There's big discounts on offer in the T Mobile PAYG flash sale running online now.
Prices start from £4.99 for a £14.99 Nokia mobile, but there are also big discounts on top mobiles like the Nokia Lumia 520 (£50 off)!
Selected phones only, subject to availability.
Sale prices available with top up - either £10 or £20 depending on the phone.
Mobile-location based advertising network xAd joined forces with mobile call measurement provider Telmetrics to release their first U.K. Mobile Path-to-Purchase study, focusing on U.K. mobile search behavior. Conducted by Nielsen, the online study, surveyed 1,500 U.K. smartphone and tablet users to measure consumer search activity on mobile devices.
While price comparisons and reviews were the leading mobile research activities in the U.K., users performing restaurant and automotive searches on smartphones were most often looking for location or local contact information.
According to the study, 40 percent of U.K. mobile searchers reported an intent to make a purchase within a day of their search. Of the mobile searchers looking to make a purchase within 24-hours, 22 percent were looking to make a purchase within an hour of their search. People with an intent to make a purchase within a day were more likely to use their smartphones, with 14 percent more of the searches performed on a smartphone versus a tablet. 
When compared to an August 2012 U.S. Mobile Path-to-Purchase study, U.K. mobile searchers have less overall immediacy with their intent to purchase than U.S. mobile searchers across the three primary vertical categories: restaurants, automotive and travel.
For restaurant searches, 87 percent of U.S. mobile searchers had an intent to purchase within the day, compared to only 58 percent of U.K. mobile searchers. And while 49 percent of U.S. mobile searchers performing automotive searches had an intent to purchase the same day, only 29 percent of U.K. mobile searchers had an intent to make a purchase the same day. Travel was the only category with less than a 10 percent gap between U.S. and U.K. data, with 33 percent of U.S. mobile searchers intending to purchase the same day compared to 31 percent in the U.K.
A key finding of the study was the importance of location for U.K. mobile search, with nearly 50 percent of both smartphone and tablet users expecting search locations to be within walking or driving distance.
Smartphone users have a greater interest in location with 58 percent of smartphone searches performed outside of the home.
Not only does location play a key role in U.K. mobile search, it is also a driving force for mobile ad clicks, with nearly one-third of users preferring ads that are geographically relevant. Location relevance trumps both brand awareness and promotional offers in terms of what generates the most U.K. mobile ad clicks.
More than 65 percent of survey respondents reported that they did not know exactly what they were searching for when performing a mobile search, opening the door to untapped opportunities for mobile advertisers in the U.K.
“Successful mobile advertising campaigns must be tailored to distinct device and category nuances as a ‘one size fits all’ approach won’t produce the desired results,” said Monica Ho, vice president of marketing for xAd, Inc.
Overall, 80 percent of smartphone and tablet searchers in the U.K. visit search engines in the research process. When specifying which device they are most likely to use at home, 81 percent of respondents claimed to use their tablet compared to 42 percent who reported searching on their smartphone at home.
The 1,500 U.K. smartphone and tablet users surveyed were required to have engaged in a restaurant, travel or automotive related mobile search activity in the previous 30 days. Restaurant, travel and automotive were the selected categories as they are the leading three vertical markets projected to demonstrate mobile growth during the next five years.
Related Topics: Search & Society: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Mobile | Stats: General | Stats: Search Behavior | Top News
About The Author: Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Correspondent, and reports on the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles. See more articles by Amy GesenhuesConnect with the author via: Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn 
If you want to switch networks, you may have to unlock your mobile phone. But this can be surprisingly complicated and expensive, as Sue Hayward found.
Considering mobile phone companies are in the business of communication, you'd think they would be pretty good at it.
But when it comes answering a simple question such as "how do I unlock my phone?", it can be hard to get a straight answer.
When you buy a mobile phone, it's usually locked to a particular phone network.
So, if you want to take advantage of deals and promotions from other operators, you need to unlock it.
My daughter had a mobile phone on a Vodafone pay-as-you-go (PAYG) deal.
After a year wanted to switch networks to take advantage of a £1-a-month contract deal with another provider.
When I rang Vodafone it all sounded very easy and fee-free.
But further along the call centre chain I was told this would incur a £19.99 charge - a big fee considering you can get phones unlocked at high street outlets from around £5.
I rang Vodafone's disconnections department to check this charge was correct.
They insisted it was, although they did offer to waive it as a gesture of goodwill.
I agreed and was passed - yet again - to another person who then told me there was actually no charge at all to unlock a pay-as-you-go mobile phone once it's over a year old.
So, had I not questioned the charge, Vodafone would have been £20 richer at my expense.
However, despite being promised the fee-free unlock code within three to five days, I was still waiting three weeks later.
Call me cynical, but what's to stop mobile companies deliberately playing silly games when it comes to providing unlock codes as, naturally, they don't want you to switch?
Well, communications industry regulator Ofcom says there are no rules to prevent mobile phone operators locking phones to their networks.
And any unlocking charge imposed is pretty much down to individual operators, providing it's written into their terms and conditions.
As you might expect, charges vary depending on which network you're with.
O2 charges PAYG customers £15 a time, but this option is only available after a year.
Orange charges £20.42 for both PAYG and contract customers and with T-Mobile the charge for unlocking a handset is £15.32.
With both these mobile phone networks you can ask to unlock your phone after three months, although if you're on a contact you will need to cover the cost of any remaining term.
Vodafone confirmed the £20 charge for PAYG phones but say this is paid regardless of how long you've had the phone.
This conflicts with the "free after a year" information given to me by Vodafone's call centre staff.
Along with the make and model of your handset, the key bit of information you need is your phone's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number.
This is a unique serial number which you can find on the original box or by dialling *#06# on your handset.
The time taken to hand over the unlock code depends on the network operator.
O2 says it's up to 10 days while both Orange and T-Mobile say it should take up to 30 days.
In some cases can take up to three months, depending on your handset.
And Vodafone says it can usually provide the unlock code within 72 hours, although if it has to request one from the manufacturer it can be up to ten days.
Have you had problems trying to get your network provider to unlock your mobile phone?
Have you given up and gone to one of the many high street outlets that provide this service instead?
We want to hear from you! You can share your views on the message board below.
If you are one of the growing number of people who use a mobile device to access BBC News, we have some important news for you.
This week sees the start of a revamp of our mobile services to make them even simpler and quicker to use, and to make more content available, more easily.
Mobile has become a key way for many people to keep up to date with news. In an average week, for example, the BBC News site and apps are visited by about 9.7m users on mobile and tablet devices worldwide, or about 26% of total users to BBC News Online.
To date, there have been three options for accessing BBC News on a mobile. The experience you get varies considerably depending on which one you use:
1) The first, and oldest, mobile option is the "mobile browser" site - mostly comprising headline links and designed for the simpler mobile handsets which predated the arrival of smartphones.
2) The second is the BBC News mobile app, which has been downloaded from the Apple and Android app stores several million times and is designed to give quick access to the day's main stories. The app allows you to read them offline too, and is a handy way to catch up with the top stories fast, but doesn't contain all the related editorial material you would find on the main site.
3) The third is the full desktop website, which many people also access on their phones. This has the advantage of giving you everything the main website contains, but on a smallish mobile screen it can be hard work to pinch, zoom and scan the content.
Now we are simplifying some of the above into a new service which launches this week and replaces the earlier mobile browser site.
Using an approach called Responsive Design, the BBC Future Media product team for News have built a mobile site which can detect and adapt to your device, giving you the optimum size and format for the phone you are using.
This new site is designed, for now, mainly for simpler phones, although you should be able to access it on any device. It will gradually evolve as new features and functionality are added in coming weeks, to the point where it becomes the default browser for smartphones as well. For those using our apps, of course we'll keep them up to date too and continue to look for ways of developing and improving them.
Kate Milner, product manager working on BBC News for mobiles, explains here in more detail what the new mobile service has to offer, and what to expect next.
People sometimes talk about a "mobile first" view of digital development and this project is a step in that direction, since the underlying technology, design and editorial approach is likely to help shape the way we develop services for tablets and the main desktop site in future too. Chris Russell, who leads the product team, writes more about this here.
We hope you'll like using the new mobile site, and If you'd like to leave comments and feedback about it, or have questions, please post them here.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.
By Deanna Cioppa
What goes through your head when the flight attendants announce that it's time to turn off phones and electronic devices? Is it "ah, finally, peace and quiet," "wait! I forgot to call [someone not that important]," or do you smile snidely and take no heed of their direction? Well, you're not going to hear that announcement for much longer, on Virgin Atlantic flights anyway.
With the official reveal of its Airbus 330-300 (flying between New York and London), the airline is offering in-flight cell phone usage for its flyers. According to a release, passengers on the new Airbus will be able to make calls, send and receive texts and emails, and have access to the web at 35,000 feet, via General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). By the end of the year, the airline says the service will be available for nearly 20 of its aircraft. The cost of the service is a bit steep—one British pound (or about $1.59) per minute, but can go up based on your network provider.
While the service is available throughout the plane, Virgin says it's mainly directed at business travelers who need to make a short call or send an email or two—"exceptional situations," as the airline puts it. To that end, only six users will be able to connect to the service at a time.
Despite that low number, some have been voicing concern over the potential for loud (or worse, boring) phone chit-chat in cabins. After Tuesday's announcement, the Associated Press wrote, "The British airline's new service could be a blessing for business travelers who want to stay connected during eight-hour flights across the ocean. It could also be a nightmare for the passenger sitting next to them."
Sarah McIntyre at Virgin's U.S. public relations office tried to assuage those worries. "This is more about people making a brief call to the car picking them up," she said in a phone interview, and not meant for passengers to be "chatting away." The feedback during the airline's trial period with the new service, she said, has been "very positive so far."
This development and the new Airbus is part a $160 million investment by Virgin Atlantic. Other digital goodies include a "technology hub" in the new airplane's Upper Class cabin with connections for smartphones, USB, and tablets, and a new in-flight entertainment system called Jam.
The service, dubbed AeroMobile, is initially available for customers using the O2 and Vodafone mobile networks. Service will still be unavailable during takeoff, landing, and within 250 miles of US airspace.
What do you think of Virgin Atlantic's new phone service? Weigh in in the comments below.
Photo credits: Courtesy of Virgin Atlantic
