Not quite as good as last time with 150 international minutes instead of 300 mins and 7GB instead of 8GB, but everything else is the same. Don't forget students should be able to get 10% discount using this link http://www.optus.com.au/student-hub?SID=con:postmob:student:…
Can you get 7GB Boost for less than $33.55?
Technically you can. I just prefer having reception.
Hmm, you're right.
Last time I saw their plans, they hiked their $20 plan to $25. Now it seems they have a $10 plan with 1GB, which is what they used to charge $20 for. The calls and text even became unlimited instead of $600 or whatever it was.
Did they lose a lot of customers and have to backpeddle?
EDIT: That 7GB $30 plan is 3GB anytime data, and 1GB per weekend. For me the weekend data is worthless, so, it's really a 3GB plan. Overall I prefer Optus' deal. You have the option to trade in the phone for the next model after 12 months, paying $99.
Is Boost's coverage the same as Telstras or are there limitations?
EDIT2: Ah wait. I really should read fine prints. The $10 plan has 7 day expiry. Was about to switch to them also. But since they got rid of their $20, and now even $25 plans, there's nothing to see for me here.
The washing machine recalls don't affect Australia.
No idea why you're still talking about the Note 7.
Yeah they do, we were impacted. Agree about the Note though.
I couldn't find any link to washing machine recalls for Australia?
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/11/australia-unaffected-by-sa…
Waiting on a good S7 Edge deal…
You missed it last month. 85.00 plan w/ 20.00 credit each month.
Yeah I missed it :(
The new S8 should be coming out in 4 months if anyone wants to wait.
S7 and S7 edge are great phones. Best smartphones to date in my opinion.
I cannot disagree more. I jumped on board the Samsung fun ship after hearing so many great things about them. It has to be the absolute worst phone I have ever had. Overheating issues. Terrible battery life. Chronic lagging. Shutdowns constantly. Terrible interface.
Australian stock. Took it back to optus and had it checked. They said it runs fine and I just need to use it less.
I've never had an issue with mine, on the plan above and writing this on it. You must have just got unlucky.
Maybe it's just as optus said and I use it too much. Never had an issue with any other phone before in regards to my usage though. I am still stuck with it as I can't legitimize spending money on a new phone when I'm only 2 months into the contract with optus. I am using it now to write this just as you were. I've already had to charge it back up once today as it got down to 6% from a full charge this morning.
How much do you use it and what for ?
If you have a Samsung store near you. Try take it there
@astarman: I work in medical science. I use it constantly for reminders, alarms, note taking, quite a few apps to assist me with my work, media (mainly music with a bit of video), camera for both photos and video,etc.
I have contacted samsung directly. I need to give them this phone for them to process and evaluate. As I'm in the middle of a few major things at this stage with the data and workings saved on this phone, I can't surrender it to them for the 1-2 weeks they need.
Hopefully by early December I should be able to and will see what happens then.
How much screen on time you get? If more than 4 hours then I don't know but if way less than 3 hours then maybe check if some "harmless" apps that you have downloaded from PlayStore interfere with your battery life.
I have G5 and one particular flashlight app makes the battery drain even when the screen is off. When I had that app installed it killed my battery always in a half day.
@datafellows: Thank you for the suggestion. I've already gone through and made sure there was no erroneous apps on there that differed from my last phone. Apart from the Samsung apps all are the same.
As for how much actual screen time, I'm not fully sure.I'll try to keep track of that as well. Battery monitor shows that 80+% of my battery is being used by android system, Android os, screen and mediaserver. In that order as well.
Is local stock Exynos or SD820? And which is better?
SD820 will be higher with the GPU, but the CPU itself, the Exynos is faster in several speed test. You can check them out online. Personally I went for the Exynos, cos it's faster in quite a few cases, where the GPU only needed most when you play those games like Alphalt 8 or Dead Trigger… However the Exynos I have still handling them really well.
I don't have a source, but I'm pretty sure we get Exynos for local stock. The 820 is used for US because of the Qualcomm 4g modem used over there.
I am only used to standard Android, is Samsung's Touch Wiz skin hard to get used to? Is it easy to get rid of?
It's not hard to get used to. I have no problem with it.
The settings screen is a bit messy, but that might be true of all Androids.
Thanks mate
Just download a new launcher. I use Nova launcher and it's so customisable. I had the Note 5 before I got the new Zuk Z2 pro and this launcher makes switching between phones so easy. I don't like Samsung TouchWiz and that's the beauty of Android that you can change whatever you don't like.
If you take the trade up option for $99 to exchange it for an S8, do they put you on a new contract based on what is available at the time, or does your current contract reset to 24 months?
Yes.
When I was told about the 12 month re-contract for $99.00, it's the same process as if you were doing a normal 24 month contract. All you're doing is;
1 - handing back the phone
2 - charged 99 on the next bill
3 - pick a phone and current plan. You cannot keep the same plan if it's no longer available
4 - going on another 24 month contract
Do you think this is worth it over keeping your phone?
If you do this every year, you're paying an extra $99 every year and never owning the phone, but you get to have the latest and greatest always.
Or would you be ahead if you keep your phone and sell it and just get a new phone every second year?
It sounds really good that you can trade up for only $99, but you never get to keep your phone. But if you sold your current phone and bought a new one, it would cost more than $99 wouldn't it?
Trading in is for people that want the latest phone and it's a profit and marketing tactic to keep customers while being aligned with companies making a flagship phone each year.
It's rare for someone to keep/use a phone when they re-contract after 24 months, either they;
1 - give it to a friend / family
2 - sell it for pennies since it's an old used phone
3 - keep it as a back up phone
4 - use it as a paper weight.
Most people are happy to keep their phone cause it's working. The phone-trade up policy only exists for people that want the latest phone. Optus advised me if you still want to keep the current phone but upgrade to the new phone in 12 months then they will charge you the remaining months of the current phone then re-contract on a new 24 months - therefore you can have two phones.
For me, I like the latest phones, I have not kept my old phones. So I will be upgrading each year instead of every 2 years.
Just depends what kind of person you are.
2 - sell it for pennies since it's an old used phone
Some phones have pretty good resale value. Especially iPhones.
Optus advised me if you still want to keep the current phone but upgrade to the new phone in 12 months then they will charge you the remaining months of the current phone then re-contract on a new 24 months - therefore you can have two phones.
Do you only pay the handset repayments or everything? Let's say you're on this plan, $65 pm, do you have to pay $65*12 = $780 to keep your phone and start a new contract for the new model? If so, you're losing all the data and calls that would have been included in the $780, and you're basically buying your existing 1 year old phone for $780 which is not a good deal at all. You could buy a brand new phone for that price. Paying $780 to keep a 1 year old used phone is just stupid. Either pay $99 to not keep it, or keep it and don't recontract for another year.
You're not paying out the plan*remaining months, you're paying out the phone only.
IF you want to keep your phone and recontract: you pay only the full price of the handset cost x remaining months. Eg. Phone is worth $50 per month over 24 months, you want to upgrade but keep your current phone @ month 12, then it will be 12 x $50 = $600 handset payout.
Optus does not charge plan/contract cancellation fees anymore. It's just simply paying out the handset if you wish to re-contract.
Though, you cannot keep the same plan. Eg. If you're on a $65.00 2016 plan and the new plan is $65.00 2017 upon recontract, then the rep will advise you will have to change to the new 65.00 2017 plan over 24 months.
Rinse and repeat.
Well I'm using simple maths. Let's say you're on this plan, $65 x 24 months. 12 months in, you want the new model but don't want to give up your S7. You would have to pay $65 x 12 = $780, or did I do something wrong?
Unless you mean the phone repayment portion only. Some plans for $65 might say $40 is for calls, and $35 is handset repayment. Others say $60 is the plan, $5 is handset repayment. They are all arbitrary values the Telco chooses to use.
What you are using as the 'handset payout' is exactly what I was doing above, except you were using $50 pm as your example and I was using $65. You are still paying out the remainder of your plan, but not getting any calls or data with that $600 or $780. You're paying $600 ($780 in my example) to keep a 1 year old second hand phone. That is a bad deal. You should easily be able to buy last year's model brand new for this much. If you're patient enough to wait for a deal $780 can get you this year's model brand new.
That is unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by what your "phone is worth".
Forget about paying the remaining months of the plan. They never had that thus you comparing the value of the payout is not correct. It will be advantageous and disadvantageous depending if a person is on a lower plan or higher plan if they had to pay out the plan*remaining months.
You will have to pay the remaining months of the handset repayments. That's it. Which is the same for all customers.
How Optus calculates it, is that: on a plan, the phone is subsidised. For example; A galaxy S7 Edge, let's say is $1200 outright but Optus does not charge 1200 / 24 x 24 = 50 per month for the phone on the 24m contract, they reduce the cost of the phone depending on what plan you go on. The lower the plan the higher cost the phone will be, the higher the plan the lower the cost will be.
So, let's take my example and see how it plays out.
I go on an 85.00 plan + galaxy s7 which is $0.00. So I am paying $85.00 per month but the phone is NOT charged on top of the plan. But when you sign the contract, the contract will state that the phone is worth $50.00 per month but you get a handset credit back of $-50.00, therefore the system only charges you $85.00.
In this 24 months, I can decide to get a new phone (if I want to keep the S7), Optus will charge $100*remaining months.
If I want to re-contract 12 months in, I will have to hand back the phone and pay $99.00 and start another 24 month contract.
You are still paying out the remainder of your plan, but not getting any calls or data with that $600 or $780. You're paying $600 ($780 in my example) to keep a 1 year old second hand phone. That is a bad deal.
You are not paying out the remainder of your plan at all, you're paying out the remaining amount owing of the price of the phone when you signed the contract. The phone does not depreciate in price over time in a contract, it stays the same. When you sign the contract, the price of the phone is locked in. All you're doing is paying off the phone over time for an agreed amount.
That is a bad deal. You should easily be able to buy last year's model brand new for this much. If you're patient enough to wait for a deal $780 can get you this year's model brand new.
I really do understand your logic behind this, but as per my previous statement above. When you pay out the remaining cost of the phone, it's not reduced because of depreciation at the time being paid out. The phone price is locked when you signed for the phone therefore you agreed to pay the full price of the phone when you get out of the contract.
Whether you pay out $500 or $1000 of the remaining months of the phone, a customer would have paid that anyway if they paid the phone outright on launch. Contracts are there to keep customers and also help customers pay off the phone. You think a telco company would give a phone for free? Nothing is free. They don't use the word free, they use zero dollars upfront, pay zero dollars per month on X plan.
That does explain a few things. I had no idea they kept a hidden value as the worth of your phone.
How much do you think Optus considers the S7 "worth" a month with this deal? Is it RRP divided by 24? I think that's $1150 or $1050. So in 12 months you'd be paying over $500 to keep it if starting a new contract. I don't think I would ever take up that offer.
I know nothing is free. The cost of a free phone is always included in the monthly payment and then some. It's usually cheaper to shop around and buy the phone outright, because you're always going to be charged RRP for a phone on contract, if not more.
@lostn: The amount appears on your bill like this:
25 Oct to 24 Nov Samsg GS7 SL (20 remain) $40.91
Less Handset Credit $40.91CR
SUB-TOTAL $0.00
So, I am on this plan and I have 20 payments left of $40.91 (plus gst). If I wanted to buy out my contract and keep the phone after 12 months it would cost me (12*45) = $645. (Or any month *45). It's not a great deal though, since I'm only paying an extra $20/month for 7gb of data.
Op isn't quite correct, previous deal that expired last week was for 8gb, not 7gb at this price.
Yes you right, my mistake sorry….updated.
That works out to be $33.55 per month for 7GB/unlimited talk and text and 150 international minutes IF you BYO S7 from a deal like Mobileciti's.
If Boost (Telstra) wasn't better than Optus then I'd consider this deal.