It’s T-Mobile’s biggest ever plan unlimited calls, data and texts from just £36 a month! Get a Free Apple iPhone 4S in this brilliant pay monthly deal!
For £36 a month, customers will get unlimited calls to other T-Mobile customers unlimited texts and unlimited internet, plus 2000 cross-network minutes. And from £41 a month customers get unlimited everything- including cross network calls.
With Mobile Word Congress just around the corner, we’re gearing ourselves up for lots of exciting smartphone announcements. So we’re going to start as we mean to go on by talking to you about Samsung’s latest offering, the Samsung Galaxy S Advance.
After much deliberation Helen and I have decided to call Baby7 Harvey, we would like to thank all of you for your entries and name suggestions.
We will run another competition soon once Harvey has been born and the world has settled down.
Jamie Oliver for those of you who don’t know him – which can’t be many, is a famous UK chief.
Jamie has put his fame to good use over the years educating and encouraging healthy eating in Britains schools. Jamie has campaigned tirelessly to help provide our countries youth with a healthy balanced diet. And he has done so a great personal expense to his own career.
Jamie wants a food revolution – and as a father of 6 nearly 7 I totally agree, in fact Jamie inspired me many years ago back in the days of the Naked Chief, and I have always had a keen interest in food since then.
We have always wanted to produce as much as my own food as I could, we now have chickens and a veg patch – while we are yet to kill a chicken I murder the odd little gem for fun! And we have tons of great eggs.
It really is about time we all stood up and took an interest in what our children are eating. We are a world of ever expanding waist lines, largely due to diets and lifestyles. When is it too late to act??
Welcome one and all to 2012 the year of the Dragon, the year our seventh child will be born. As yet baby 7 still has no name, this winter has been unlike any we have ever known – not only has it been strangely mild, its been so full on.
Helen has been very poorly developing bronchitis and very nearly pneumonia, she has been on bed rest since new years day – kids have been to school late, washing has piled up, dinners have been interesting and the world as we know it has generally gone to the dogs (We haven’t told her we can’t cope though ).
Thankfully she is much much better now, anyway all of this has ment baby number 7 is not going to wait until the 20th of Feb. Helen is going to be taken in for induction on the 9th of Feb, if he doesn’t come before and I think he might!
So you don’t have long to enter our free name baby 7 competition to win an Apple iPhone 4s.
Choosing a mobile phone deal isn’t an easy task for many people. With so many different networks to choose from as well as so many different plans available to you, it isn’t hard to imagine why people can get so confused just by looking at the different deals! The first thing you need to do is decide whether you’d save money by purchasing a monthly mobile phone deal rather than being a pay as you go customer. To make a long story short, you should only go on pay as you go if you don’t use your phone that regularly, for example: you only send a few texts and make a few calls each week. Otherwise, you’d save money by getting a monthly contract, but how do you know which one is the best deal for your particular needs? Well, here are some things that you should consider:
• Talker or Texter – Firstly, you should find out if you’re more of a talker or more of a texter. This is because some plans offer you a lot of minutes while some other plans will offer you a lot of texts. What I usually recommend people to do is spend a few weeks using your phone as you’d normally use it and monitor your usage. That way, you can find out exactly how many minutes you need on average and how many texts you need on average. After you find out how many minutes and how many texts you’ll need, you can then narrow down what plans might be the best option for you.
• Who Do You Call – A lot of people usually make most of their calls to certain phone numbers. Some phone networks let you choose one or two numbers that you’ll get unlimited free calls to and this can really come in handy to a lot of people especially if you usually only call these people. Other offers include giving you free calls to certain networks; this can also work out very well if most of your friends or family are on the same network.
• Internet Bundle – Since nearly everyone has a phone that can connect to the internet, it’s a good idea to take internet bundles in to account when you want to choose the best mobile phone deal. The amount of data that you need will depend on how much you use the internet on your mobile phone along with what you actually do on the internet on your mobile phone. If you’ve got a smartphone you’re more than likely using the internet to download apps and music, which means that you’ll need a decent amount of data each month. However, if you just use your phone to check your emails every now and again or to browse a couple of webpages then you wouldn’t need that much data.
• Contract Length – You’ll usually notice that you can get huge discounts on your monthly bill if you decide to agree to a long contract. As well as getting a discount on your monthly bill, you could even be offered a very good phone for a cheap price or even for free! This can tempt a lot of people that would be better off on a pay as you go deal to agree to a monthly fixed contract. It’s important to remember what you’re signing up to here, of course it’s a good idea to sign up to a longer contract if you are sure that you’ll be able to afford it, but if you have any doubt whatsoever, I wouldn’t sign a contract. Contracts used to always be 12 months, but now they can go up to 18 months and sometimes even higher! If you want to get the best mobile phone deal you’ll need to agree to a long contract, but only do so if you know that you’ll be able to pay it each and every month.
• Cashback – There are many cash back deals offered by lots of retailers and networks, these should also be considered when looking for the best mobile phone deal. If you aren’t too sure what a cash back is, it comes in 2 forms auto and redemption auto cash back as you would expect comes to you automatically whereas cash back by redemption requires you to request your cash back at intervals during your contract.
• Freegifts – Like the cash-back deals many retailers offer a free gift such as an Xbox or Playstation or even a flat screen TV as part of the mobile phone deal. And also like cash back some of these require you to claim your free gift 3 or more months into your contract while others provide the free gift instantly.
fortunately for you ShopMobilePhones inline mobile phone deals comparison tables show you exactly which deals are the cheapest and offer the most value, they can also be easily customised and filtered to provide the best mobile phone deals that are specific to your usage patterns.
• Battery Life – Battery life is among of the first things you should look out for when you’re searching for your new smartphone. Think about it this way, there’s absolutely no point having the best phone in the world if the battery can only last an hour or so. There can be huge differences from one smartphone to another, so make sure that you compare them. More and more people want to use smartphones for more than just calling or texting people, nearly everyone wants to be able to email people on to move, get the latest news stories while they are out and so on, so make sure that the phones battery life can last long enough for you to do all of this! (if that’s what you’d want of course)
• Keyboard – How long do you usually keep a mobile phone for? Probably over a year, right? How much of that time would you spend using the smartphones keyboard, it’d probably be a very long time! This is why you should make sure that you like the keyboard before buying any smartphone. Nobody wants to spend a fortune on a piece of technology that they cannot use to its full potential since it annoys them to use it. The type of keyboard that people like ranges from one person to another, some people like physical keyboards while others prefer keyboards that are on the screen, otherwise known as virtual keyboards. Here’s another point to remember though, just because you like virtual keyboards doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll like every type of smartphone that has a virtual keyboard. Every one has its own software for the keyboard, some are faster than others, some need you to press on the screen harder than others etc. For example, just because you like the keyboard that’s on the iPhone doesn’t mean that you’ll like the virtual keyboard that’s on another touchscreen phone.
• Storage Space – So many people are starting to use their smartphone for much more than just a phone nowadays, which means that you’ll need more space to store all of these files. If you have hundreds or even thousands of photos, songs or whatever you’ll need a decent amount of space on your mobile phone to store all of this data. Nearly all top notch smartphones come with built in memory, such as 16GB. This will let you save a lot of stuff on to your phone but over time you could easily need more than this. But here’s the problem, does you phone have a slot for a memory card? If it doesn’t you’re out of luck, but if it does that gives you loads of options. You could purchase a cheap memory card that’ll allow you to store some more files on your phone or if you need more storage space you could spend a little bit extra!
• Camera / Video Recordings – There’s no reason to own a digital camera anymore to be honest, since nearly all smartphones have a good camera built in. If the camera quality really matters to you, I wouldn’t recommend that you decide which one is better just because one has more megapixels. It’s a much better idea to try test it out for yourself, take a picture on the phone and see how it compares to the other. Most stores have display models that you can test out to see what its camera quality is like but if you can’t try this you could just search online and see what others think of it.
• Apps – If you think that you’d spend a lot of time on your smartphone using apps then it’s a good idea to compare one phone to another. Some phones will have a very limited number of apps which might be something that you don’t want to deal with while other phones like Apple and Android phones would give you a much better choice of apps to choose from.
• Screen Display – Not that many people worry about the screen display that’s on their smartphone. It’s usually one of the things that people forget to even think about when they want to buy their new mobile phone. This is quite weird since you’ll spend nearly all of your time staring at the screen when you’re using it so you want it to be good! In most cases, cheap smartphones won’t let you see the screen very well in any kind of sunlight, while more expensive ones should let you do this without any trouble. If you have a high budget for a smartphone, take a look at AMOLED screens – they are stunning!
• Multitasking / Processor – If you’re planning on using your smartphone a lot, you’ll more than likely be running several apps at once. Let’s say you want to listen to music, have a FaceBook app open in the background and send a text message all at once, this would put a bit of pressure on your phones processor. If you don’t have a good processor it’ll force some of the apps to shut down by itself, which isn’t something that you want to happen if you’re doing something that’s important.
We recommend you narrow your phone choice down to 3 or 4 handsets then compare their features side by side using our compare mobile phones tool you can then compare deals from the whole market by clicking “Show Deals”.
There are a lot of people who think that there aren’t that many Android apps available on the Android market, but this isn’t true at all. Although Apply have more apps available on the App Store, there are still a wide variety of apps on the Android market. Of course Apple are going to have an advantage since they’ve been in the market for longer, but Android are quickly catching up on their competitors. Just like the App Store, on the Android market it can be difficult to tell the good apps from the bad apps, but hopefully this article will help you out a bit. Here are some apps that you should keep an eye out for:
• Skype – Skype is definitely one of the most useful apps on the Android market if you want to save money without a lot of trouble. If you’ve used Skype before, you’ll know that there’s a good few reasons why Skype is better than making calls as you’d normally call someone on your phone. The main reason is since it’s a lot cheaper. You can purchase add-ons on Skype which give you unlimited calls to landlines for a month / 3 months / 12 months and so on. This will save you a lot of money in the long run, and since you can make Skype calls on your Android phone it’s pretty much hassle free. As well as purchasing add-ons, you can also use Skype for free. By doing this the other person must have Skype installed on their phone / computer, but you can’t really complain since it’s completely free!
• Barcode Scanner – Barcode scanner lets you scan any products barcode and then find information about it online, including reviews, best prices etc. This is another app that’s on the Android market which can save you a lot of money. If you’re smart, you could even scan products while you’re in a shop so that you can see whether you could buy the same product for a cheaper price online!
• Google Maps – I’m sure most people have used Google Maps at some stage in the past, but I just have to mention this app. It can help you with directions for when you’re out and about, or just tell you where is the closest garage to your house. You can also use Google Maps to get a company’s phone number too, which can really come in handy at times.
• Tiny Flashlight – This is one of the most basic apps that’s on the Android market, but you could be surprised about how many times it can help you out! Let’s say your electricity goes and you have no candles around the house, this app could be used to light up the house for a bit before you get a better alternative.
• Smart Keyboard Pro – Think about the amount of time that you spend looking at your keyboard on your Android phone. Shouldn’t you make it look as good as possible? Well, with this app you can customise the look keyboard a lot, there are loads of options available to you so all you need to decide on is which layout and colour style is the best! (in your opinion of course)
• Snap Photo Pro – Did you think to yourself “This would make a great photo” and then once you actually take the photo it turns out to be terrible because of one little tiny thing? This won’t happen if you use Snap Photo Pro since it will take multiple photos which allows you to decide which photo is the best. It’s not nice to realise that a photo has been ruined because of one little thing, so it’s well worth buying this app at the Android market.
• Wordpress – Since more and more people are starting to use WordPress I thought that it would be good to mention WordPress. Not a lot of people know that they can edit their website on their mobile phone, but with the WordPress app which is free on the Android market you can do exactly that.
So, if you have an Android phone I’d highly recommend that you check out all of those apps.
If you have any Apple device, including an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll probably notice that there are so many apps on the App store that you can download. There are over 100 million apps on the App Store, so where do you even begin searching for the best applications? Well, when you’re in the App Store you can select an option which shows you the 25 most popular applications which you can choose to display the top 25 free ones or the top 25 paid ones. Don’t assume that just because something is free that it’s not that good, there are plenty of free applications which are free that are better than most paid applications. Along with looking at the top 25 apps, you can also search for what applications you want to see, for example, you could search “shooting” to find shooting games and so on. Here’s a list of applications that I’d recommend to everyone that has any Apple device:
• Twitter – With people joining Twitter every day, Twitter is easily one of the best apps that any person with an Apple device can get. It’s completely free and allows you to do anything that you can do on the desktop version of Twitter. No matter what you want to do, whether it’s following your friend, tweet to the world, search for something etc. – you can do it all on the Twitter application!
• Soundhound – Have you ever heard a song that you love but can never remember the name of it? Well, then Soundhound is an app that you need! Let’s say that you hear a song in your local bar, and want to remember it so that you can purchase it when you get home, Soundhound allows you to do just that. It’s important to remember that you need an internet connection to use it though, but most public places have free Wi-Fi now anyway.
• Angry Birds – You’ve heard of Angry Birds, haven’t you? If you haven’t, you should download it immediately. Basically, it’s one of the most addictive games that’s on the App Store. You’d be surprised how many hours you could waste from playing a game on your iPhone or whatever! Even though it’s a fairly basic game, it’s still extremely addictive. Since it’s quite basic it also means that children as well as adults can have fun playing it.
• FatBooth – If you just want to have a bit of fun with your friends or family then this app is for you. The name of the app might give it away, but I’ll explain it anyway. Basically, you take a picture of your face and within a few touches of the screen it’ll magically transform the picture to make the person look very fat! It’s great to pass a bit of time and since it’s so easy to use children can also use it.
• Bump – Have you ever wanted to share something like a picture from one Apple device to another Apple device? This is exactly what Bump does. As the name of the app suggests, you simply bump one device in to another and then a message appears on the device that you want to receive the picture, once you accept it the picture will be on the other iDevice. Another bonus is that the app is completely free of charge!
• Nike+ GPS – With Nike+ GPS you can easily see how much work you’re putting in to your fitness. It’s mainly designed for people who run, although you could also use it if you walk a lot. It tells you loads of information such as the distance that you’ve travelled, what route you’ve used, what parts of the route that were slower than others and so on. Since the app uses your devices GPS signal there’s no need to have Wi-Fi/3G coverage etc. since everything is done using the GPS that’s built in to your device.
They’re the 6 apps that I’d tell everyone to download once they get a new Apple iPhone, but of course there a wide variety of apps that are just as good as the ones mentioned above. Here’s a quick tip if you’re looking for good apps, keep an eye out over certain times of the year such as Christmas since many application developers will either reduce their apps or even better, give them away for free!
Nowadays people have so much choice when they’re looking to buy a new smartphone. Choice is always good but at the same time it makes your decision a lot harder to make especially when there are so many good smartphones out there for you to choose from. Not so long ago, you could count on one hand how many smartphones there were that you could buy, but today it’s hard to keep up, with all of the best brands bringing out new smartphones which are supposed to be “the best of the best”. So, I’m going to list some of the best smartphones which are on the market right now.
Obviously people have different opinions on what’s the best phone, since one person has different needs and expectations than another person would, so I’m not going to list them in any particular order. If you’re searching for a new smartphone, here are some that you should definitely consider purchasing:
1. iPhone 4S – This is an obvious one but it has to be mentioned. Ever since Apply brought out the original iPhone, it has got better and better. With the huge selection of apps that are available on the “App Store” you’ll never get bored! It’s not just great for apps though, it also has an 8 megapixel camera which is more than what the majority of people would have even on their digital camera. It’s just an all-round great phone and well worth considering buying although it’s quite expensive.
2. BlackBerry 8520 Curve – The BlackBerry 8520 is another phone which is worth looking at if you want a new smartphone. It’s cheap in comparison to most smartphones but it still has pretty much everything that anyone could possibly need on their mobile phone. It’s one of the cheapest BlackBerry’s out and still has features such as a QWERTY keyboard, BlackBerry Messenger and so on. It’s a huge improvement on older Curve models since this one has a much better trackpad to make sure you have a better experience than before.
3. Samsung Galaxy S2 – This is another amazing smartphone which is in competition with Apple’s iPhone. It’s roughly the same price as an iPhone and there’s a good reason for it. Firstly, there’s a 1.2GHz processor which ensures that your smartphone will very rarely slow down even if you have a lot of apps and things open. One of the best things about this phone in my opinion is how thin it is, it’s incredible. It’s easily one of the thinnest smartphones out right now since its only 8.5mm thick! This also means that it’s nice and light so you can carry it around with you no matter what you’re doing. It’s great that a phone can be packed with so much and still remains nice and light – at just over 115g!
4. HTC Sensation XE – As the name suggests, the HTC Sensation XE is one of the most sensational phones around and it’s one of the fastest smartphones too, thanks to its dual core 1.5Ghz processor! The Sensation XE also boasts an 8 mega-pixel camera with auto focus and dual led flash, 1080p HD video recording, tons of storage, Beats audio and DNLA so you can stream media using wireless to other DNLA enabled devices like a smart TV or your playstation 3.
5. Sony Ericsson Xperia Play – More and more people are purchasing smartphones so that they can play games on them. One of the main reasons for this is that game developers are focusing more on the smartphone market which means better games are becoming available on nearly all smartphone operating systems. As well as this, games on smartphones are a lot cheaper than traditional games such as PS3 games, Nintendo DS games and so on. Anyway, if you are a gamer this could be the perfect phone for you! It’s been built especially with gamers in mind, with a screen which slides up so that you can access its controls. It’s not just for people that have an interest in gaming though, it also has a 5 megapixel camera, stereo speaks and that’s just to name a few things. To make it simple – If you mainly use your phone to play games then I’d recommend that you check this smartphone out as soon as possible.
6. HTC Sensation – Not so long ago nobody heard of HTC, but now it’s definitely one of the best brands that are on the market. The HTC Sensation proves why HTC have taking over a large chunk of the smartphone market share. With features such as an 8 megapixel camera, duel core processor and being able to record videos at 1080p it’s no wonder why this is among the top smartphones that are out at the moment. The problems that have been associated with HTC phones such as how the screen wasn’t visible in sunlight have been mainly sorted out thankfully which is great news for all HTC fans. It’s a little bit heavier than most other smartphones, weighing in at in or around 150g, but you’d expect that since the build quality is impressive.
7. BlackBerry Bold 9780 – Don’t let the BlackBerry’s Bold 9780 looks deceive you, it might look exactly the same as the older BlackBerry Bold 9700 model – but it’s much, much better. There’s not much on the outside that’s different apart from a black bezel, but inside it’s whole different story. Firstly, the software has been improved dramatically which is always nice to hear when you want a new smartphone. Not many people think about how good (or bad!) the software is when they’re in the market for a new smartphone, but think about it; what good is a smartphone with great features if the software won’t allow you to make the most out of those features? Secondly, the screen on the device has also been improved compared to the previous model. Even though it’s a relatively small screen at just under 2.5in, it’s still a great screen with awesome colours. You don’t have to look at the screen at a particular angle to make out what’s on the screen anymore, you can see the screen pretty much whatever angle you’re looking at the screen at. Overall, if you want to try out a BlackBerry smartphone, here’s a good phone to start at!
8. Motorola Razr – I’m sure you’ve heard of the Motorola Razr before and you’re probably thinking that this is an old phone, but it’s not. The Motorola Razr is back with a bang, it’s now loaded with Android 2.3.5, an 8 megapixel camera and much more. It has to be one of the thinnest smartphones that’s out too, since it’s just over 7mm thick! (on the part which you hold, the design is quite unique) If you haven’t heard of AMOLED technology yet, you’ll more than likely be amazed if you see this phone in real life. It has one of the best screens that I’ve ever saw, every picture is crystal clear thanks to the AMOLED screen. You can literally see each and every different colour in a new way that you’ve never experience before. The only problem is that it will make all of your other devices with screens look terrible since you’ll be so used to seeing great quality images and so on. Although the design can put some people off this smartphone, it’s worth researching more information about it and seeing is it a suitable smartphone for you.
9. Nokia Lumia 800 – This phone is the first of many Nokia phones that will be running on Windows. The first thing that you’ll notice when you see the phone is that it stands out from the crowd. (in a good way) It comes in a couple of different colours including bright blue and bright pink. Since it has a 1.4GHz processor there’s no doubt that you have more than enough to run many things at the same time without the phone freezing or turning off. It also comes with an AMOLED screen like the phone above which allows you to see colours that you’ve never seen before on any older smartphones. In today’s world more and more people want phones that can hold a lot of data for their applications, music, photos etc. and the Nokia Lumia certainly lets you do all of this since it has 16GB of storage built in to it so you won’t be forced in to deleting loads of files that you actually need!
10. Samsung Galaxy Nexus – The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a special smartphone and not just because it was the first phone to have Android 4.0 on it. It has a HD screen, dual core processor along with a 5 megapixel camera. All of the handset is slightly curved without making it look silly which is a nice touch, at least it’s not exactly the same as any other mobile phone that’s out there, right? It has over 300 ppi (pixels per inch) which is a lot more than what most smartphones have. This means that the screen display will be super sharp, very few smartphones have anywhere near 300 ppi. The only downside of this smartphone is that there’s no option to add memory to it, (by micro SD cards etc.) but since it has 16GB built in most people don’t have to worry about going over that anyway.
Hopefully this guide to our top 10 smartphones has given you at least one or two ideas to help you in your quest for a new a mobile. Just remember which ever phone you decide to go for, you will find the best offers when you compare mobile phone deals on ShopMobilePhones.
