Carphone Warehouse offers free PAYG phones
The obvious answer to the credit crunch: don't pay for anything
The Carphone Warehouse has decided that phones aren't worth anything these days, it's all about the airtime. So pay £30 for credit and get a free Nokia 1650 phone.
Not only that, but for the first 30 days you can get unlimited texts as well, so Christmas could be a phone-filled paradise for those that like the budget models.
Once again, we're seeing a phone that's very feature-light in the Nokia 1650, much like its bargain basement brothers, the Motorola W180 and the Samsung B130, available for a frankly expensive £2.89 and £5 respectively.
Feature-poor
You can listen to the radio through the FM receiver and it needs charging only once every 17 days in standby mode. Erm... and that's it, unless you count the noise reduction technology.
It will be available on Orange's animal tariffs - Dolphin, Canary, Camel and Raccoon.
There's also the option to only buy £10 worth of credit and pay around a tenner for the phone... but that's nowhere near as interesting, nor a good story down the pub. Well, neither is this really, but if you have to say something about your handset, then you might as well say it was free.
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Of course, you could just look at it as buying a phone for £30 and getting free credit, but that's not as much fun now, is it?
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 grew 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.