IPhone 5 Price Breakdown (UK Only) | Hacker News Reader

IPhone 5 Price Breakdown (UK Only)

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I know this is primarily about contract vs non, but my god it is expensive.. particularly the memory upgrades £170 for 64GB chips over 16GB.. almost 6 (six!) times what a 64GB SSD or SD-card would cost. And that is at launch. Could anyone else get away with this?

The issue for GBs is value to the consumer, not cost of components.

It's Apple's form of price discrimination. Everyone else does get away with price discrimination in one form or another. Apple uses a simple and straightforward type which I think is a positive thing, even though it ends up connecting significant price changes to small component changes.

Also if you look at the % more you pay over 2 years for more GBs, it isn't that bad since the contract price is way higher than the phone or GB upgrade prices. (Even looking at the unsubsidized phone prices, the increased cost for more GBs is a lower %. Subsidizing each phone model for the same approx $450 in the US makes the GB upgrade price differences seem larger).

At least part of this is Apple's foreigner tax. 170GBP is roughly $275 US, but the equivalent upgrade in the US is only $200. Well, "only".

Very interesting to see the difference between a UK plan and an American one. For example it's pretty standard here to offer unlimited texts, whereas it appears to be very uncommon there?

Personally, I wish that I could have unlimited data and text messaging and then pay a certain cent amount per minute I talk. I very, very sparingly use my phone to call people. I probably use 30 minutes per month, at most.

I have never encountered a limited SMS (pay monthly) plan here (England). I think they're listing 10,000 as an alternative to saying "unlimited", or networks here are hiding this 10,000 limit in their TOS?

I'm with Vodaphone and I pay £36 per month for: "Your Plan comes with 300 minutes, unlimited texts, 500MB mobile internet and 2GB BT Openzone Wi-Fi" and I can't find any limited plans or information on a supposed limit on "unlimited".

Edit: aha! Found it, on the far right they clarify that 10,000 = unlimited.

3000 texts is the fair usage cap on texts with most UK networks

UK Plans come with "unlimited" texts although they're actually 10,000 under a fair usage policy. However, most providers let you go over this number a couple months in a row before charging you for the extra texts at the standard rate (£0.10/$0.16 per text)

The price difference was what stuck out to me. I currently pay over $100/mo for the cheapest AT&T plan that includes more than 0 minutes, more than 0 text messages, more than 0 data, and tethering. I'll be moving to Verizon soon, which will cost $90/mo. Apparently you can buy this service in the UK for $16/mo.

Wow, it's normally us Brits being royally screwed over! Nice change I guess? :P

It's important to note that in the UK, you only pay for calls and texts that you make/send. You don't pay for what you receive.

So, for a fair comparison, double the minutes/texts on UK plans.

You should also bear in mind that no-one actually has unlimited texts. You'll get clobbered by 'fair use' limitations long before you reach anything really high.

Ouch - no thank you.

I pay £15/month (O2 PAYG) and take the £6/month 512Mb data bolt on, leaving £9 of call credit left. That gives me free O2<->O2 calls and texts as well which is great as I don't know anyone who is not on o2. I usually use £2-3 of my call credit calling land lines. My phone balance is currently £85 - nearly the value of the handset.

My handset is a Lumia 710 which cost me £129 on O2[1] and my TCO is £244.50 a year over two years and I have £85 of call credit left a year to play with...

So that is approximately 85 hours of calls, 2500 text messages, 512Mb of data for £15/month. The handset over 2 years is £5.75 a month so all for £25.75 with NO CONTRACT DEPEDENCY.

The only thing I had to do was cut my SIM down to a microSIM one which was easy with a metal ruler and craft knife.

If anyone can do better, I'd love to know.

[1] http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/buy/NOKIA_LUMIA_710_O2PYG_W... (now £115)

On my Galaxy Note 24 month contract, overall it will save me ~£50 vs buying it on PAYG, plus I get calls/texts/internet :D

Unfortunately it seems that GiffGaff won't be offering nano SIM cards for some time yet, so at the moment they are not an option for the iPhone 5. http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Blog/giffgaff-nano-SIM-upda...

Apparently you can cut and shave them down, but it seems like a bit of a scary thing to try! There's also cutters popping up on ebay which claim to do it. Who knows, though.

its not that scary...

The nano sim is also slightly thinner than a micro sim so it will involve some light sanding as well as cutting[0].

[0]http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/09/you-cant-just-cut-down-your...

Very useful. I'm currently on £15.50 O2 simplicity with no contract, and i'm weighing up paying Apple £600 directly for the unlocked phone on entering a new contract with O2. Looks like the cost of £600 up front and my current £15.50 a month is about the same total over 2 years at the £26 a month option for the 32gb phone... Only difference is the contract gives me way more voice minutes...

For god's sake, please freeze the row and column! Thanks.

(View > Freeze rows/Freeze columns)

well you could cut down a "regular " ( i think the regular was "mini" as the original was a credit card sized thing) SIM into a micro sim without great difficulty so it should be pretty easy to do the same for a micro sim an get it to a nano sim. However the painful part of all of this is needing a sim or micro sim adapter to put it into a non nano sim phone - kind of the same situation with SD, mini SD and micro SD cards

Worth pointing out that even though GiffGaff has the lowerst total cost of ownership, you can't get LTE on their (i.e. O2's) network yet.

Actually, Only EE is guaranteed support on their LTE network - The LTE spectrum bands up for auction for the other networks are different to those supported by the 3 announced models of the iPhone 5. [0] This means that even post-auction, EE is the only LTE operator for the iPhone 5.

As a side-note: I'm unsure about whether 3 will have their LTE supported as the article [0] is ambiguous about the 1800MHz spectrum EE sold to 3.

[0]http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/12/apples-iphone-5-will-...

Giffgaff will most likely be increasing their £10 plan to £13 in the coming months[0].

I'm actually in the process of switching to 3's £12.90/month 1 month rolling contract[1] as they actually have the nano sims, though none of their plans have been included in the spreadsheet.

[0]http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Contribute-Innovation-Promo...

[1]http://store.three.co.uk/view/searchTariff?deviceType=SIM_ON...

>> though none of their plans have been included in the spreadsheet.

Which is a shame because between Voda (work phone), O2 (previous long term customer) and Three (past 2 years), Three wins hands down, previously O2 seemed the best - to me anyway.

Cheap as chips too, £15/mo PAYG, unlimited data, 300 mins, 3000 sms. Can reduce to £10/mo with a 12 month contract but that also caps the data. They're tethering friendly too.

Interestingly Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile are both MVNO's based off of the O2 network.

Thanks for this! Very useful!

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