Mobile Phone thread - please include links to good deals

[Family Fry]

In march there was a lumia 800 firmware update that increased battery life by 3.
Main reason was the idle power draw, apparently it was massive pre-update.
Cheapest Windows 8 for so far will be the HTC WP 8S about ?239.99.

[fishbowlhead]

Anyone got a jelly bean galaxy nexus, has it got music controls on the lock screen as standard, ala like ios and wp7, just cant seem to find any confirmation of this anywhere, grrr?

[wakka]

So EE (the newly merged Orange and T-Mobile network) are launching their 4G service on 30th October. Prices finally got announced today:

http://ee.co.uk/plans

Cheapest is ?36 p/m for 500MB data (lol), most expensive is ?56 for 8GB. They've got a small range of phones including the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy SIII and Note 2, and apparently the Nokia Lumia 920 is coming too.

I've been holding out on getting an iPhone 5 till these prices got announced, but now I'm not sure...I'd have to go for at least 1GB of data (otherwise what's the point?!), which is ?41 p/m. Plus ?109 upfront for the 16GB iPhone.

What do you lot think? Are any of you going to go for it?

[Brad]

Ridiculous. WTF is the point of 4G with a data cap?

[MartyG]

Yeah, innit. On full 4G pelt 500MB would be gone in under 2 minutes

[PeteJ]

Isn't 4g cheaper to run than 3g was? Insane prices that the iSheepies will unfortunately pay for, keeping prices high for the rest of us.

[CMcK]

I would imagine sheep find it difficult to operate a phone without opposable thumbs. It was inevitable that 4G was going to be pricey to start with. Lots of investment in new kit and advertising. And 4G is no use for normal calls so you still need a 3.5/3/2.5/2G fallback.

[fishbowlhead]

Also, what could you possibly need 20mb download speeds on your phone for anyway?

Ive got along just fine on 2g for the last 2 years, ive not even bothered with the 3g toggle on my phone.

[wakka]

iSheepies? Since when was 4G reserved for iPhone users? Absolute bollocks.

[MartyG]

How is 4G coverage currently? Although I get 3G where I am, coverage is still pretty patchy. I really can't see currently why anyone would need 4G unless coverage is better - do you really need 40Mbs on your mobile for the casual browsing? Even in terms of streaming 3G is more than sufficient in speed - the prices don't appear to be that much different, but tiny caps are pretty pointless which makes 4G all the more pointless.

[PeteJ]

iSheepies? Since when was 4G reserved for iPhone users? Absolute bollocks.

We'll see, but I suspect the biggest initial take up for 4G will be iphone owners.

4G will be great once the prices and cap is sorted. Maybe more so for businesses in the short term (mobile working) but later mobile TV, and online gaming etc. Hopefully hardware manufacturers improve battery life significantly soon or it will be pointless though.

Coverage of 3g is poor in the south west, I imagine 4G will be the same!

[koopatroopa90]

I'll take up 4g when its the norm, 3g coverage has only just got to acceptable levels in the past few years and is perfectly fast enough for when I'm out and about anyway.

[charlesr]

If you find any good mobile phone deals, please link them in this thread along with your phone recomendations.

[ETC]

I think it's funny all the 4G shenanigans, Orange or EE or whoever couldn't barely get a bloody GPRS signal going in my area, 3G was reserved for when I was nearer Newcastle now 4G ha ha get your bloody 3G signal right nationally first

back on topic that Nexus 4 seems very decent although reading everywhere it will be much cheaper to go sim free (about ?240) than contract (O2 are offering one for ?36 a month hee hee yeah right )

[charlesr]

IDC found that Google's OS powered 135 million new smartphone purchases last quarter; Apple's OS grew to 14.9% of market due to iphone 5. Windows grew to 2%.