T-Mobile, Vodafone, Orange and Virgin HTC Desire deals compared

Comparing the best HTC Desire deals in the UK
Comparing the best HTC Desire deals in the UK

The HTC Desire was only announced two months ago, yet it's not only in consumers' hands, it's also causing a lot of excitement.

We might have given it our first five star review in donkey's years, but that's not the end of the story - the public wants to know how to get it on the cheap as well.

And they're being spoilt with the HTC Desire, as it's coming to all six top providers - but that means a plethora of deals to sort through.

But don't worry, as we've trawled the official provider's tariffs and cracked out the calculators to work out the cash behind the contracts - how much will each really cost you?

We're not talking about how little it will cost you at the start - there are plenty of ways to get a free phone and a bagillion minutes, but we want to know how much lighter your wallet will be in 18 to 24 months.

Note: We've not yet received official word on tariffs from O2, 3 or Orange (although we've taken those offered by The Carphone Warehouse for the latter), but we'll update the article as they emerge.

HTC desire

We've taken a few things into account - the amount of cash you'll chuck into the pockets of each network over the course of the deal, the minutes on offer, the contract length and handset cost, to find the cheapest overall cost for each network.

All are offering unlimited texts with the deals (although for T-Mobile this is a free Booster option; you could switch this for cheaper international calls for instance).

Also all of the deals we surveyed offer unlimited internet (with the exception of Vodafone, that's only giving away a measly 500MB per month) because let's be honest - if you're not going to use the HTC Desire for a lot of data hungry applications and internet, then there's not really a lot of point picking it up.

So once you've decided how long you can want to keep the phone for, and how many minutes you're likely to be chatting for each month, have a look at TechRadar's friendly chart to see which is the best deal for you:

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.