Omio News Blog

Omio Mobile Phone Price Survey: Savings Show Online Retailers Still On Top

6 months ago, Omio ran a survey to see exactly how much could be saved by shopping for a mobile phone online as opposed to on the high street – and the details were startling.

We found that a regular contract for a popular handset (the Nokia N96 at that time) could cost as much as £360 more than the equivalent mobile deal from an online retailer.

Well, it’s about time we checked up on the current state of mobile phone deals, so we decided to run another high street survey, comparing the offers found against the 400,000+ currently on our site for the most recession-friendly offers…but it seems like online is still king when it comes to saving those pennies.

Since our last survey, the networks have become a lot more savvy to the virtue of online-only offers, with most of the major carriers offering more texts, minutes and cheaper monthly line rental in exchange for avoiding their high street outlets and signing-up by surfing the web.

O2 offers double the number of free texts on many of their online deals as well as special web-only tariffs which are particularly easy on the pocket, whilst Orange and T-Mobile both shave a few quid off a number of their tariffs in exchange for shoppers going digital.

Vodafone have even gone as far as to one-up the online retailers, offering genuine half price line rental deals where customers can save 50% for a large part of their contract’s duration before it jumps back up to full price.

However, our biggest finding was still that the smart shopper could save even more by visiting independent online retailers, in some cases as much as 40% on an 18 month contract.

Using a few phones as case studies, the disparities in price of the ever-popular Nokia 5800 XpressMusic were quite surprising in particular.

Looking for an 18-month, £25 deal on a Nokia 5800, the closest available in an O2 retail outlet was a package which would include 200 minutes and 200 texts for £24.48 per month. However, the handset itself would cost us £48.93.

An online Mobiles.co.uk deal charges nothing for the handset – an instant saving of just under £50 – as well as offering more minutes (600) and unlimited texts, as well as half price line rental for 15 months of the contract – the equivalent of paying only £12.50 per month.

That is a saving of £178 over the course of an 18 month contract, going up to £226.93 when including the cost of the handset itself.

Much the same was found when looking at similarly priced tariffs from other retailers, where an equivalent monthly cost of £25 could stretch much further with greater minutes and texts, free gifts ranging from laptops and iPods to games consoles, as well as discounted line rental and cashback offers.

A standard 18-month 5800XM deal on BuyMobilePhones.net offers 700 minutes and unlimited texts each month, as well as a free Acer laptop (worth over £200) for £25 per month and a handset cost of £19.99.

A more pricey mobile like the Blackberry Curve 8900 – a messaging smart phone with multimedia functionality – still gleaned a number of better offers when checking the online retailers…

Whilst a contract over a longer duration offered equivalent reductions in monthly line rental, the 24 month deals offered by the networks paled in comparison to the best that the web had to offer.

Whilst the cheapest we had to plump for was a 24 month, £25 Combi tariff to get the handset for free at a T-Mobile store (which rose to £30 with a compulsory e-mail booster), Dial-A-Phone offers the Curve on an 18-month tariff for the same price, with 100 less free minutes but half price line rental for 6 months, making it £12.50 for 1/3 of the duration.

So not only is the consumer saving on monthly fees, they are tied into a contract for a shorter length of time than with the networks.

Cashback offers might seem great, although shoppers need to be savvy about exactly how to redeem these discounts from the retailers. Many make the cashback redemption easy, but others have a number of hoops to jump through before you reap the savings. Ofcom has recently weighed in to make the process more transparent, which is great news, but the onus is also on the networks to make their deals on the high street a little more appealing.

Whilst using sites like Omio can help cut through the mobile maze with like-for-like comparison, the first port of call for many is their local outlet and they are currently not giving the whole story on deals that are available.

Whilst some store staff admitted there were better deals to be had on their websites, many were content to offer us packages which we knew to have far less minutes and texts than their own online counterparts, for the same price.

We are more than a little surprised that even in the face of a recession and increasingly savvy shoppers, the high street is not trying hard enough to draw attention away from the online indie retailer.

Whilst their web sites now promise deals galore, the combination of a lack of information and a vested interest towards steering uninformed consumers towards pricier monthly tariffs seem to make buying a phone on the high street confusing, expensive, and often a waste of good shoe leather.

We have found that the wealth of information at one’s fingertips and the ability to directly comapre the full range of tariffs and deals on offer at a glance makes shopping online still the best way to buy the latest mobile phones, at the right price.

New iPhone Games Showcased At Apple Event, iPod Touch To Take On Handhelds

Apple’s event on the 9th of September was as much about software as it was new iPod hardware (and the triumphant return of Steve Jobs), and the popularity of apps (with mobile gaming in particular) is a huge contributing factor to the device’s unwavering success at present.

On hand to cement the iPod/iPhone’s credentials as a gaming platform were some of the world’s biggest developers, showing off flagship games for the holiday season.

First up to bat was Ubisoft, branching out their Assassin’s Creed franchise to the iPhone after the success of the original ‘Altair’s Chronicles‘ (itself an improved port of a Nintendo DS title).

The iPhone sequel will be released day and date with Assassin’s Creed II on home consoles this November, albeit with iPhone exclusive features like adding your photo into the game as a ‘wanted’ poster mugshot!

Check it out in this video.

Second up was Tapulous, the company that started from jailbreaker’s favourite Tap Tap Revolution to becoming a mobile movement with Tap Tap Revenge, a hugely popular iPhone rhythm game.

Riddim Ribbon offers a strange cross of WipEout and Rock Band, having the player groove-riding and beat matching with a neon art style reminiscent of classic game Amplitude.

The ability to save mixes and send them to friends places this title above the plethora of post-Guitar Hero music games flooding the store.

It looks like fun, but here’s hoping that there are tracks from artists other than Black Eyed Peas…please?

They were swiftly followed by Gameloft, undoubtedly the current rulers of the iPhone gaming roost. With 35 titles and almost 20 million downloads, their ‘mockbuster’ approach of creating titles insipred by popular console games is proving highly lucrative.

With production values dwarfing the majority of gaming efforts – mobile or otherwise – games like Modern Combat: Sandstorm, Gangstar: West Coast Hustle and Blades of Fury (aping Call of Duty 4, Grand Theft Auto and Soul Calibur respectively) are technically impressive for a portable format and a huge amount of fun.

With lawyer-baiting degrees of inspiration taken from Xbox franchise Halo, N.O.V.A. is a first person perspective shooter that places gamers in the battle-scarred boots of a space marine, fighting an alien horde.

With 12 levels, 5 weapons and online multiplayer over both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, N.O.V.A. offers as much as many full price console titles before even taking into account iPhone-specific features like push notification, voice chat and media player support.

Oh, and it looks amazing, check out the Apple event footage below.

Last, but not least was the behemoth of gaming, Electronic Arts. With their unwavering support for the iPhone from the outset, EA brought some of their biggest franchises including Need For Speed, The Sims and Tiger Woods Golf to mobiles, and had many casual fans sitting up to take notice.

With Madden 10 for iPod and iPhone, they continue a trend of scaling the big titles to fit in pockets around the world, with as few concessions as possible.

Available now, Madden 10 brings the incomprehensible sport of American Football complete with shoulder pads, touchdowns and perky cheerleaders to mobile devices. Check it out now.

What these games show is not only that the iPod Touch and iPhone serve as perfectly competent gaming devices, they can arguably offer experiences favourably comparable to dedicated handheld consoles.

A graph showing the number of games available on the iPhone in comparison to other formats is moot, quantity definitely does not amount to quality as far as the App Store is concerned, but one point which cannot be argued is the relative pricing of new releases.

For a handheld title to cost as much as £30 becomes a lot less palatable when the latest triple-A offering from the same publisher comes in under a fiver on the App Store.

That’s not to say EA didn’t try, with their opening salvo costing £8-9 upon their release, but they soon realised the error of their ways when consumers voted by keeping their wallets shut, driving prices down. How long before the same happens to the latest costly releases on rival formats?

Digital downloads are undoubtedly the future, with the PSP Go eschewing a disc drive serving as proof that manufacturers are serious in embracing this model.

However, with the cost of an iPhone game currently less than a quarter of the price of ‘equivalent’ titles on other formats and available without a trip to the high street, this will be the area where the DS and (to a lesser extent) Sony’s handheld are made to look pretty archaic.

The Nintendo DSi does currently offer an on-line download store, but one in which decent titles are outweighed by gimmicky applications like Mario themed clocks and Animal Crossing calculators, as well as fracturing the market by remaining out of the reach of DS and DS Lite owners.

The controversial decision to remove the drive from the PSP Go in its entirety makes it incapable of playing the vast majority of existing software, but does open it up to their exciting new idea of micro-games called ‘PSP Minis’. Some of these are admittedly iPhone app ports, but at least Sony are actively seeking to combat the popularity of the iPhone as a gaming platform.

Charging £225 for a dedicated gaming device in the PSP Go, however, is not the most appealing way of going about it…

Both of these responses are arguably a kneejerk reaction to the iPhone changing the gaming landscape with the App Store, and their degrees of success are yet to be measured.

What is certain is that the combination of improving the titles on offer both by beefing up the iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS, as well as lowering the barrier to entry with a $199 model levels the iPod touch squarely at both Sony and Nintendo’s handheld offerings, with Apple are ready to fire at them with everything they’ve got.

10 Reasons Why PSP Minis Are A Bad Idea

Sony are in a tough position. We know it, they know it. So when they decided to rip out the disc drive and stick £100 on the price of the Playstation Portable, we were more than a little confused.

When they decided to announce ‘PSP Minis,’ a range of downloadable games for the format (which they insist are not apps), we were downright perplexed.

Apps work on the iPhone, and mobiles in general. The PSP is quite literally not a mobile phone and leave us fearful for the fate of both this new direction, and the format in general. We think it may not be the success they hope for many reasons, a few of which we have decided to mention here:

1. Shovelware

The iPhone has a lot of bad games, but the community rating systems mean the best things rise to the top, and word of mouth means the decent titles always get some visibility above the detritus. The PSP will soon see some of the best iPhone apps ported over, but a lot of them will be identical, and in many cases come off worse than the original.

Controlling Fieldrunners with an analogue nub over a grid is faster and less laborious than pinching and pulling on the iPhone 3GS? Even Pocket Gamer admitted it might not be the case.

“Subatomic has decided to leave the watertight gameplay alone in favour of slapping some extra layers of polish onto the game’s presentation,” seems to translate to “there is nothing new that the PSP can bring, so updates are largely cosmetic”.

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2. PSP Go is a bad idea.

A PSP Go is £225. £225. £30 less than a Sony Playstation 3, the most technically advanced games console currently available. It is, in terms of technical prowess and button layout, identical to the original PSP. People who buy this will only be able to play downloadable games from the Playstation Network, as it no longer has a disc drive to support the hundreds of games currently available for the PSP. This is the platform which Minis will be launched on, lauded about, and hopefully downloaded in their millions.

Stop me when this is starting to sound like a good idea.

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3. No Apps Allowed.

The best apps that people show each other down the pub aren’t the shooters or desktop defence games, as fun as they are. They are the apps that can split a bill seven ways with a 13% tip, show you the closest toilet, or name the tune that’s playing on the jukebox in seconds. To limit the ‘Minis’ to only games is understandable in terms of keeping the PSP focused on gaming, but narrowing the scope of what can be made is limiting to developers and is much to the device’s detriment.

At the time of writing, six of the top 25 paid titles on the App Store are actual applications, including the top-selling one. Would apps equally highlight the shortcomings of the PSP rather than provide an entertaining non-gaming distraction? With no internal camera or connectivity beyond Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, some of the most fun and functional apps wouldn’t be able to make the leap intact…

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4. Dev kits are too expensive.

€1,200. That’s how much it costs for the PSP development kit, suggesting that this is far more targeted at the small indie developer upwards, rather than the lone guy in a back room with some programming skills. The sign-up process requests all sorts of data including tax codes and company IP addresses, so Sony knows that they are limiting the potential gems that can be created to smaller dev houses belonging to big publishers. iPhone success stories like Trism and iShoot have turned one man dev teams into millionaires, those people may be immediately turned off by the initial barrier to entry posed by a pricey development toolset.

The great thing about the App Store is that those homegrown titles could stand shoulder to shoulder with the high profile, well-publicised efforts from behemoths like EA and Gameloft, and still sell on their own merits. Without that, the PSP Minis could be devoid of these smaller, more innovative arthouse titles, as publishers look to recoup on their portable gaming investment above all else.

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5. Already got a PSP? Tough.

This move to a download-only bitesize experience is totally at odds with what the Playstation Portable was about only a couple of years back, when the Nintendo DS Lite began to appeal to the mainstream. "We’re about bringing full length, hardcore gaming top the PSP," was the clarion call, an antidote to those quick-fix puzzle games and time killers the DS touted.

Well, the DS sold like a Katie Price book, as did iPhone apps, and now Sony are abandoning all that hardcore gamer cash with €1 downloadable mahjong and ports of mobile games. An interesting problem is the issue of whether they will stop selling games in the traditional UMD disc format, thereby forcing all those PSP1 owners to go digital and missing the point at the same time.

People that enjoy the DS or mobile phone gaming want a brief distration for five minutes, whilst PSP gamers want the full-fat experience. PSP Minis are filling a gap that may not have been there in the first place, except in Sony’s own balance sheets.

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6. 100MB Minis limit is constricting.

These 100MB file size limits for Minis are as restrictive as they are arbitrary. With the ample 16GB of internal memory the PSP Go has at its disposal, a 100MB limit is an unnecessary headache for the already stressed developer. iPhone apps sail into the hundreds of megabytes, with the beautiful vistas of Myst and side-splitting Monkey Island dialogue resulting in 533 and 351MB monsters respectively. XBox Live Arcade had an equally strict size limit which quickly rose from 50 to 350MB, and Shadow Complex released last week weighed in at 833MB. Either this restriction won’t last long, on the PSP Mini…

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7. Approval Process as strict as ever.

In an effort to maintain quality over quantity, Sony is said to have strict policies on content and Minis output, meaning that great idea that might have been turned down by the taste and decency board at Apple is no more likely to see the light of day on the PSP. Whilst Sony claim to be more transparent and clear than Apple, only checking for titles being structurally sound rather than for objectionable content, the official sign up page for prospective developers tells a different story….

With baby-shaking, stabbing and shooting people in the face amongst the previously approved titles on the App Store (albeit briefly), the fact that even titles which “reflect[s] adversely on the name, reputation or goodwill of Sony” will be denied PSP immortality doesn’t bode well for my profanity-filled tentacles vs. schoolgirl RPG…

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8. Lack of impulse purchasing.

The App Store is one icon away, a world of 59p impulse purchases can be bought whenever the feeling takes. The lack of data connectivity for the PSP combined with the fact that credit cards were the only way to purchase games on the Playstation Network, means that gamers wanting a PSP Minis hit will need a Wi-fi connection to connect and download. Without that always-on connectivity, impulsive feelings soon turn into premeditation and all of a sudden spending €4 on a video poker game feels like a bad idea.

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9. Lack of an innovative way to play.

As integral ot the iPhone gaming experience is the introduction of an interface that you didn’t need a PhD in Street Firghter 2 studies to play. No buttons to remember, no finger-crippling combinations, just swiping or poking at a screen to make things happen. Rolando was arguably an improvement on the impressive Loco Roco, with the intuitive tilting of the device replacing the shoulder button presses to great effect.

Porting the game in the other direction would be a step back, as all those barriers to players that the iPhone got rid of get put straight back up again with the PSP.

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10. They stole the name!

Okay, maybe they didn’t but our Omio Mini is cooler! It is currently residing on sites as awesome and varied as CNet and Review Centre, and allows for a complete and robust mobile deal comparison in numerous unique ways. On the other hand, we can’t provide you with fun bite-sized morsels of gaming pleasure, but we’re working on it…