Mobile Network Comparison

About a month ago we covered Three Mobile’s new groundbreaking 321 tariff. They’ve really stepped up their game by bringing out what are easily the UK’s cheapest PAYG rates ever.

Previously, calls used to cost 26p per minute but now you’ll only have to pay a tiny 3p. Texts were also slashed from 11p each down to just 2p each. And data went down the most dramatically from 11p/MB to just 1p/MB.

Unsurprisingly, industry experts and consumers alike have been praising Three’s bold move. This is really set to shake up the mobile market and hopefully will make the existing big players rethink whether they can continue to rip off the British public.

However, although these are easily the best rates currently available, we had to ask whether it’s really the cheapest way to use your phone. Longtime readers are aware that our main mission is to save you, the user, as much cash as possible.

While you won’t do better on standard PAYG, lots of PAYG operators have been offering rolling monthly bundles recently which can offer phenomenal value for money. How much are Three really upping the ante when compared to these deals? In this article, we take a look at the biggest competitor to Three’s new 321 tariff, Giffgaff.

Giffgaff charges quite a bit more than Three on their standard PAYG with calls coming in at 10p/minute and texts costing a comparatively-pricey 8p each. Data is also 1p/MB but only if you use 20 MB per day – after that it explodes to an exorbitant 20p per MB However, they also offer a variety of monthly goodybags ranging from just £5 to £20.

 

The showdown

Let’s start off with the cheapest, the £5 Hokey Cokey goodybag. this comes with 60 included minutes, 300 texts and 20MB of mobile data.

On 321, this would set you back a total of £8. And also bear in mind that you also get additional free minutes on the Hokey Cokey goodybag for every minute someone calls you and to all other Giffgaff customers.

Giffgaff wins

 

Next is the £7.50 goodybag which offers you 200 minutes, unlimited texts and 250 MB of data.

Even if we ignore the unlimited texts, this would cost more on 321 coming in at £8.50 for the same usage. If you use just 150 texts a month it would be £11.50 and if you went up to 300 a month your costs would be a whole £7 more at £14.50.

Giffgaff wins

 

Probably Giffgaff’s most popular goodybag is the £10 goodybag coming with a massive 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of tetherable data.

Taking an extreme example, if you only used half the allowances and didn’t send a single text you’d still have to pay more on 321 with your cost being £12.62 instead of £10. And if you just made 500 minutes of calls and didn’t use any data or SMS you’d have to pay £15 on Three instead. It gets worse – if you use up your full 500 minute and 1GB allowance as well as send about 150 texts, the price on 321 would be over 300% that of Giffgaff coming in at a massive £31.24.

Giffgaff wins

 

The next option is the £12 goodybag which offers 250 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data.

Again, 321 costs a lot more even if you only use a fraction of your allowance. For example, making 150 minutes of calls, 200 texts and using half a gig of data would be £13.62 on Three compared to £12 on Giffgaff. If you start to make the most of those unlimited allowances and still only make 150 minutes of calls but with 1.5 GB of mobile internet and 400 texts, it’s more than twice as much at £27.86 on 321.

Giffgaff wins

 

The £15 goodybag on Giffgaff gives you 400 minutes as well as the same unlimited texts and data.

Unsurprisingly, this also seems to beat the 321 tariff under reasonable usage conditions. If you manage to get through 300 of your minutes and send 300 texts as well as use half a GB of your data allowance you’ll still pay £15 on Giffgaff but over £20 on Three. If you use the full allowance of 400 minutes as well as send 300 texts and use 1GB of data, your costs on 321 would be almost twice as much as on Giffgaff!

However, to be fair we should also mention Three’s monthly bundle on PAYG which also costs £15. This offers 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 1GB of data. So while it’s not as good value as Giffgaff, it’s certainly a better choice than the 321 tariff if you have this level of usage. In fact, if you used these full amounts on 321, it would set you back a massive £79.24!

Giffgaff and Three draw

 

Finally, we’ve got the £20 goodybag which still comes with unlimited texts and data as well as a massive 1200 minutes.

Even if you completely ignored your unlimited texts and internet access and just made 700 minutes of calls, it would still be more expensive to choose 321 over Giffgaff. And if you wanted to make 1200 minutes of calls and just 300 texts and 1GB of data you’d be looking at over £50 compared to just £20 with a goodybag.

Giffgaff wins

 

Verdict

So there you have it. The final score is pretty obvious: in almost all our examples, Giffgaff turned out to be much cheaper than Three’s new 321 tariff. So make sure you run some calculations before you switch over! If you currently have monthly usage around any of the amounts offered by Giffgaff’s goodybags, you’ll almost certainly be better off than switching to a pure PAYG tariff like 321.

Of course, there are some important caveats to be aware of if you really want to save money. Firstly, it’s only worth getting a goodybag if you will normally use up a decent portion of it. If you spend £10 on a goodybag and only use a fifth of your minutes and, say, 100 texts and 250MB of data, you’ll still be paying but could have spent just £9.06 on Three (even though you could have saved money by going for the £7.50 goodybag instead).

If you are a very low user you will also do better with 321. For example, if you only make about 20 mins of calls and 20 texts a month and don’t user internet at all, your price on Three will be just £1 compared to £3.60 on Giffgaff. So make sure you’ve checked to make sure your choice is the best option for you.

And don’t forget that Giffgaff also has other ways to save money such as free calls, texts and video chats to all other Giffgaff users which can be a real money saver if you know lots of people who also use the network.

How much money can you save by switching PAYG provider? Let us know who you’re choosing and why.

EE’s first survey into how customers use 4G mobile internet has revealed a large surge in the use of video streaming as well as uploads from phones. The incredibly unsurprising news from the 4GEE Mobile Living Index shows that customers on faster 4G connections use more bandwidth on video streaming than they did when on the older 3G standard.

The research uses customer surveys as well as a statistical analysis of traffic patterns and packet content to provide an insight into how 4G is being used in the UK. Specifically, the 4GEE Mobile Living Index looked at data from the first seven months of the operation of the 4G service as well as responses from 1,000 4G users in May.

Even less surprisingly, EE’s report shows that mobile data usage peaks at certain times such as during the morning and afternoon commute and even with sneaky lunch break usage. Of course, the heaviest time for internet use is in the evening after work.

Also pretty obvious is the revelation that users with large-screened devices stream the most video. More interestingly, more women have taken up 4G contracts over the last few months with their representation rising to over 40% from just over a quarter when 4G first launched.

In particular, streaming through services such as iPlayer and Netflix as well as other ways of downloading and uploading videos accounted for over 25% of all traffic on EE’s 4G network. TV and film streaming in particular has seen a significant increase as YouTube now only accounts for 14% of data usage. And major sports and culture events such as Wimbledon also result in large bumps in traffic on the network.

As far as reports from customers went, over 50% surveyed reported that they make use of the faster internet access more than they did when on a 3G connection. They also said that they no longer rely on wifi connections as frequently. Some even are replacing their home broadband entirely with mobile 4G access despite the strict bandwidth limits.

Perhaps because of these limits, it shouldn’t be so surprising that basic web browsing still uses up a large proportion of EE’s 4G traffic. People may still be somewhat reluctant to make full use of the high speed access to streamed content due to the rate at which it can use up their allowance. As an example of this, social media use on mobile is growing at a massive rate and is expected to massively rise by an order of magnitude over the next two years.

Backing this up, Ofcom’s latest Communications Market Report claimed that most customers do not think that 4G offers good value for money. It remains to be seen how competition from other networks offering 4G services will affect things, but almost half said that they are not planning to upgrade to 4G LTE due to the data charges.

O₂ and Vodafone plan to launch their rival 4G services imminently. And Three Mobile will surely follow soon after that.

Do you have a 4G connection on your mobile? Do you regularly stream video content? How are you using your phone differently compared to with only 3G internet?

Leaked photos of the shell of the new iPhone 5S strongly suggest that it will feature a fingerprint scanner. Sources have revealed what is said to be shell of a new upgraded version of the iPhone, expected to be named the iPhone 5S. The placement of new holes that didn’t exist in the regular iPhone 5 shell are said to indicate the addition of a fingerprint scanner in Apple’s next flagship model.

The rumours are further supported by Apple’s acquisition of mobile security firm AuthenTec over a year ago. AuthenTec have been running for over 15 years now and specialise in tiny fingerprint sensors that can be embedding into micro-electronics. Apple forked out over £225 million on buying out the Florida-based company putting their value at an value 60% higher than before the sale.

After spending such a substantial sum, it now make perfect sense for Apple to use the IP that comes with AuthenTec to integrate their technology into future iOS devices. In particularly Apple will be eyeing up the lucrative government contracts traditionally won by BlackBerry. As BlackBerry struggles more and more and its new BB10 software update seems increasingly-doomed to failure, there is a gap in the market opening up that Apple will be keen to move into. Beefing up the security on iPhones will be particularly important if it wants to become the new provider to national security services.

Apple is also clearly hoping that fingerprint scanners will be come the latest must-have smartphone feature. Writing on TechRadar, Gareth Beavis argues that biometric fingerprint scanners will “change the world again”.

However, even if the iPhone 5S does have this new feature, we don’t see it being such a big shake up. First of all, it’s not exactly a new idea. Many laptops have had similar sensors for years and years. While its true that Apple has a good track record of transforming old ideas and making them ready for the prime time (viz. tablet computers), we can’t see this being much more than a new gimmick.

Beavis claims that this ushers in a “moment that heralds a shift in the way we use phones forever” but offers no real evidence other than unlocking your phone with a fingerprint is easier than swiping a pattern or using a 4-digit PIN. Unfortunately, he wildly overestimates the robustness of this as a security feature. Sure, unlocking with a fingerprint might be faster than other methods, but it would be naïve to say that current technology makes it much more secure.

After all, the original iPhone and iPhone 3G didn’t even have hardware encryption and software such as the iOS Forensic Toolkit can perform relatively fast brute-force attacks on other versions of the iPhone. Even if Apple doesn’t have a backdoor to decrypt the content of iPhones, the general consensus is that it’s doable to break the security if you really want/need to.

It could prove to be useful for mobile payments. It could certainly be one of those Apple moments when they take something that has existed for ages but never quite caught on and get it right leading to everyone else following suit to remain competitive. We just don’t see it. Apple CEO Tim Cook is already being heavily criticised for the recent lack of innovation at Cupertino and this could be more of a desperate attempt to prove himself to broad members.

So what else do we know about the new iPhone? Other rumoured features on the iPhone 5S include a new low-power high-res screen from Sharp, a better camera with dual flash, NFC and, finally, modern OS features such as homescreen widgets (nah, only kidding about that last one but you do get different colours, yay ;)). There will probably also be a cheaper model called the iPhone 5C.

The new iPhone 5S is rumoured to be coming out some time in September. Apple have already announced a large media event on the 10th September where the full details about the new iPhone models are expected to be revealed.

What do you think about the rumours so far? Is a fingerprint scanner definitely going to be a new feature? Will it ever be more than just a gimmick? And what’s your bet for the release date of the new iPhones?