Mobile Network Comparison

Keeping your phone safe is important, and there’s nothing worse than accidentally dropping your £500 smartphone and seeing it smash into a million pieces. After our recent series on the best priced deals currently available for the iPhone 4S, we thought it’d be a good idea to look at ways to keep your expensive new phone safe and well-protected. They should all fit the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and other models too.

Without further ado, the countdown – here’s our favourite five iPhone cases on the market:

5. Case-Mate – Barely There

Was £25 Now £18.95

This case adds a nice feel to your iPhone and trims down those angled corners to give a more pleasant experience to hold. Like the name suggests, the case is so thin it barely looks like it’s there.

For less than £20 the Case-Mate provides an attractive edge to your iPhone, although if you dropped this it’s unlikely to give any extra protection because of the slim design.

 

4. iGloo – Premium Leather Flip Case

Only £4.90

This case also has a plastic shell that is attached to the leather casing to house your phone,. It can be quite difficult to get your phone in and out of the case and the leather flap can make texting on the move uncomfortable.

However, for only around £4 it does its job nicely, and offers enough padding to save your phone if it slips out your hands while walking about.

 

3. Case-Mate – Tank

Was £45 Now £42.99

Yes, this case does cost quite a lot. But you know that this is the strongest you’re gonna make your phone as the case goes through extreme test conditions before reaching the shops. The Tank case has a retractable screen protector that will make sure your iPhone never gets a cracked screen, it is quite bulky, but for the punch it takes it’s understandable.

So maybe not the most attractive thing, and passers by may think you’ve got a phone from the 19th century, but it certainly does it’s job well, and if you want ultimate durability, the Case-Mate Tank is the place to be. It’s not all that appealing, but luckily you still can actually fit it in your pocket.

 

2. Speck – Candyshell Card Case

Only £35.95

This case does not only give your iPhone an extra layer of protection, but also could potentially be your new wallet. The case comes with a slot on the back of your phone, perfect for your credit cards, notes of money, or anything else you may have hiding in your wallet.

The case is extremely hard to get on, and even harder to get off, once on it’s a very tight fit, and too much mishandling could crack the case near the headphone and charger slots. Other than that this case is a very intuitive idea from the creators at Speck. It’s not going to give you the most protection, but it certainly will absorb some of the impacts of your phone cluttering about. Just make sure not to leave it lying about…

 

1. Otterbox – Defender Case

Was £29 Now £11.94

The iPhone 4S fits beautifully into the Otterbox Defender. It provides a great grip and having this on your phone is going to make it a lot less likely for you
to drop it. The case comes with an inner layer of protection, a hard clear clover for the touchscreen, and an outer rubber piece which holds everything else in place. Once put together there is an outer casing which can go over the rubber too, providing more protection, but a lot more bulk. With it all assembled, even if you drop this phone it’s very likely it won’t break.

This case may not be as durable as the Case-Mate, but being more than three times cheaper, this case is a real bargain. Great durability, and a great price.

 

Rejoice all ye iPhone and iPad users – Giffgaff have finally got round to producing their own micro-SIMs (you Nokia Lumia, HTC One X, Sony Xperia and Motorola Razr fans can let out a little cheer too).

After producing a fantastic infographic showing that the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 where both in the top 5 handsets used on Giffgaff, they decided it was about time to more proactively lure these users over. Previously, they had hosted a member-project called Microgaff than matched up new customers with existing members who owned SIM cutters. They would order SIM cards in advance, cut them down to micro-SIM size with a cutter and then post them out in lieu of Giffgaff. We even got involved here at Mobile Network Comparison and sent out our own professionally cut micro-SIMs by first class post absolutely free of charge.

Now, however, our top-rated network has produced their very own micro-SIMs. They were announced a few weeks ago but they’ve just started arriving on doormats today. Fresh after moving to a brand new state-of-the-art warehouse, the guys and girls at Giffgaff HQ and come up with a great new pop-out style of hybrid SIM card. Every SIM will be laser-cut (lasers are always cool) so that you can use it as a regular sized SIM card as usual but if you need a micro-SIM you can just pop it out.

See how it works for yourself:

So there will be no more fiddling with careful cutting and filing, buying expensive SIM cutters or going through third parties. Now you can order a Giffgaff micro-SIM directly and be sure that it will fit perfectly in your phone. So what are you waiting for? Check out more about how much cash you could save and if you’re moving to Giffgaff and need a micro-SIM or a regular SIM card, order your free hybrid micro-SIM today. And as an extra promotional bonus, if you order through our site you’ll get an extra £5 credit absolutely free

After our preview of Samba Mobile (a network with an interesting business model) a couple of weeks ago, we got together with CEO and co-founder Ben Atherton to chat some more. Some of you had some interesting questions and we tried to get as detailed answers as possible.

Ben, first of all can you explain a little more about the genesis of the company and the ideas behind it?

The idea came about in 2009. The 2 founders, me and Dilip, had worked in the ad industry and the telco industry since the early 1990s. We knew the web was moving more towards video (and brands were reacting to this), we knew that people wanted better value from their mobile providers for data on laptops (this was pre iPad) and we knew that operators wanted to drive money from advertising.

Put these three trends together, and we came up with Samba.

What can users expect from the adverts they have to view and how are you choosing advertisers?

Adverts are varied and high quality. At the moment we are running Virgin Media, Volvo, Star Wars Kinect, Samsung, Next, Nissan, Microsoft, Schweppes – amongst others. Major brands. Most content is between 30′ and 60′. Viewers watch on average 3 per day (we know this because we did a trial with 300 users in 2011 over 3 months and 50 brands, some 90,000 ad events were played).

We aggregate ads and other video content from social and viral video partners such as Unruly Media.

Going forward, we will also offer music, film and sport content.

Over time, as we offer more and more ads and content, people will get more and more of what they want as we can show them stuff they like based on what they have clicked on before.

The MVNO market is incredibly competitive and saturated – apart from your pricing plan, how else are you going to distinguish yourselves and get the word out?

We are very attentive to who else is out there, but so far see nobody like us. Because we are free, and there is a fair ‘value exchange’ (ie users watch high quality content and get data in return) – we expect to see high satisfaction with the service and therefore good word of mouth.

Only today one of our triallists was invited to return, signed back up and sent this quote:

“Thank you in advance and I look forward to using your great service again“

I asked him if we could use the quote and he said “Yes that’s no problem” – so we think it fair to say have happy customers.

This revenue model has been attempted many times before in other markets – why do you think it will work better now and in this particular niche?

Its all about the value exchange – we offer a valuable service – which in the market most people place at being £10-15 (for a month’s worth of mobile broadband data) & for the most part our customers are entertained watching ads and content to earn this data.

Blyk was very interesting (there are some similarities) but at the end of the day the voice minutes and text being offered was worth a lot less in the market than what Samba is offering. People value mobile broadband access.

Freeserve was a similar model and they gained 1.5m customers over a decade ago.

Mobile broadband demand is soaring, everyone should have a right to have it. Why pay?

The other key thing is that right now, in the middle of the worst downturn in living memory, nearly everyone wants a bargain, not just traditional ‘bargain seekers’.

All the above is from a customers POV (and quite right) but from a brand POV we also provide benefit. We know from our trial our average CTR (click thru rate) was 7 times the market average. For us the only logical reason for that is because our customers responded well to the ads. So brands are happy too.

What is your target market? How has adoption been so far and do you have growth forecasts?

Its everyone who wants a high quality mobile broadband service. We are attracting everyone from teenage men to 60 year old women. We only went live this afternoon and are already seeing significant sign ups. We have 7000 people pre-registered.

Right now we are only offering iPad micro sims, but soon we will offer dongles. Once they are available, we see no reason why the customer base should not grow into the hundreds of thousands and beyond. Mobile broadband penetration in the UK is only around 15-20% right now, and we see that growing (as do the likes of Gartner and other players) to 40-50%+ in the next few years. This means over 20m connections out there for grabs. There are currently only 6 providers in this space (including Samba). There’s no reason why we shouldn’t attract a good amount of those 20m connections.

That’s it for now. Stayed tuned for part 2 of the interview in the coming days. We’ll have the full lowdown on how to order a Samba Mobile SIM and what being a customer actually entails. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter to be notified once we’ve published the post