Orange iPhone 4 Deals Announced, iPhone 3GS 8GB Confirmed For UK
Orange has become the first mobile network to officially announce their iPhone 4 price plans, also confirming that the new cheaper 8GB model of the iPhone 3GS will be arriving on our shores from June 24th.
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Pay monthly
iPhone 4:
The iPhone 4 16GB costs £169 on a £30 per month tariff, falling to an affordable £29 on the £45 / 1200 minutes and unlimited texts tier, and free on a £75 per month unlimited contract.
18 month tariffs lock you in for a briefer spell, but significantly raise the handset cost to £229 on the cheapest £35 per month deal with 600 minutes and 500 texts, and £129 on the popular £45 per month contract.
The beast that is the iPhone 4 32GB is a tad more expensive, with the handset costing £269 before embarking on a 24-month, £30 tariff. The handset still costs £139 on a £45 per month deal, and even the unlimited £75 per month tariff isn’t safe, with the iPhone 4 costing £29.
The upside of the £75 unlimited contract is the addition of 100 free European roaming minutes, 20MB of European browsing and 3GB of wireless tethering to other devices.
The unlimited mobile internet browsing and wi-fi on all of the above iPhone deals are considered to be 750MB in Orange’s case, 250MB more than O2.
iPhone 3GS:
The iPhone 3GS 8GB becomes a bargain (well, as iPhones go), with the handset available for free from £35 per month on a 24-month contract offering 600 minutes and unlimited texts, and from a pricey £75 per month on an unlimited minutes and texts 18-month deal.
Paying £59 nets a free iPhone 3GS 8GB on a 24-month contract, but will set you back as much as £229 on an 18-month deal.
A significant price drop to the barrier to iPhone entry, but it is half the memory of the previously smallest 16GB 3GS, now seemingly on its way out in the UK as well as the US…
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Prepay
The iPhone 4 on prepay is not quite the bargain bonanza we were expecting, with the device costing £480 for the 16GB model, and £570 for the iPhone 4 32GB.
These prices are only £19 and £29 cheaper than the iPhone 4 available unlocked from Apple themselves, with Orange offering 250MB of mobile browsing and unlimited public wi-fi for 12 months with their microSIM.
The 8GB iPhone 3GS is quite pricey at £385 on prepay, but with the 16GB 3GS still fetching £500 unlocked on Play.com its the cheapest pay-as-you-go option by some margin.
Bear in mind that the iPhone 4 on prepay will still require a microSIM for activation, so enquire with your network if you wish to switch over your current contract and contacts.
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Should I buy?
Well, Orange are the first deals officially announced and they are already a little steeper than Vodafone’s leaked offerings.
The iPhone 4 is free on Vodafone’s rumoured £45 per month tariff and is £29 on Orange’s equivalent, whilst Orange’s top tier contract is also a full £15 per month dearer than Vodafone’s £60 per month unlimited deal.
Also, Orange’s data limit is 750MB to Vodafone’s 1GB, whilst the latter are also offering unlimited calls to other Voda customers and 5MB of European data roaming on deals over £40 – whilst Orange is giving 20MB to their £75 per month high rollers.
Whilst we will wait for the other networks before making a decision on which is best, we suggest you do too.
It seems as though pricing will not fluctuate hugely between carriers, but value added propositions like unlimited calls, extra roaming bundles and the like are certain to make a big difference between iPhone 4 deals.
Prepay is not much better value than the unlocked alternatives from Apple (if they have any in stock!), so plumping for an iPhone 4 free from shackles for an extra £19 is a bargain. With O2 charging £15 to unlock an iPhone, paying a little bit more than that to never have to is a decent option.
Stay tuned for pricing from other big networks as we get it!
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