Would YOU pay £1,416 more for a phone that folds

ANEW wave of £1,500 mobile handsets is being launched next month but you can snap up a high-tech smartphone for just £99. The Samsung Galaxy Fold comes out in April and although a technological marvel with a folding screen, the phone will carry a hefty £1,515 price tag. This is the price you must pay to buy the phone without a SIM card or mobile contract.

Network providers try to lure customers into making such high-cost purchases with a monthly instalment deal – which may make it affordable but end up adding hundreds of pounds more before you eventually own the handset outright.

Yet for £99 you could buy the sleek Nokia 2.1, a smartphone with enough bells and whistles to compete with most big budget phones.

And rather than getting trapped into a lengthy contract, it is possible to opt for a cheaper SIM-only deal, paying perhaps £10 a month for a flexible option where you can later change your calls plan.

Matthew Moreton, managing director of phone comparison service Compare and Recycle, says: ‘It is worth looking at cheaper alternatives that offer realistic competition to handsets costing as much as £1,500 – often with gimmicks you do not really need. Someone buying a phone outright avoids paying interest.

‘This extra interest gets added to the sums in a lengthy contract deal when you sign up. With a SIM-only option there is no need to be tied into a network deal.’

Moreton suggests anyone seeking a new handset should consider trading in an old mobile and putting this money towards a new device. Compare and Recycle offers a comparison service that lists the dealers willing to buy old handsets. For example, an iPhone 6 sells for £80 through the trading firm SellMyFone while those trading in a Samsung Galaxy S6 get £65 if using musicMagpie.

The best SIM-only contracts can be cancelled after just 30 days. Comparison websites such as broadbandchoices can provide details of the best deals from a range of network providers.

The major names include BT Mobile, EE, O2 and Three. But others – such as giffgaff, Plusnet, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Voix and Smarty – are also worth considering.

Among the most competitive SIM-only deals at the moment is a £10-a-month offer with giffgaff for three gigabytes of data, unlimited texts and phone calls. The three gigabytes allowance is enough to watch 15 hours of movies or listen to 750 songs on Spotify.