Mobile Network Comparison

You’ve probably already heard – the latest genius idea from the arbiters of freedom, the TSA, is to require you to turn your mobile phone on before boarding flights. Ostensibly as part of new “security” measures, if your phone is dead when checked by airport staff, they can confiscate your device.

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said in a post on its website. It warned: “Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft. The traveller may also undergo additional screening.

We’ve already written at length about how this new directive is a completely useless policy and so rigid that it does to increase our safety. It’s just another example of pointless security theatre.

However, we have to be pragmatic. The simple facts are that smartphone put greater demands than ever on our phone’s battery life. And now, you simply need to have enough power left to demonstrate that your phone will turn on to get through airport security.

So, to help you decide what’s the best phone to buy for battery life, we’ve taken a look at handsets with the best batteries. It’s no use sacrificing features and power just for days of standby time so we’ve only looked at recent smartphones. But we’ve made careful measurements of the real-world battery life you get from a full charge when using your phone normally including making calls, browing the internet and watching videos. The results of our test produced the following list of the top five smartphones that are least likely to cause you to miss your flight.

Nokia Lumia 1520

Only £335.00

The Lumia 1520 has a massive 3,400 mAh capacity battery. Amazingly, even though it has a huge power-hungry 6″ display too, it lasts a long time. Windows Phone 8 isn’t always the most efficient mobile OS, but it works great here!

In terms of talk time we got almost thirty hours out of the phone.

Web browsing was also very impressive. Over wifi with the screen constantly on we got about twelve and a half hours on average.

Finally, we looked at its performance on video. Watching videos on the massive display looked great and it lasted well over ten hours every time we tried! Amazing 🙂

 

Sony Xperia Z2

Was £559.99 Now only £476.99

The Sony Xperia Z2 is a great phone. Not only is is waterproof and dust resistant but it also comes with a 20.7 megapixel camera sporting 4K Ultra HD video recording and a lush 5.2″ display.

Despite all this power, it also has a great battery life. When using it to make voice calls, we saw a single charge lasting well over twenty hours.

It also did well in our internet browsing test. We managed to get over eleven hours use out of the battery.

And the 3,200 mAh battery also performed well for video playback on the lovely screen. Our tests constantly showed that it would last for over twelve hours.

 

Motorola RAZR MAXX

Only £199.99

The Droid RAZR MAXX had a pretty impressive battery life but the GSM version, the Motorola RAZR MAXX, manages to do even better. This might be because it’s running a later version of Android but who knows.

In terms of calls, it lasts well over twenty-one hours on a single charge.

Browsing the internet over wifi is also a strong point. In fact, it will keep going for over nine hours!

And video playback is where it really excels. Believe it or not, but the RAZR NAXX can endure for well over fifteen hours without a top-up. That’s pretty amazing!

 

Huawei Ascend Mate

Only £214.40

The Huawei Ascend Mate is no slouch. For only a bit over £200, you get a 6.1″ screen, 1.5GHz Cortex A9 processor and a 16-core graphics chip. Thankfully, you also get a huge 4050 mAh Li-Ion battery.

Talk time was already very impressive with the phone lasting over twenty-five hours.

And the performance for web browsing wasn’t bad either with a full charge lasting over eight hours in our tests.

Despite the massive display, the handset also impressed when we subjected it to a video playback stress test. We managed to keep it going for over twelve hours.

 

HTC One Max

Only £140.56

Another great choice is the HTC One Max. This comes complete with an impressive 3,300 mAh cell.

The official rating for talk time was twenty five hours. We didn’t quite manage to match this in our tests but the actual score of over twenty two hours wasn’t bad either.

The web browsing performance was also decent with the phone lasting well over eleven hours on one charge.

Finally, we tested video playback in the same way as before. HTC’s smartphone did great and we were able to keep watching for over thirteen hours. Not bad!

And, as a bonus – not a smartphone but a great idea nonetheless:

Morphie Juice Pack PowerStation Pro

Was £104.99 Now only £85.48

As everyone who owns a smartphone knows, battery life leaves a lot to be desired especially compared to the dumbphones we used not so long ago. This is where the Morphie Juice Pack PowerStation Pro comes in. Morphie have been pioneers in producing additional battery packs and this is one of their flagship products. It features rugged metal construction as well as an additional 6000 mAh of battery power to ensure that your phone will keep chugging on for days and days. Even better, it has an output of over 2 amps meaning it will recharge your phone as fast as possible. It is also impact and splash resistant.

It may be expensive, but this is a high-end product and should be able to recharge your handset to full capacity at least twice meaning it’s perfect for a long weekend away. It can also charge standard USB devices from its meaning it’s quite versatile. From experience, we know that this product can be an absolute lifesaver is worth taking with you everywhere you go.

Giffgaff is down! We’re getting reports that Giffgaff is suffering a partial network outage. It’s not yet clear whether O₂ and Tesco Mobile are also affected. We’ll update from across various sources as the situation progresses.

2G and 3G calls –  Available
2G and 3G texts –  Available
2G and 3G data –  Available
Emergency calls –  Available

Update 18:02

Okay, it’s been a while now with nothing new to report so we’re going to close down the liveblog. Thanks for following and to all those who contacted us with updates 🙂

Update 17:15

We're going to close down the giffgaff outage liveblog soon as it seems sorted. Comment if you still have issues: http://t.co/fhXTgY4m9v

— Mobile Comparison (@networkcompare) December 3, 2014

Update 17:11

Giffgaff community website seems a bit sluggish at the mo…

Official Update 17:07

@RichardDowling9 And on that note, everything should be back up and running now. http://t.co/lNjEpeUHXC.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 17:06

More and more reports that giffgaff is fixed now coming in.

— Mobile Comparison (@networkcompare) December 3, 2014

Update 17:02

The outage has also been reported elsewhere now.

Update 17:00

It’s 5pm now so this has been going on for about two hours. Thankfully we’re hearing more and more people getting their mobile data back again but it’s still not fixed for everyone. But – without trying to jinx it – the worst might be over now.

Official Update 16:58

Giffgaff have changed the status icons to show that everything is Available again now.

Official Update 16:56

Hi all, thanks for being so patient with us on this while we work through a fix. Quite a few of you are now posting that you can access your data once more, and we’re pleased to confirm that this service is now back up and running. The main website should also allow you to view your balances and goodybag allowances as usual. If not, try a simple refresh – sometimes, the wrong page gets cached in your browser and a refresh updates it.

As part of our troubleshooting steps, we blocked access to giffgaff.com from mobile devices, and we’re going to be lifting that restriction soon. In addition, some of you may find that transactions that you were doing during the issue take a while to process – for example, activations or topups – we’ll be working through these as soon as we can. If you’re planning on topping up or activating a SIM, I’d recommend holding off for a short while until we clear that backlog.

Update 16:52

3G appears to be up in most places but not 4G yet.

Official Update 16:41

We’re still working on bringing things back up. I know quite a few members have reported their data is working once more but we’re not yet in a position to confirm it completely. I’m checking in with the folks.

Official Update 16:34

Hi everyone

Thanks so much for your patience, we understand how frustrating it can be not being able to get signal/data when you need it. Thanks to everyone reporting locations to us, it’s really helpful for us to know which areas have been affected by this so the right departments can look into this issue further.

We’ll be updating this as soon as we make any progress in getting this resolved so stay tuned.

Thanks again for your patience in this and we apologise for the inconvenience caused by this.

Update 16:32

We’re getting reports that data is now back up in some areas. Downtime was approximately two hours.

Update 16:25

We’re hearing that not all phones are down. It might depend upon what goodybag you’re using. So far, it only seems to be affecting data.

Official Update 16:17

Hi all, sorry for the blip in the community site, we had to restart it to make sure everyone could access it without it slowing down.

We’re still investigating the cause of these issues – you may be able to see that out main page is now available in a limited capacity. Once we make further progress I’ll make sure to keep you informed.

Update 16:10

Data still down here and nothing new to report from Giffgaff themselves.

Official Update 15:48

Hi all, a quick update for you on this. We have a couple of early ideas of what could be the cause for this based on the behaviour of giffgaff as a whole and we’re in touch with the people that provide various different services to make sure we can narrow it down. Once we’re certain of the cause of the issue we’ll move ahead with steps to address it and I’ll make sure you’re all aware.

I want to apologise for any issues you’re facing – I promise that we’ll get it sorted as soon as we’re able.

Official Update 15:17

Hi all – we’ve seen some intermittent issues with the main giffgaff website being unavailable and so to make sure we can get it sorted we’ve taken the site to our outage server. This means that you won’t be able to access My giffgaff or the main site until we get it sorted and bring it back up.

We’re also investigating reports of network issues for some members, although others are reporting no issues. Once we know more we’ll make sure that we loop you in on that as well.

Keep an eye on this thread for updates as soon as we make progress.

Update 15:24

Yup: definitely an outage. Officially acknowledged now:

@Mallwill Apologies. We're currently investigating similar reports and will update everyone via http://t.co/zGJTwHcFmL soon.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 15:21

Seems that the website has been down for some time too.

@PandoraRaaain currently the website is experiencing a technical issue this will hopefully be resolved asap.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 15:20

Giffgaff seems to be down. Keep checking back here for the latest updates.

The Co-operative Mobile is a MVNO that’s part of The Phone Co-op. Across the whole company they have over 10,000 members and made revenues of over £10 million.

The mobile division is just a part of the whole group but it also operates under the Rochdale Principles which require payment of a yearly dividend that is proportional to each member’s spend. Last year, this came to 2.5%. They also offer great UK coverage through EE.

Like many co-ops, they do loads of good and last year they were Accredited as a Living Wage Employer by the Living Wage Foundation. They also sell mobile phones alongside their 30 day rolling contracts and they recently because the exclusive UK stockist of Fairphone’s great dual-SIM FPU1 “ethical” smartphones.

We had a chat to ask them a few questions about the mobile network and learn a bit more:

You started with mobile way back in 2010 – can you explain a little more about the genesis of the company as well as the management team and their background?

We were founded in 1998. Originally, we provided landline calls at lower rates than the competition. Since then, we have added broadband, line rental and then mobile in 2010. We have traded profitably every year since our foundation, with the exception of 2005-2006, which was affected by our rescue of an internet co-operative in Manchester, which we incorporated into our business.

Our decision to expand into mobile services was taken in response to demand from our customers and members and to market trends affecting landline revenues and margins experienced during the 2000s. We started with post-paid services in 2010, expanding into Pay As You Go in 2014. This move into mobile has broadened our appeal and resulted in increased revenues and turnover. Last financial year, we made £555,000 profit before distributions.

One problem we have with your question is that we are not a company, we are a consumer co-operative. This means that we are owned and ultimately controlled by our customers who choose to become members. As we are owned my our members we aren’t focussed on putting money into the pockets of external shareholders. A customer becomes a member by investing between £1 and £100,000 into our co-operative. Of our 27,000 customers, over 10,000 have chosen to become members, investing £4,650,000 into our business (as of 28th Feb 2014).

In return, they receive interest on their investment (currently 2%) and a share of any profit. Last year the dividend paid was 2.5% of the members’ annual pre-VAT expenditure with us. Last but not least, our members benefit from having a say in the way that their business is run and how the profits and cash reserves are invested.

Our management team is experienced and balanced. You can see details of their experience on LinkedIn and our Chief Executive is Vivian Woodell, our Head of Operations is Craig Lumsden, our Chief Financial Officer is Lisa Logan while Fiona Ravenscroft is our current Head of Products.

Good point and thanks for correcting us! What does being a co-operative mean to you personally and why do you think it’s important?

Co-operation is embedded in the DNA of our business. We are a consumer co-operative that exists to serve its members, and inspire others with an alternative, better model for business and the economy.

This means that we operate always only with the support of our membership. Our aims and beliefs are not the same as our corporate competitors.

We encourage our customers to think about what they really need and not to consume products for the sake of consuming products! This philosophy resonates with our customers and members and means that our churn rate is lower than the competition. Our members want us to do good with their money, while taking care to offer them the service at the best possible price.

As well as being a co-operative, we are a social enterprise and were recognised as “social enterprise of the year” in 2008. A social enterprise is an organisation that has strong social aims and uses a business model to achieve those social aims, reinvesting all or the majority of its profits to further and support those aims, rather than creating private wealth.

Could you describe the brand in three words?

Co-operative, ethical, competitive.

Makes sense. Now, the MVNO market is incredibly saturated and competitive these days and customers only seem to care about the bottom line – what’s your USP and what would you say to convince someone to join?

I would not agree that customers only care about the bottom line; based on an online survey of our Pay As You Go customers that we conducted just recently, 6 months after launching, we have a 91% customer satisfaction rate with 89% saying they would recommend the service to a friend. Our fair pricing is the number one reason cited for customer satisfaction and next to our great rates our co-operative business model is the primary reason our customers mentioned for choosing us. Note also that according to Ethical Consumer Magazine’s statistics the ethical share of the retail market is around 5% which is still a lot of customers for an MVNO.

I would say that Our Pay As You Go are competitive rates matching the other supermarket tariffs together with honest pricing and excellent customer service. We explain our proposition clearly, people understand what we’re doing and come to us because they want not only competitive pricing but care where they spend their money.

We are a social enterprise and a Living Wage employer. As of October 2013, we had invested £234,000 of our profits in the Co-operative & Social Economy Development Fund, of which £146,500 has so far been invested into ventures such as solar and wind power as well as community pubs and community-owned football clubs. In addition, we have invested more than £622k in solar panels.

Since the business started we have been running affinity schemes; charities, non-profit and co-operative organisations can raise money by promoting our service to their members and supporters and earn a commission based on their members’ spend with us. Last year (up to August 2013), we paid over £59k to partners such as The Soil Association and The Big Issue.

Our ethical reputation has meant that we were engaged as the sole UK stockist of Fairphone, a smartphone which puts social values first.

So there you go… That’s it for part 1 of our interview. We hope you found it as interesting as we did. And if you have any questions about some of the issues and products covered in this discussion, please let us know in the comments below…