If you already have a smartphone but are now out of your contract and are looking to keep your phone but switch to a cheaper plan, you should consider one of the many SIM only mobile deals on the market. With SIM only deals, you can typically avoid the lengthy credit checks and paper work involved when it comes to buying a new phone plan and simply decide how much data, texts, and calls you would like to receive each month and pay for that without the expense of also paying for a new phone. Here we detail some of the best SIM only mobile deals on Black Friday, as well as provide a handy buying guide for anyone wanting to make the switch.
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Shops With SIM Only Mobile Offers
SIM Only Mobile Buying Guide
If you’re looking to keep your costs down when it comes to buying a new mobile phone, one of the ways that you can do this is by buying a phone contract that is SIM only. This means that you’ll have to buy your phone separately, which will allow you to keep the cost of the SIM contract as cheap as possible. Obviously there are then two different costs, with one of them being for the SIM contract and the other being for the cost of the phone. The good news is that if you already have a phone then you won’t need to worry about that cost with only the cost of the contract being the concern.
What Is a SIM Only Deal?
The first thing we need to look at is what, exactly, a SIM only deal is referring to. When it comes to mobile phones, you will often find packages that include both the price of the phone and the cost of the call package. This means that you’re paying for two things, which have been neatly packaged together in order to make things easier for the consumer. Of course, you might also find that you end up over-paying for one or both aspects of the deal because of this, so one of the things that some people like to do is separate them out so they know exactly what they’re paying for.
Imagine a scenario in which you’ve bought the new iPhone. You’ve signed up to a deal for £50 per month for the phone and 100 mb of data with unlimited calls and texts. You find that if you were to buy the phone directly from Apple you could do so for £35 per month, say, but you won’t have any calls included in that package. As a result, you’ll need to get a SIM only deal from your mobile provider of choice. Getting 100 mb and unlimited calls and texts would cost £7, for example, meaning that the total package would be £42 per month by separating it out.
Why SIM Only?
The obvious question that a lot of people will want to ask is why they would want to end up buying a SIM only deal. The answer is that you can save money, as we’ve already mentioned, by separating the two parts of a mobile phone deal out. There is also the fact that you might already have a mobile phone of your own that you want to use and don’t particularly fancy buying a new phone. In this instance, you will want to do what you can in order to keep your spending down, which will mean avoiding packages that offer you both a calls and data package and a phone.
This is where SIM only deals come in. They are literally just for the data, calls and texts that you will use during the duration of your deal. Say you get 150 mb of data with unlimited calls and texts, this means that you can send regular texts and make phone calls to non-premium numbers as much as you want to, whilst using the data part of your mobile phone will be fine as long as you don’t use up any more than 150 mb of data. If you do, you’ll either stop being able to use your phone online or else you’ll be charged extra for the data that you use outside of your allowance.
How Much Data Do You Need?
If you’re considering getting a SIM only deal, the first thing you’ll want to think about is how much data you actually tend to use. It is common for people to over-estimate how much data they use during the course of their contract. The majority of SIM contracts nowadays give you unlimited texts and minutes, so it is the data that is the most expensive part of any contract. The more data you have, the more expensive the contract is likely to be. If you know that you’re a really heavy data user, going for a contract with lots of data involved will be the right move.
If, on the other hand, you don’t tend to use the mobile data part of your phone and always make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, for example, then you’ll want to opt for a low amount of data. This will make the contract cheaper and most people do tend to over-estimate how much data they need, so bear that in mind when looking at the various contract options. You can use Data Calculators online to get a sense of how much data you’re likely to need depending on how it is that you use your mobile phone, so do that before you spend heaps on a contract you don’t need.
Think About What You Need
When you’re getting a SIM only deal, you can spend some time thinking about what it is that you actually need out of your mobile phone contract. If you are the sort of person that is regularly out of the country, for example, then getting a deal that will allow you to roam in other countries could be crucial to keeping your costs down. If, on the other hand, you never leave the United Kingdom then you will want to avoid SIM only deals that specially allow you to roam, given the fact that these sorts of contracts normally come with extra costs that you don’t need to spend.
Of course, the fact that you don’t normally leave the UK doesn’t mean that you won’t ever do so, so you’ll need to remember that you’ll need to have roaming turned off on your phone before you get on the boat or plan that will take you to a different country, else you might end up paying large fees for your usage whilst abroad. SIM only deals tend to come in either monthly or longer contracts. Monthly means that they renew every 30 days, but will often be slightly more expensive than, say, a 12-month or 24-month SIM only deal.
The 30-day deals mean that you can leave at the end of each 30-day period without facing any sort of penalty. Those that are for 12 months or longer will often involve having to pay a fee to exit your contract before your 12 months are up. The balance that is struck is that 12-month or longer contracts tend to be cheaper each month than those that are rolling monthly deals. That isn’t always the case, but it often is, so think about whether you want to save money over the long-term by getting a 12-month deal or have the freedom to leave when you feel like it with a 30-day contract.
Using Your Old Phone
If you’re hoping to keep the costs down as much as possible, one of the things you can do is to use an old phone. This doesn’t necessarily mean finding a phone in the cupboard that you had a decade ago. Instead, you can think about the last contract you had. It will have been based over a given period of time, such as two years, meaning that once the two years had elapsed the phone belongs to you. If you keep paying the price after the end of the contract, you’re therefore paying for a phone that you’ve already paid off and are effectively paying a fine on your usage.
What you can do at that point is cancel the contract, but keep the phone. This means that you can then look for a cheap SIM only deal that will supply you with a contract that offers data, calls and texts for a significantly cheaper cost than a contract that also includes payments on the phone. The only problem is that some phones will be locked to the provider that you bought the phone from originally. The good news is that you don’t need to pay to get your phone unlocked, with providers having been stopped from locking their phones to their network since December 2021.
Which Phones Are SIM Only?
If you’re new to the phenomenon of SIM only, which is often referred to by the acronym SIMO, you might find yourself wondering which phones you can get on a SIM only basis. The short answer is ‘all of them.’ Virtually every single mobile phone provider is happy to sell their phone as it is, without any sort of contract attached to it. You can buy a phone directly from Apple, Samsung, Google or OnePlus, for example, which will come to you unlocked and with the ability to put almost any SIM into it. You can then get your SIM directly from your mobile provider of choice.
Not only that, but the majority of the big providers will happily sell you a phone without a contract attached to it. You can therefore get both a phone and a SIM only deal from them without having to combine the two. If you can afford to buy your phone outright then that is the best thing to do, adding a SIM deal separately and paying for that on a monthly basis. If you don’t have the sort of reserves of cash needed to be able to buy a phone outright, however, then the best thing to do is to look for interest free purchase options, which most of the big companies will offer.
What Are the Advantages of Going SIM Only?
If you’re weighing up your options about what to do around your mobile phone contract, you might well be asking yourself what the advantages are of going SIM only. One of the key things is that you’re not tied in to one provider in the same way that you are if you choose to buy your phone and your usage in the same package. This can be handy if you’re not sure how good the reception is where you live, for example. You can take out a 30-day rolling contract with one provider and give them a go where you live, then try a different one 30 days later if you fancy.
It also allows you to stick with your current phone, if you’re happy with it and don’t want to pay for a new one. Perhaps more important is the idea that you can upgrade your phone whenever you feel like it, rather than needing to wait until the end of the contract period. All of this is much more environmentally friendly, given the fact that you can keep your phone for as long as you want to and won’t be sending phones to landfill every 12 to 24 months. You can even choose to buy a refurbished phone rather than brand new one, should you particularly feel like it.
In a lot of cases, 30-day rolling contracts don’t require you to undergo a credit check in order to get the mobile deal you’re after. Similarly, buying a phone outright won’t involve any sort of credit check. If you either have bad credit or else are trying to keep your credit as good as possible and therefore want to avoid credit checks, sticking with a SIM only deal and buying your phone separately can help to avoid that from happening. The same is not true if you’re on a contract, given the fact that contracts are essentially a form of credit agreement.
SIM only deals are designed to allow you to pick the minutes, calls and data package that works best for you and are therefore a lot more flexible than contracts.They still offer you a bundle for your data, calls and minutes, unlike Pay-As-You-Go, but the deal can fit around what you need rather than what you’re being offered. For most people, the flexibility around SIM only deals and having a phone that you can do what you want with will be massively appealing.