Is 4G important?

Hey guys,

I have been with talkmobile for the past 2 years and have finally reached the long-awaited upgrade date today. I am looking to buy a 24 hour pay monthly contract for an iPhone 5s but I have two choices as follows:

1. Upgrade with talkmobile for a 16GB iPhone 5s with 2000 mins, 5000 texts and 4GB data for only £17.50 a month. HOWEVER here's the catch; talkmobile doesn't have any 4G network

2. Upgrade with talkmobile to a cheap 30 month sim only contract for £5 and end the remaining contract altogether for £15 and buy the same iPhone 5s with 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB data for £18.49 a month with a £50 auto cashback.

I will be living on campus University next year so I'm not sure if I will be needing excessive amounts of data... Which option should I go for?

Ditch the idea of getting a IPHONE. Most stuff on it you will never use.

Go to Vodaphone Website and buy a Smartprime 6.
http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/pay-as-you-go/vodafone-smart-prime-6-payg/sku86176-grey

It is 4G and will only cost you £35 plus a big value bundle which can be had for £10. So £45 in total.

Wait a month, get your lock out key from Vodaphone and then get a GiffGaff Sim with Always On Bundle; Unlimited Texts, Minutes and Data! Cost you £20 a month.
https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans/always-on

4G is really nice to have (if I need to upload anything big I always hotspot because 4G is so much faster than my internet at home, both up and especially down), but you can easily burn through the data REALLY quickly. But being on campus you will barely touch it.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Hey guys,

I have been with talkmobile for the past 2 years and have finally reached the long-awaited upgrade date today. I am looking to buy a 24 hour pay monthly contract for an iPhone 5s but I have two choices as follows:

1. Upgrade with talkmobile for a 16GB iPhone 5s with 2000 mins, 5000 texts and 4GB data for only £17.50 a month. HOWEVER here's the catch; talkmobile doesn't have any 4G network

2. Upgrade with talkmobile to a cheap 30 month sim only contract for £5 and end the remaining contract altogether for £15 and buy the same iPhone 5s with 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB data for £18.49 a month with a £50 auto cashback.

I will be living on campus University next year so I'm not sure if I will be needing excessive amounts of data... Which option should I go for?

Hi,

I would strongly suggest getting a SIM that does have 4G capabilities, as 4G is much faster than 3G in most places. Also, in city centres, this will be very important, and I can vouch from experience.
When I was at De Montfort University, Leicester, I started off with Virgin Mobile. 3G only. Quite congested and got about 3Mbps download, and 0.5Mbps upload. But when I tried connecting my laptop to 3G (I didn't trust the wireless network at DMU with my own laptop), speeds went down to less than 1Mbps after a bit of use. In the end, 3G became unusable. Then switched to EE, which had 4G capabilities, and 4G was much more reliable and responsive. Speeds were good, generally about 20Mbps, which is good for a busy city.

I also went to an event in Lincolnshire earlier on in the year. It was very busy, so the network was under strain. I was with EE and had the option to lock to 3G, 4G or use the default mode (the latter, I never do since my S4 pushes me to 2G far too often).
When locked to 4G mode I was getting anywhere from 10Mbps to about 50Mbps, which is excellent considering the abnormally high load at that time. Coverage was very good on 4G as well; I had some sort of 4G signal everywhere during the event (apart from indoors sometimes, due to the lower power and higher frequencies of EE 4G).
When locked to 3G mode, however, things were very different. At the start of the day, 3-5Mbps was possible, however things quickly deteriorated and 0.5Mbps became the norm. On some occasions, there was no data at all and I had to switch to 4G only mode. Also, the coverage was far more hit and miss than 4G was; 3G has a property whereby the higher the load on the mast, the smaller the mast's coverage - so in some areas where 4G was available, 3G was either very weak or no signal at all.
Usually, this mast is fine on 3G and 4G, however, the high load meant that things were very different - and 4G seemed to cope much better than 3G.

My advice: get a PAC code from Talk Mobile and switch to a different provider, that offers 4G. If needed, you can get a SIM Only package and buy the phone outright. That way, you'll be covered is almost all circumstances. (A PAC code will allow you to transfer your existing mobile number to the new network.)

Hope that helps

edit: It should be noted that 4G will use your data faster than 3G, due to the faster speeds. Apart from a few things (such as speedtest.net, and streaming sites such as Spotify/Youtube/Tunein Radio etc, where the bitrate changes depending on your connection speed), the amount of data you will use on 4G will be the same as what you would use on 3G, assuming that you didn't change your usage habits when switching from 3G to 4G.

Also, something to bear in mind, make sure you do buy a phone that has 4G capabilities (most modern phones do) because, from what I have heard elsewhere, 3G may be switched off before 2G (though this still won't be for a good few years yet).

You can always go on uswitch and compare phonesAs a Talk Mobile user i used Uswitch and got the s6 for 5000 text and minutes but 2 GB for £15 I then when on the live chat on their site and i was able to get 5000 texts and minutes and 8GB
My plan is called
PROMO MySIMO 12 XLarge

Thank you for your reply.

Just got off the phone with talkmobile: originally called to 'upgrade' to the cheapest possible 30 day sim-only deal to cancel my contract altogether thereafter (save some money). However, after 15 minutes of deliberation (with the dude claiming they'll be bringing 4G next month... not even advertised on their website), the phonecall ended with him telling me to upgrade online if I so wish to.

It's also confusing to get your head around how despite 4G using data faster than 3G, the amount of data used remains the same. Does that mean you'll reach your allowance much quicker than if you were to use 3G? Is, for example, 1GB way too little amount of data to use 4G with?

No problem at all

Quite a few virtual operators, that run off other networks, don't have access to 4G... I know that Virgin Mobile have no 4G, but whilst I was a member on their forum, and I was with Virgin Mobile, they did say about bringing 4G... Some people said that 4G would be coming in the coming weeks, some people said that 4G would come, but not for a while, some people said that Virgin Mobile has no intentions of 4G... that was 2 years ago, and now, Virgin Mobile still has no 4G at all! So unless you actually see the 4G appear on Talk Mobile, don't get your hopes up... So you're honestly best off with a network that does 4G, in my opinion.

So long as you don't change your browsing habits, 4G won't use more data, I'll try to explain it in a way that isn't too confusing.
For example, let's say that you want to do the following: download a new app, download 2 songs from Google Play Music (or iTunes), download 5 pictures that a friend has recently emailed you, and visit 20 websites. This will use up about 100MB of data.
If you do this over 2G, then everything will be really painfully slow, and you'll probably want to give up halfway through. But eventually, if you have the patience, everything will get done and you'll use up 100MB data.
If you do this over 3G, then everything will be reasonably fast, unless there are congestion issue like the ones I mentioned before You'll still use 100MB of data, no more, no less, because you haven't done anything else.
If you do it over 4G, things will be very fast and you'll likely get it done in a matter of a couple of minutes, or even less. Assuming that you don't do anything else, though (for example, you visited the 20 websites you planned to, you downloaded just the 5 photos, the 2 songs that you planned to, and the one app that you wanted to), then you'll still only use 100MB of data. You won't use any more, because the size of the data you needed doesn't increase if you're on 4G. The only thing you'll notice, is that things are done faster (so it'll appear that data is used quicker, but you won't use more data if your data habits don't change); the only time you'll use more data is via speed tests (e.g. Ookla Speedtest), or via music streaming (Youtube, Spotify, Tunein Radio etc) - as with music streaming, a slower connection will mean a lower bit rate, in order to keep the reliability.

I would say that 1GB is a bit low for 4G though - to be on the safe side, 2GB or 4GB would be recommended. After all, you'd be better with too much data (and not using it) than having not enough data (and go over and rack up a large bill).

Hope that helps!

That's way off my budget dude, and how do you convert to a sim only contract whilst on the first month of your opening 24 month phone contract (assuming that is what it is).

EDIT: Just had the pleasure of reading your username lol, I'll take your suggestion as a grain of salt.

Well if you've gone ahead with a 24 month contract you are stuck on it. I can't help you with that.

Oh that helps a ton dude. I feel like even if I do get a network with 4G, I'll mostly be using 3G as I'm a real budget-er, although it would feel good to have that 4G on standby. With your advice into perspective, I think I'll wait till iPhone 7 to release to cancel my current contract and change providers to EE then, in hopes that iPhone SE will drop in price a little .

It's real impressive how much you write in (presumably) little time (I hope). It's a talent I hope to acquire one day... I take way too long to write formal emails which don't even mean much.

I 💗 4G! After upgrading my phone from Samsung to iPhone 6S Plus (64GB)

Implying apple is the only place you can get 4G

Posted from TSR Mobile