Omio News Blog

T-Mobile UK Launches January Sale, Slashes Contract, PAYG and SIM Only Deals

The mulled wine is still warm in Omio Towers and yet T-Mobile are already thrusting into a January sale of epic proportions!

From today (23rd December) until the 31st of January, T-Mobile are offering discounts on contract deals, pay-as-you-go handsets and propping up their SIM only offers too.

In the pay monthly arena, the magenta network are taking a fiver off per month from the HTC Desire S, making it available for free from just £20 on a 24-month contract. A fiver more will net you the new and improved BlackBerry Curve 9360, complete with unlimited BlackBerry mail.

T-Mobile’s own-brand Android handset – the Vivacity – will now only set you back just £10.21 per month, a bargain for a Gingerbread-powered device complete with 3.5″ touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera.

For those happy with their current device and looking for a SIM only deal, T-Mobile now offers up to 500MB of free internet with every package, including both 30-day and 12-month plans. Factoring in unlimited texts to the bargain, and the offer stacks up favourably with the SIMO competition.

Phone fans will also appreciate the myriad offers in the PAYG section, including the HTC Wildfire S having its price shaved by £30 from £179.99 to £149.99, and the ever-popular BlackBerry Curve 8520 falling to £119.99, a saving of twenty quid.

There are a ton of other discounts across the board, so please be sure to check out their site for the full line-up of reductions!

T-Mobile launches 3 £10 PAYG tariffs, with extra benefits

T-Mobile has introduced three more prepay contracts, where a £10 top up gives you more for your money’s worth – only for the following month.

First off is the ‘text plan’, where topping up this pay as you go tariff by £10 this month, gives you unlimited text messages next month. This is along with being able to use 100 text message right away, and of course, the tenner too.

The second new T-Mobile tariff falls under the name of ‘talk plan’. This comes with 100 free minutes to any landline or mobile phone numbers for the following month, if a £10 top-up is added to the account; which also provides 25 minutes to use straight away.

Lastly and by no means least, is the ‘international plan’ that offers a whole hour to call overseas and to 60 different countries, next month. This is the same as the other two, where £10 needs to be added for this to be made available.

These three new plans came in to effect today, for new and existing T-Mobile customers – who said Everything can’t be Everywhere. 

Check out all the T-Mobile deals at OMIO!

Samsung Galaxy S II – FREE on T-Mobile from £25 Per Month

Deal hunters rejoice!  Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S II, is now available on T-Mobile for absolutely free from £25 per month.

That will get you 600 cross network minutes, 500 texts and 500MB data each month.   Those unwilling to sign on for a 24 month contract can get the same package on an 18 month contract for £19.99 upfront, and £30 per month.

The Galaxy S II is quite simply one of the most powerful and thinnest smartphones on the market… We mean, like stick-insect thin, being a paltry 8.49mm at the narrowest point.

Its diminutive waistline belies the power in the belly of this sexy beast; The Galaxy S II is rocking a top of the line 1.2GHz Dual core processor and 1GB of RAM.

This combined with the latest Android 2.3 software, means the phone is SNAPPY, handling anything that you care to throw at it with ease, including flash browsing unlike some of its other notable rivals, and full 1080p video playback and recording.

The icing on the cake though is the generous 4.3-inch ‘Super AMOLED +’ touchscreen, which put simply is big, bright and colorful and has been universally praised for reproducing images that pop right out at you.

Samsung have come under fire from Apple in recent months over alleged copyright issues regarding the uncanny likeness to iOS, we won’t lie, its a fairly obvious reference to Apple’s layout.

However whilst they pit their best lawyers against each other in a legal bloodbath, for everyone else its something of a win/win. Previous iPhone users who may be wanting to dip their toes into the cool free waters of Android will find themselves at home here, with the added advantage of interface customization, free file handling, and expandable memory upto 32GB.

Alongside the iPhone 4 and HTC Desire HD, this really is one of the top three best smartphones on the market today. So if you fancy treating yourself to something special for less, check out all the deals for the wonderful Galaxy S II on Omio’s deals page.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Now Available for Preorder – Free From £35 Per Month

Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play deals are now listed via BuyMobilePhones.net as being available for pre-order.

The UK’s big four carriers are listed – O2, Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile, but nothing for Three or Virgin as yet.  The prices for the handset range from FREE on a fairly steep £35 per month package, all the way up to a £249.99 handset cost on the various contracts available, too numerous to list here.

Meanwhile, Expansys.com lists the handset at £539.99 SIM-free and have pencilled in the availability date as the 31st March 2011, so a maximum of just over 6 weeks to wait!

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play has to be one of the most poorly kept secrets since, well the iPhone 4, and we wonder if testing the public reactions in some way is due to a little hesitancy or insecurity on behalf of Sony themselves.

Sony stopped short of allowing the subsidiary Sony Ericsson to call it the ‘PSP Phone’ or similar, settling for a slightly less commital ‘PlayStation Certified’ stamp of approval, which only covers the XPERIA Play’s hardware setup, rather than gaming credentials.

The jury’s still out on whether the XPERIA Play will really do justice to the PlayStation brand, although Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai was there to show support for the handset when he appeared onstage at the MWC 2011 on Sunday night during the official reveal.

The XPERIA Play packs a 1Ghz Qualcomm Scorpion ARMv7 processor (an interesting choice given the profusion of multi-core mobiles coming this year), has 400MB RAM, a 4″ capacitive touch screen running at 854 x 640 pixels, and runs on Android 2.3  or ‘Gingerbread’.

Onboard storage comes via an included 8GB MicroSD, expandable to 32GB.  The handset can also record 720p video and DLNA will stream it to compatible televisions.  In addition to a 5MP camera at the rear, a 2MP front facing camera is on hand to provide video calling functionality for all you Skype heads out there.

The controller itself has the familiar four button directional pad, triangle/circle/cross/square buttons as well as L and R shoulder buttons, instantly familiar to the Playstation range.  Some gamers earlier bemoaned the lack of analogue sticks, but it so happens that the slightly mysterious touch interface in the middle will be usable in lieu, giving fans of FPS games like genre stalwarts Call of Duty and Killzone something to sleep well on.

Oh yeah and before we forget, it’s also a phone! You know, to call people on, although we can’t imagine that serious gamers will want to be disturbed when they’re right in the middle of a serious multiplayer firefight.   Good luck making that call!

Check out Omio’s deals page where you can find the best offers on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play.

Orange join forces with Barclaycard to bring wireless payment to the mobile phone

The merged companies of T-Mobile and Orange have double teamed with credit card maker’s Barclaycard to offer near field communion money transactions, by the summertime.

There are over 40,000 stores on the high-street already geared up for the contactless NFC payment method, where just holding the phone up to the electronic reader allows for the payment of goods; in much the same way as the London underground Oyster card.

The shops currently running the Barclaycard near field communication scheme are Pret a Manger, EAT, Little Chef and soon the Co-Op, with many more being planned.

Orange will be the first to run with this new partnership and technology, with T-Mobile slowly gaining the ability within time.

A number of NFC enabled mobile phones are in production by many different handset manufacturers, where the most popular of which has to be the Samsung made Google Nexus S which replaced the HTC manufactured Google Nexus One mobile phone.

Check out our full range of Google Nexus S deals at OMIO

DEAL ALERT: Free Nokia Booklet 3G with X3 Touch & Type on T-Mobile £40 per month plan

Nokia are currently offering a bundle of their new X3-02 Touch & Type handset and Booklet 3G netbook …sorry, mini-laptop (worth a cool £589) for £40 p/m on T-Mobile, allowing even the most indecisive of Christmas shoppers to have their cake, and eat it.

Nokia’s entry last year into the burgeoning sub-notebook market received some high praise.  Whilst the 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and 120GB hard drive initially suggested that it was just  another netbook, there were some distinctive features that allowed it to stand out amongst a sea of clones.

Critics were seduced by the sleek 2cm thick aluminium chassis, offering the same build quality as Nokia’s high-end handsets and its beautiful 10” 720p HD screen with HDMI out for connecting to larger TV’s and monitors.  The Booklet 3G is also fully mobile, connecting to the web via wifi or dedicated 3G SIM card slot, and running for up to an incredible 12 hours from one charge!

The only setback until this point has been the price; it’s currently retailing at £589.  That needn’t put you off this time around though, as Nokia is offering this for FREE… yes, gratis, with compliments, bundled with it’s X3-02 Touch & Type handset.

The X3-02 Touch & Type combines a 2.4” touch screen and the camera and music features synonymous with the ‘X’ series, whilst giving avid thumb warriors the accuracy and speed of a 12 button keypad and candybar format that we all know and love.  The X3 Touch & Type is a perfectly capable handset with great battery life that solidly compliments the expanded HD multimedia and productivity of the Booklet 3G.  Weighing a paltry 78g and measuring a svelte 9.6mm, its brushed aluminium body offers the looks to match the performance.  Expect effortless connectivity between phone and computer and tight integration with the built in Ovi apps and services.

This deal is available direct from Nokia on a £40 p/m 24 month contract with T-Mobile, which gives you 1200 minutes and 1GB data allowance.  The handset and laptop are available in matching white or black.  Omio has a full range of colours and offers on other networks available for the X3-02 Touch & Type on our deals pages.

Three announces the Apple iPad is available on a contract from today

Three is now selling the Apple iPad, from £199 on a £25 monthly tariff with a 15GB data allowance.

Three has joined both T-Mobile and Orange in selling the iPad from today onwards, at the same prices as the two parts of Everything Everywhere – only with a 15GB Internet browsing limit, instead of the 2GB that Orange and T-Mobile allow.

All three mobile phone networks have the Apple iPads at the same cost of £199 for the 16GB version, £249 for the 32GB model and £349 for the 16GB version with Apple selling the same 16GB for £529.

Three’s data allowance is clearly much higher than Orange and T-Mobile’s, for the same price and on the same tariff cost, which can be used at any time where 1GB of the 2GB EverythingEverywhere web surfing bundle can only be used in off-peak hours.

Check out the full range of Apple iPad deals at OMIO

Everything Everywhere announces Apple iPad prices and plans

Both T-Mobile and Orange have now separately unveiled their ‘more affordable prices’ for the Apple iPad, started from £199 with a £25 monthly tariff attached.

The two companies that make up EverythingEverywhere are selling the Apple iPad at a much lower cost than the Apple Store, who currently offers the 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G for £529.

Orange are also selling the other capacities of the Apple tablet, with the 32GB version costing £249 and the 64GB model being priced at £529 – where T-Mobile are only retailing the 16GB version.

Both networks are bundling in a 1GB data allowance for use at any time, along with another 1GB for off peak use.

No dates have been confirmed by either network as to when the Apple iPad device will be arriving, but the prices are a good start – now it’s Three’s turn.

Check out the full range of Apple iPad deals at OMIO

Three also to sell the Apple iPad cheaply

Three has announced they too will be offering ‘more affordable prices’ for the Apple iPad and on a contract, in an identical statement to both T-Mobile and Orange.

Three companies have now unveiled in the next few months they will be selling the iPad at a lower cost than the Apple Store can currently offer and on a contract too, in much the same way as mobile networks can afford to offer a £500 handset for free.

Three haven’t confirmed any prices yet, nor has Orange or T-Mobile but they at least have provided a link to register interest which Three haven’t as yet.

Out of all of the networks Three currently has the cheapest price for the 16GB iPhone 4, at nearly a third of the cost of the nearest competitor – where it’s been rumoured Orange could be selling the Apple iPad at £200.  

With this theory in mind, Three could very well undercut EverythingEverywhere and sell the iPad at £150 or even £100 as the iPhone 4 currently costs £499 from Apple directly. 

Check out the full range of Apple iPad deals at OMIO

Everything Everywhere to sell the Apple iPad cheaply

Both T-Mobile and Orange have separately announced they will be offering ‘more affordable prices’ for the Apple iPad, but only when purchased with a data service plan.

It appears the two companies that make up EverythingEverywhere will be selling in the next few months the iPad at a lower cost than Apple Store currently does, only on a contract in much the same way as the networks can offer the latest mobile phone for free.

Apple currently sells the 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G for £529 and although Orange will still add a fee for the Apple tablet, it’s been noted on What Mobile this could be as little as £200 – less than half the price SIM free.

No confirmed prices have been made public by either network, only that they will be offering the iPad at a better price and Orange has provided a link to register interest – seen here.