[OT] iPhone or Android...

[grimly4]

I have the Arc S - nice bit of kit. Only drawback was the usual bloatware and rubbish the network operator put on it.

[Steve Firth]

It was in the "buy an iPhone, walk next door to the three shop, buy a SIM deal. I'm not particularly anal about SIMs or phones so I didn't pay a lot of attention. I did sit down with a spreadsheet and work out cost of ownership over two years with various contracts and SIM plans. Three plus phone purchase worked out cheapest.

I've just checked on their site and they now have the same SIM deal for £7.50 a month. I can't see the contract details. However I'll try to find out because it would be worth changing to that SIM for me.

[Steve Firth]

[snip]

I wish I could recall what nickname they give the offering. I'm fairly sure they mailed me recently saying there was an unlimited SIM offer for the same price.

[Steve Firth]

"dennis@home" wrote: [snip]

No it does no such thing.

You really must learn not to talk utter shit.

[snip usual dennisbollocks(tm).]

[dennis]

So you think a phone that gets down to 20% battery with normal use for a day is good, remind me never to trust your opinion on phones.

[Alan Braggins]

Rather more faff than unlocking an Orange San Francisco, but apparently you can do it yourself for free these days:

then the Monte Carlo is newer, bigger, faster. My SF was effectively only £60 because I bought it with Tesco vouchers while they had a 2-for-1 offer on. The iPhone is a much nicer phone of course, but so it should be at that price.

GiffGaff is £10 a month for "unlimited" net. (Where "unlimited" means "fairly unlimited so long as you don't take the piss":

[Mark]

Aren't they all?

[Mark]

Tesco will unlock for free if you've had the deal for a year. All the others charge IIRC. I have found none of my phones were easy to unlock with freely available software. YMMV.

[Mark]

often broken which means that you sometimes can't buy their special deals (Goodybags). They also have a long-term problem accepting payment from some credit & debit cards. Apart from that they are good value ;-)

[Alan Braggins]

If you're prepared to "unlock it, repartition and install CyanogenMod 7" as John suggested then you can probably cope with that.

I've only come across the short-term site brokenness, which is annoying, but you can buy a goodybag in advance to take effect when the current one runs out. (On the other hand you can't buy, for example, a goodybag with unlimited texts to take effect immediately if you have a goodybag that hasn't run out of time but doesn't have any texts left.)

[Steve Firth]

I'm guessing that you have never tried Three for support? In the annals of appalingly poor customer support, Three will stand as a landmark of just how bad it can get if someone really, really, tries.

All the rest are mere amateurs by comparison.

[Bob Martin]

You can unlock Orange San Franciso and Orange Monte Carlo phones for free using software procedures from the appropriate forums.

My son unlocked his Samsung Galaxy S the same way.

[Mark]

I've never tried "3". However I find it hard to imagine how Orange could make their "service" any worse.

[Mark]

I wasn't meaning handset support. Installing new firmware isn't going to help with GG website/network/billing problems.

[John Williamson]

In desperation, they have recently signed a sharing deal with T-Mobile to use each others' base station networks. It hasn't helped much.

[charles]

not so much "signed a sharing deal" but are now owned by the same company

[Andy Burns]

You're thinking of Everything Everywhere which is the merged T-Mobile+Orange, I'm not sure where that merger has left the T-Mobile+Three combined base-station agreement ... anyone know?

[Andy Burns]

Answering my own question ...

Mobile Broadband Network Ltd is a joint venture between Everything Everywhere and Three, so that network effectively consists of 12,000 3G masts formerly belonging to Orange, Three & T-Mobile, with a further

5,000 redundant masts having been decommissioned.

[Tim Watts]

Three's phone support is shit. I did call it once - took 1/2 hour talking to a stroppy indian lady who knew f*ck all about anything.

I was at least making the phone call from the Three shop so at least it was free...

However, their data packages are good and in some parts of East Sussex, they are the only operator with decent coverage. O2 is utter s**te and even Vodaphone are a bit dodgey south of T Wells.

[Mark]

Sounds like Orange. I once spent nearly 3 hours on the phone to them talking to various foreigners who knew f*ck all.

I was paying for the call too since calling from the handset free always results in me being cut off mid-call.

Coverage is poor here as with all the operators.