Want to upgrade to the latest iPhone while spending as little as humanly possible? I’ve managed to get the monthly payments for an iPhone 16 with data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts down to just £25.95. It’s one of the best mobile phone deals I’ve spotted in the early Black Friday sales.
This year’s entry-level iPhone 16 gets the same A18 chip as the Pro, giving it comparable all-round performance. You don’t get the more expensive phone’s telephoto lens and the display is slightly lower quality, but if you don’t think you’ll notice those differences, the £200 price difference between this and the iPhone 16 Pro is difficult to ignore.
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You’re also getting many of the same upgrades seen on the Pro: new camera controls, the ability to run Apple Intelligence when it’s made available, faster wireless charging and a toughened glass screen.
In our iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus review, The Independent’s tech critic David Phelan was “impressed by how much closer the regular iPhone now is to the pricier Pro models. Sure, the Pro has an extra camera, a better and bigger screen and more, but feature after feature that you might have expected to be Pro-only is on the iPhone 16.”
Here’s how to get the iPhone 16 without breaking the bank.
iPhone 16: Was £799, now £729, Giffgaff.com
First, you can buy the iPhone 16 handset in Giffgaff’s Black Friday sale to get a £20 discount on the £799 device, then spread the cost over 36 months to bring your payments down to £20.95. You’ll need to pass a credit check and you won’t pay any interest over the term. There’s also a £25 up front fee, which will be deducted from what you owe.
To be eligible to buy a phone from Giffgaff, you have to sign up for one of the plans. The cheapest plan is £10 per month, which gets you a generous 60GB of data if you agree to an 18-month contract. That’s great value already, but you can make things even cheaper by choosing the £10 rolling contract from the drop-down menu. This gets you a still-reasonable 20GB of data per month, but you’re free to cancel at any time.
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Before the end of your first month with Giffgaff, cancel your £10 rolling plan and grab a new SIM card from Smarty. The cheapest is on sale for £5 per month and gets you 5GB of data, which means – after paying £35 to Giffgaff in month one – you’ll be paying just £25.95 per month all in for the iPhone 16 with a data plan.
I’ve prioritised finding the absolute cheapest price in this example, but you should stick with Giffgaff or pay a few pounds extra with Smarty (or another SIM-only provider) if you want more than 5GB of data to play around with. Also keep in mind that while your device repayments will stay the same over the 36-month term, data plans increase with inflation and rolling plans can change at any time, so you can expect your payments to creep up slightly as you pay off the phone.
How good a deal is this compared to the contract offers at the major networks? The best price I can find on the iPhone 16 for new customers at EE is £48.24 per month, while at O2 it’s £44.21. That makes my little homemade plan around 40 per cent cheaper than the alternative, or around £800 over three years. I think that’s more than worth the faff of switching around.
For even more shopping advice and the latest discounts, check out our expert-driven guide to the Black Friday 2024 sale, where you’ll find deals on everything from phones and tech to mattresses and air fryers.
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