. Described as “An exciting new service that gives you free mobile broadband to your laptop, desktop or tablet”, they are the distant cousin of ill-fated mobile network Blyk (anyone remember them). We reported on how they give you a free mobile data allowance in exchange for watching adverts.

2. No longer a teen: txt trns 20

To celebrate SMS text messaging turning a significant twenty years old we went back and did some research into its genesis. This detailed article takes you back to the very beginning. From the invention of the text at GSM meetings in 1985 through the first SMS message received in 1993 to modern day technicalities and the explosion of texting in the 2000s. Did you know the most frequent way we get in touch with family and friends is by text and that well over half of UK adults text at least once a day?

1. How to get the cheapest iPhone 5 – 16GB, 32GB, 64GB

This was a series we are incredibly proud of. Dozens of hours of work and statistical number crunching when into these articles that analysed all the different contracts and PAYG options for getting an iPhone 5. We looked at every possible permutation from every possible network operator (there were hundreds in total) and worked out the best value choices available. We used a technique called Total cost of ownership which allowed us to balance the cost of the phone as well as the monthly charge to enable a fair comparison between all the different tariffs. In the end, after lots of calculations, we were able to give recommendations for the absolute cheapest way to buy an iPhone 5 regardless of whether you needed lots of minutes, unlimited data or just to get the best price possible full stop.

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