I’ve recently added a wrist strap to my phone. This is primarily on the back of Terence Eden’s advice for mobile security. As well as advising the use of a password manager, password/biometric lock and not sideloading apps from shady sources, he also mentions physical security of the handset.
Whilst my phone “only” cost around £700, I’ll only finish paying it off next month. If you have an iPhone Pro Max with the maximum 1 terabyte of storage, you’ll have paid £1600 which is a lot of money to lose. Some Samsung Android phones also cost serious cash to buy new nowadays too.
I often have my phone out when walking around, mainly for playing Pokemon Go. All it takes is someone brazen enough to snatch it out of my hand for it likely to be gone for good. So I’ve finally decided that a wrist strap would be a good idea in the hope of preventing this.
Both the strap, and the phone case I use, are relatively cheap ones from AliExpress – collectively costing less than £5. The case has a pair of holes for threading a strap through, but you can also buy wrist straps that attach to the bottom of any phone case if yours doesn’t have holes. Somewhat annoyingly, the holes are on the left side of the phone, and I’m right-handed.
My wrist strap itself is adjustable, so you can tighten it around your wrist and reduce the risk it falling (or being pulled) out of your hand.
Whilst I was mainly motivated to reduce the risk of my phone being stolen, having a wrist strap also reduces the risk that you’ll drop your phone. As well as reducing the risk of the phone being damaged, it means you’re less likely to drop it in places where it can’t easily be retrieved. Maybe if Rebekah Vardy’s agent had a strap on her phone, she wouldn’t have ‘accidentally’ dropped it in the North Sea. Snide remarks aside, I use my phone’s camera quite a bit, so having a wrist strap makes me more confident that I’m not going to drop it into a lion enclosure at a zoo or something.
Just a quick word of caution though. If you keep your phone in a pocket, make sure you tuck the wrist strap in as well so it’s not hanging out. Otherwise, counter-intuitively, it might make your phone easier for pick-pockets to steal.
Later today I will have a brand new iPhone 5S, which I ordered on Friday. I wasn’t expecting to need a new phone so soon but sadly my current iPhone 5 is not in a good way.
The need to upgrade
I bought my iPhone 5, along with a new two-year contract, in September 2012, shortly after launch. My iPhone 4 had pretty much conked out: it kept randomly rebooting, and was getting rather slow. However, by September 2014, my iPhone 5 was still in good shape. Sure, the battery life wasn’t as good but it still worked fine. So instead I took out a new 12 month SIM-only contract with the intention of keeping my iPhone 5 until next year.
Unfortunately, more recently, my iPhone 5 has developed a fault with the Lightning port. It will only charge if I plug a cable in at a certain angle – and if the cable becomes even slightly loose, it won’t charge. Whilst I can usually get the cable in a good enough position to charge it at home, it’s almost impossible to do when out and about unless you actually hold the cable in position. And there have been several occasions when the cable has been knocked slightly and I’ve ended up starting the day with a phone on 30% battery.
It’s been like this for a while but it seems to have got worse of late. I’ve tried cleaning out the Lightning port as best I can, and I’ve used many different cables, but it still doesn’t work properly.
It may be fixable, but as the battery life isn’t great either, I decided that really, I’d be best with a new phone.
Rule-breaking
Co-incidentally, I recently received an ‘exclusive’ offer from Three, the network I’m with, to upgrade early to a new iPhone 6. Normally ending my contract now, and not when it ends in September, would incur a penalty, but Three were willing to waive these charges if I signed a new two-year contract with them. I registered my details on their ‘rulebreakers’ page and got a call back later on Thursday to discuss the deal.
The offer was for a brand new iPhone 6, in my choice of colour, at no up-front cost, with a 2-year contract that included 2 GB of data (including tethering), unlimited calls, unlimited text messages and a few other perks. The catch was that the monthly charge would be £46 per month, and it was only the 16 GB model. I’m currently paying £18 per month for a SIM-only deal so this would be a huge hike in my monthly payments – more than 2.5 times higher.
But I agreed to it – I needed a new phone, and I’d be getting Apple’s latest and greatest model. Even though I had the opportunity to home test an iPhone 6 in September, and found it rather too big for my liking.
Cutting too many corners
At first, I didn’t think the lack of storage would be an issue. My iPad Mini 2 is the 16 GB model, and whilst I don’t have much space left on it, it does just about everything that I need it for.
My iPhone 5, however, is the 64 GB model. And it turns out I was using half of the space on it. At first I thought these were things I could do without – a 2.5 GB full HD quality episode of Sherlock, for example. But after deleting the stuff I didn’t use, and then the stuff I occasionally used, and then stuff that I didn’t really want to delete but would do if I absolutely had to, I was still using over 20 GB of space. Essentially, if I wanted to get by on a 16 GB phone, I’d have to make do with not having all the apps I wanted, all my photos, or all of my music. And it’d be a compromise that I’d have to live with for the two years of the contract. A contract that would be costing me over £1000 over the two years.
The lack of storage might not have been so bad if it weren’t for the limited data allowance as well. Whilst I’ve only ever used more than 2 GB in a month once or twice, if I have less storage capacity on my phone then I’d need to store more data in the cloud, which would eat further into my data allowance. A small capacity phone and unlimited internet might have worked, as would a large capacity phone and limited internet, but not the worst of both.
Cooling off
I’m fortunate, in some respects, that I’d agreed to this over the phone, which meant that I was legally entitled to a 14-day ‘cooling off’ period, as per the Consumer Contracts Regulations. And in fairness to Three, they made me fully aware of my rights to cancel on the phone call and what to do. So on Friday I called them, and cancelled the upgrade, which was done without any fuss. After all, I’ll still have a contract with them until September. The iPhone 6 had already been dispatched at this point, so I’ll need to refuse the delivery when it comes today.
With that sorted, I ordered a new 32GB iPhone 5S direct from Apple. Whilst not as big as my current 64 GB model, I can comfortably get by with 32 GB of space – and Apple doesn’t offer larger storage on the 5S anymore. It cost £499, which I can pay off from my credit card over the next few months, and even with a bit of interest, it’ll save me around £180 over two years, assuming that I stay on an £18 per month contract. And the phone is unlocked too – whilst I’m happy with Three and don’t intend to switch networks, if I do, then I can take my phone with me.
I also prefer the size of the iPhone 5S to the 6. I’m not bothered about a bigger screen and would prefer a device that I can use with one hand, for the times when I’m standing on a train and need to hold onto a grabrail, for example. Whilst it is last year’s model, Apple tend to offer updates for 3-4 years after release, so it should be good until September 2018. And there aren’t many other improvements to the iPhone 6 that are relevant to me: I don’t have any 802.11ac wifi devices and Apple Pay hasn’t been launched here yet.
With hindsight I should have turned down the ‘rulebreaker’ deal in the first place, as soon as I heard it was a 16 GB model, but I guess desperation got the better of me. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to cancel without penalty, and been able to find a solution that serves me better. Even if it does mean using last year’s model.
It’s almost August, so I’m within a couple of months of my initial 24 month mobile phone contract with Three coming to an end. I bought my iPhone 5, along with a new contract, in September 2012.
At the time I decided to go for a new contract because my current phone at the time, an iPhone 4, was not in a good state. It would randomly reboot around once a week, and sometimes when it came back up it would ask to be connected to iTunes, as if it hadn’t been activated. The battery life was starting to get rather poor by this point as well. Rather than spend money on a new battery and hope that it would also fix the reboot problem, I decided to take advantage of the launch of the iPhone 5 and just get a new phone. And because iPhones are so expensive when bought without a contract, I took on a new two year contract at the same time.
This time, my iPhone 5 is in a better state by comparison. Admittedly it too doesn’t have the same battery life as it did when I got it, but that is to be expected, and I have backup batteries in both my usual bags to top it up if needed (which actually isn’t that often). It’s as reliable as it was when I got it, and thanks to the improvements in iOS 7, it’s more useful now than it was two years ago. And iOS 8 will hopefully make it even better.
So, unless the rumoured iPhone 6 is amazing and has must-have features, I’ll sit it out and stick with my current model for the next twelve months. Not only will I not have the upfront cost of a new handset but a SIM-only contract will be much cheaper – around £14 per month instead of the £34 per month I’m paying now, saving me £240 over the year, or £5 per week.
Christine is in a similar position with her phone as well, so hopefully between us we’ll have the capacity to save quite a bit of money over the next year. There’s no point having the latest and greatest model if the current one works fine, and does everything I need it to. I’d rather have the extra money.
As more and more people use their mobile phones as their main phone, instead of landlines, it’s becoming more of a scandal that ‘freephone’ 0800 and 0808 numbers are usually not free on mobiles. Not only that, but users with contracts that have inclusive minutes (which is most people), will find that calls to freephone numbers aren’t included. My network, Three, charges me 15.3 pence per minute to call freephone numbers, and my allowance of 300 minutes per month won’t cover it. EE charges its customers 40p per minute.
If you have a smartphone with Skype installed, and have enabled SkypeOut which lets you call regular phone numbers, then you’ll be pleased to know that freephone numbers are completely free. You’ll also probably find that calls made through Skype to 0845 and 0870 numbers are also cheaper than on your mobile.
The downside is that you need to have access to a reasonable internet connection for this to work – 3G or Wifi is usually okay but you will struggle on anything slower. And this might not be a good option if you don’t have a very high data usage allowance.
2. Find the geographical equivalent
Freephone numbers like 0800 numbers, and the chargeable 0870 and 0845 numbers, all point to regular geographical numbers – ones starting with 01 or o2. So if you can find out that geographical number behind the 0800 number, you can call that instead, and make use of your inclusive minutes. SayNoTo0870.com is a rather dated web site that lists many of these numbers, and you can search both by company and by phone number.
3. Use a geographical call forwarding number
Instead of calling the freephone number directly, you can call a third party service using a geographical number, and then have your call forwarded. The call is billed as a geographical number and so will therefore be included in your call allowance. There’s a couple of services to try – 0800 Buster and 0800 Wizard. With 0800 Buster you can actually dial both numbers at once, by inserting a pause character between them, so you can save them to your contacts.
4. Use an app
The aforementioned 0800 Wizard service also has a series of smartphone apps – here’s a link to the iOS app, and it’s also on Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. You open the app, dial the 0800 number as normal, and the app will automatically route it through a forwarding number as above.
I’m not aware of any privacy issues with using these services – although they forward your calls, I don’t think they’re able to somehow eavesdrop on your conversations.
Next year, none of this will be necessary, and freephone calls will actually be free for everyone. But in the meantime you can stop wasting money on calls that should be free.
I’m rather pissed off this morning. You know that shiny new mobile I spent £90 on Wednesday? Well, it’s been stolen. Already.
I was out at the Friday Night Disco, and about 20 minutes from the end reached into my pocket, to find that it was missing. It was nowhere on the dance floor, security hadn’t seen it and no-one had handed it in to the bar. When a friend of mine tried ringing it, it reported that it had been turned off (bearing in mind that when I last had it it was still turned on), so I imagine someone’s taken it. Grrrrr.
Anyway, I’m going to ring up Vodafone and ask them to block the IMEI number, which should make the phone useless to anyone (even with a different SIM card), and see about getting a new SIM card with my credit transferred over. And I need to ring my parents to see if we get anything out of the insurance company.
I am still very annoyed about this. In fact, if I could find the heartless little toerag who nicked it, I’d be very tempted to kick him in the nuts.
