It’s a harsh reality that is affecting us all, the Credit Crunch! as financial institutions realise the errors they have made, the economy is collapsing like a house of cards. Suddenly, instead of buy now, worry later, we all need to consider where every penny goes, and re-evaluation of out-going invoices and bills is a necessity.
Making your money go that little bit further also applies to looking out for a good bargain; getting a product at a good price always leaves a good feeling. So if Pay As You Go is an option you are looking at, we have hand picked five handsets that we feel offer particularly outstanding value.
The Sony Ericsson J132 from just £4.84, if you are looking for a mobile phone that covers the basics, but covers them well, you can’t go wrong with our cheapest PAYG phone, the Sony Ericsson J132. The phone is incredibly light, weighing in at just 76g, and has a tough, dust resistant keypad. Despite the no frills appearance and price, the handset does include an FM radio and with the option of a 3.5mm audio output jack, you can plug in with your own favourite, comfortable headphones.
If the J132 isn’t your thing, then a good budget handset from Nokia is the Nokia 1650 from £9.73. Weighing in at a very light 80g, the small compact 1650 is another handset for people who just want to make calls, and send text. Despite the ‘glamour’ of the top end internet accessing, emailing on the move smartphones, there is a good percentage of mobile users who just want to make calls, and send text messages. Nokia have built their reputation on simple to use, easy to understand handsets and the 1650 carries that tradition admirably.
The Nokia 2630, another excellent budget handset, from £19.53 the Nokia 2630 is slim, small, easy to use, and surprisingly for a phone of its budget range it includes Bluetooth, for audio connection to a Bluetooth headset. The handset also covers GPRS for data access via WAP, and will include an FM radio and a VGA digital camera.
The Samsung E250, the first phone in this list that can truly offer a range of features over and above the basic calls, texts, and good battery life of the previous phones. A slim slide design handset, the E250 is a tri band phone, has a VGA digital camera, built in FM radio and MP3 player. Onboard memory is quite low at just 10MB but the E250 supports Micro SD cards, up to 2GB in size, so you can add a few tunes from your favourite CD’s and listen on the move. The handset also supports Bluetooth 2.0, allowing you to tune in wirelessly, with a compatible stereo Bluetooth headset. All of these extras, yet the phone still only weighs-in at just 80g, starts from just £19.53.
The Skypephone, now, if we are talking saving money, then we really should include the Skypephone, on Three. Available on PAYG, the Skypephone allows you to connect to over 246 million Skype users (not all at once, of course!) for free. Simply hit the Skype button in the centre of the phone and talk to your friends, as long as you like, for no cost. Over the Skype service, the Skypephone includes a 2.0 megapixel camera, music and video player, and supports memory expansion with Micro SD memory cards, and of course is 3G compatible for web browsing. Another small handset, the Skypephone weighs in at 86g, is available in black or white and starts from £34.99.
These are just a few that we feel offer extremely good value, check out our Pay As You Go Deals for our full list of comparable handsets.