First mobile for kids?

zagfles

Watch out for exclusions on "capped" contracts - read the T&C's carefully! Some for instance exclude foreign use.

The other thing to bear in mind is that typical kids' use of smartphones incurs very little airtime cost. Particularly if you tell them they have to pay for it out of their pocket money

My kids both got smartphones about 9 months ago, they've never topped them up! They're still using the £10 odd credit they had on their old phones, despite being on them all the time (or so it seems!) They use them almost exclusively on wi-fi, for facebook, messenger, internet, games etc, wi-fi is everywhere these days, restaurants, hotels, friends' houses etc. Texting is old hat, and phone calls are very rare.

The phone cost £190 on PAYG, on contract it would have been £20 a month for 24 months, ie £480. So £290 cheaper on PAYG, minus maybe £20 PAYG airtime cost, so £270 cheaper!

It's amazing how "monysaving" kids can be when it's their own money :rotfl:

tyllwyd

I'm amazed how little credit some kids are using.

My DD was getting through £10 per month on PAYG, so my logic was that she could replace that with a cheap sim only contract at, say £7.50 per month which would mean that for a £10 per month contract with phone included she would be buying a handset for £2.50 x 24 = £60. And if she loses the phone, she still has the benefit of the calls bundle, so we'd replace the handset with a cheap one but we wouldn't have to pay any more for calls.

For the contract we took out, we are only paying about £40 more over the 24 months than the cost of the handset if we bought it sim free (its not available any more so I won't put details) so that seemed like a pretty good deal. (I'm not sure that any of the phones currently on the Tesco website are as good value as that unfortunately.)

I think that £5 per month is probably a reasonable minimum amount to allow for the cost of calls etc, so that's £120 over 24 months. So if it was me, I'd be looking at the cost of the handsets sim free or PAYG + £120, then the total cost of getting it on a contract, and see how the figures compare.

jellybeans09

One of the cheaper Blackberry models can work nicely (my sister got my 12year old niece one for her birthday!) - they're quite basic but reliable too.

MoneyMate

Why not go sim free, Samsung http://www.1stmobile.co.uk/samsung-gt-e2121-492-p.asp
Long battery life, good reviews, around £20 if you look around.:beer:

ladygreen

i'd definitely go pay as you go.

samadams_2

Samsung galaxy ace.

Sam