The cheapest way to get an iPhone 4S in the UK

What’s the cheapest way to get an iPhone 4S legitimately in the UK? That’s the conundrum that’s been confronting me for the past few days.

I’ve been on a £30/month contract with O2 for my old iPhone 3G, but I’m sure I can do better. I’m a medium data user (between 0.5 and 1Gb/month) and make relatively few calls and send few SMS. I travel a lot, so even the cheaper package roaming prices for data offered by some networks are too costly for me (more on the roaming conundrum here), so I have a MiFi and PAYG SIMs for other European countries for that.

So what did I discover? This is the table calculating a price for a 32Gb iPhone over 24 months, with various data and call packages with the main networks. Data for this was compiled 7-9 October 2012 – it’s accurate as far as I can tell. Click the table to enlarge.

The cheapest option – by a full £76 over two years – is to buy an unlocked iPhone 4S from Apple directly, for £599, and put a GiffGaff PAYG SIM in it, and top-up £10/month for unlimited data (although no tethering according to their T&Cs). I’ve survived without tethering for two years in the UK, no big deal, so I don’t think that’s going to stop me…

Now of course GiffGaff could change their prices and my calculations wouldn’t stand. But I would be the owner of an unlocked iPhone and could go elsewhere if I need to (O2 and 3 both offer 500mb for £10/month), and would still be better off financially than I would on a contract. For £15/month I can get an unlimited data SIM from 3, which together with the unlocked iPhone would still be cheaper than 3’s unlimited data option on a contract.

Now all of this strikes me as a rather perverse outcome, and not one I had expected. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome!