Choosing A Cheap Mobile For My Mother

securespark

securespark

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Just a quick bit of advice, please.

Old Ma Secure is looking for a new phone - her battery is goosed and a new handset is cheaper, plus, she'll be a bit more up-to-date.

She currently has a Nokia 3330, which cost her £68 new on PAYG, back when the 3330 was just out.

I am looking at 3 sub-£10.00 models from CPW.

Should I choose the Nokia for her on the basis that she is familiar with the Nokia menu system, or are either of the others worthy choices?


1. Nokia 1661, £9.99

2. Sony Ericsson J132, £4.95

3. Samsung E1100, £6.95

Can you help please?
 
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I would stay with Nokia, easy to use and are robust, if the charging socket is the same then you will have a spare charger.

Wotan
 
Gone back to my old Nokia, affectionately known as The Brick, after a Samsung, and Eriksonn. It is a basic phone/text with no camera, bells or whistles. It has been dropped kicked and slung in a drawer and forgotten about in the past but still comes up trumps. Funnily enough it is the one we use in work when we go on site jobs. So old I can't remember the model number but its a grey front with silver back.
 
Don't overlook the cashback deals, they really are good/great value for money.

I've just finished one up.
12 months ago, I got a nokia 6300 on a vodafone contract (500mins 500 text) for £30 per month for my wife - but with 4 cashback payments by them for £75 each.

It's not a con. I've just received the last cheque, so the whole thing ended up costing only £60 for the year, or £5 per month.

Best of all, I can now sell the phone with envirofone for about £35

Meaning that we've had a contract mobile with more minutes that we'll ever use for about £2 a month.

I think that is cheaper than most pay as you go deals.
 
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Consider more the ease of use than the price of it.

It may be best to stick to the same make as she will be used to the menu system & way of doing stuff on it.
Changing can be quite confusing as they all do things differently.
 
toasty: this will be a PAYG phone. She hardly ever uses it, so a bundle of minutes and texts will go unused every month.

conny, wotan & matty: the Nokia wins by majority verdict!

I naturally leaned towards a Nokia as she has had her old one years & got so used to it.

But I firmly believe you can teach an old dog new tricks and had an open mind for the others.

If you had said, "yeah, normally I'd go for the Nokia but the SE one has much larger buttons & a bigger display," then that would have swayed me.
 
my floozie and I recently needed new phones. I got a whizzo Sony (free on monthly contract) with camera, internet etc. However it is a "candy bar" phone with a big screen, so the buttons are too tiny for my tired old eyes and fat fingers. I bought a rubber sock to put it in to protect it from knocks and scrapes (it has a big colour screen, and my old phone gave up after I kept dropping it)

she got a PAYG "clamshell" (flip) that opens up. It has a much bigger keyboard which is far easier to use, and of course, when closed, is less prone to damage than mine.

It cost about £30 including £10 of prepaid minutes, and is some kind of Nokia. She put the old SIM card in so keeps her number. It came from Carphones and was unlocked in the shop so will work on any network's SIM.

I think it is a good one to get. If I was getting another I would go for a Clamshell with big keyboard, it is much easier to see than the slide-out ones.

I think it was this one Nokia 2760
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/NOKIA-2760/PPAY
 
Well, I got the first option.

Surprisingly, though, I was able, on my own, to go to the retailer & buy a new handset, giving the retailer my mum's mobile number so they could initiate a "port" from the old sim to a new one.

Even more surprisingly, I rang the mobile provider later and asked them to complete the "port" process, having given them my mum's mobile number and the new sim serial number, thereby giving me a brand new handset complete with my mum's old number and all her PAYG credit.

That must be wrong.
 
My father had one (94yrs old-just passed away) wth big keys and 4 presets on buttons. So "A" send for me, "B" send for my sis etc. Its called a Doro HandleEasy 328gsm. It will recieve text but not send and no camera's or any other gizmo's. Dont know price or were it came from as my Sis bought it, but a google search should find. Just noticed it has "care electronics" on the box. This one will be on Ebay shortly.
 
I'd vote for a chunky Nokia as well.

One got dropped down the toilet, and was working again as soon as I dried it out :!:

The big issue is the battery.
I've also got a Nokia 3330 in the cupboard that still works, but the batteries seem to start losing their charge quickly after a year or two.

It may be worth checking what batteries come with it and paying a few more quid to get a better battery.

Being old (and sensible) they'll probably want a phone for making calls and a phone that's going to last for 4/5 years.
It's a shame we don't all do this...

The alternative is to order a mobile phone battery on ebay, but there's a danger it won't work much better than the current old battery.
There are some for less than £4, so maybe it's worth a punt.
The 3330 buttons are more old-people-friendly than the more recent models.
 
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