Vodafone have continued their streak of breaking record plan prices with a new iPhone offer.
The 16GB iPhone 4S is now available on Vodafone's $49 Cap for only an additional $8 per month for handset costs.
This means that overall, you will only be paying $57 per month for a brand new iPhone. This is undoubtedly the best iPhone plan in the market right now, smashing competition from providers like Optus and Virgin out of the park. But is it worth it? Let's take a closer look at the plan and see whether or not it offers you value for money.
First of all: the phone itself. The iPhone 4S is a favourite amongst Australians, and Apple has proven itself the smartphone heavyweight, with spectacular profits and dominance in the market both here in Australia and abroad. The 4S itself is a brilliant smartphone epitomising Apple's style of an instinctive and well-defined interface "that just works".
The cheapest plan you'll find the iPhone 4S is Virgin's Fair Go $19 Plan, where with $23 worth of handset cost per month you'll be getting the iPhone for $42 per month. This is definitely an enticing offer, but when we look closer at it, it's not really worth it for anyone besides the very lightest user: only $50 worth of credit for texts and calls, and a bare 50MB of data. As a smartphone user, particularly as a new smartphone user with your very first iPhone, you'll want much more than that to play around with.
The most comparable plan you'll find to Vodafone's is Telstra's Freedom Connect $59 Plan, where with $10 worth of handset costs per month you'll be getting the iPhone for $69 per month. You get $550 worth of monthly credit and 0.5GB more than you get with the Vodafone plan, but it's an additional $12 per month. Over the course of the 24 month contract, that's an additional $288 that you'll be paying.
In contrast, Vodafone's $49 Cap offers $550 worth of credit for texts and calls along with a free three standard national voice calls per month, and 1GB of data. Social networking sites such as FaceBook and eBay are unmetered, and international rates are included in the cap rate, which will be a great boon to those who have family overseas.
Vodafone has suffered criticism in the past about its network, but over the past six months they have been pouring money into upgrading and perfecting their system, and have reported much better results. In addition to that, Vodafone are offering their new Network Guarantee, unlike any other telco in Australia at the moment. The guarantee allows customers to opt out of a contract if they're not happy with the network speed within the first 30 days of signing up, giving you an easy out if you get your brand new iPhone only to find that you can't do anything with it.
(Of course, you'll have to return the iPhone, too, but you can't have it all!)
Desperate for a short contract? Vodafone also offer the $49 Cap on a 12 month contract, although in this case you'll have to pay a lot more for the iPhone 4S - $32 per month on top of the $49 plan, bringing your monthly fee to $81. On the plus side, this does mean that you get your iPhone at the end of the 12 month contract for only $972 overall – that's only about $1-270 more than you'd pay for an iPhone outright, making it still a pretty fair deal. However, if you needed that 12 month contract, we'd recommend going for a cheaper handset – the Apple iPhone 4 8GB is only an additional $22 per month.
Call us for more information or to sign up with Vodafone today on 1300 850 518.
Not convinced by Apple and their plethora of supporters? There's some great other smartphones on the line. Check out the best cap plans and have a look at some of the plans available for some of Australia's favourite smartphones: the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Nokia Lumia 800, or, to try something different, the brand new HTC One X.