Often the easiest way of getting your hands on the latest iPhone is by committing to a multi-year phone contract with one of the UK’s many mobile networks. This is a way to split the cost of the pricey handset across several months, rather than having to pay hundreds or thousands to buy the gadget outright. It’s often difficult to find the best deals, so we’ve done a bit of digging.
O2 is offering the iPhone 15 on a 36 month contract with an eye-catching half price deal for the first six months. The network will charge you just £18.56 for the phone for six months, which includes 1GB data. After that period, it’ll go up to £39.56.
36 months is quite a long – three year – contract, but with O2 Switch Up you can technically swap your phone for a newer model every 90 days during your contract if you want to. O2 also asks for a £30 upfront payment to get your hands on the iPhone 15.
This sounds great on paper, but when you run the numbers you’ll actually end up paying £1,328.16 over three years. The cost of the 128GB iPhone 15 you can get for this price is £799 if you buy the phone outright from Apple, so O2 is charging £529.16 on top of that – which works out to £14.70 per month for 1GB data, which you may find yourself running out of.
We think Sky has a better deal. You can get the same 128GB iPhone 15 on a 36 month contract for £23 per month, plus £6 per month for triple the data of O2 at 3GB. That means at £29 over three years you’ll pay £1,044, nearly £300 less than on O2, which comes to just £6.80 per month for 3GB data when you take into account the £799 cost of the phone. Sky will let you swap the iPhone 15 for a new model after a month, according to its website.
View the iPhone 15 deal from Sky Mobile
“This is a 36-month contract. You can swap to a new phone anytime after 31 days, or from 24 months at no extra cost,” the provider says. Sky Mobile actually uses O2’s network too, so if you were leaning towards O2 because of coverage in your area, you should be fine with Sky.
Both of these contracts are subject to annoying mid-contract price rises every April too, so the grand totals will be a little more than what we’ve worked out here. O2 is also able to offer better EU roaming than other networks, and you get O2 Priority that gives you access to pre-sale tickets for gigs and other discounts – something no other network offers.
There are pros and cons to every phone contract but if your main worry is the total cost, it’s worth breaking down the deals like we have here to figure out the best ones. We also recommend checking out Mobiles.co.uk, as its contracts are only 24 months, so if you don’t mind paying a little more every month, you may end up paying the same amount but not be tied into a three year contract.
Remember also that it’s your right to stop paying the standard monthly price after your contract ends. Many providers won’t tell you this, and you’ll keep paying over the odds even after you’ve paid off the cost of your iPhone. Once your contract is over you can cancel it, keep your number, and move to a rolling one month SIM deal from a provider such as Giffaff – which happens to use the O2 network – and get much more monthly mobile data for a price that never goes up. This writer has been paying £10 per month for their SIM for years.
