Get an iPhone for under 56p a day

Carphone Warehouse's cheapest-ever deal delivers an iPhone 4 handset for just £17 a month.

Apple's iPhone has been one of the most successful technology products ever sold.

Since launching the first iPhone in June 2007, Apple has seen smartphone sales soar. After five years, Apple had sold 250 million iPhone handsets, generating $150 billion in sales. Frankly, no other consumer product in history has enjoyed such staggering sales success -- and it's turned Apple into the world's leading high-tech brand.

'Free' handsets don't come cheap

Since mid-2007, Apple has launched six different iPhone versions. The latest, the sixth-generation iPhone 5, was unveiled in September 2012. Meanwhile, the first-generation iPhone is becoming something of a collector's item.

However, getting a shiny, new iPhone 5 on contract isn't cheap. To get a 'free' handset, you'll have to sign up to a lengthy and expensive tariff with a network provider. Typically this will involve paying, say, £35 a month for two years, a total of £840. This is beyond the budget of many folk, including teenagers, young adults, students and other groups of modest means.

Cheapest iPhone 4 deal ever

Then again, if you don't need all the features of the iPhone 5, but still want a superior smartphone, then Carphone Warehouse may be where to go. The high-street chain has launched what it describes as its 'cheapest-ever iPhone 4 deal'.

Designed to attract budget-conscious buyers and first-time smartphone owners, Carphone Warehouse's deal offers a brand-new, fourth-generation iPhone 4 8GB handset on contract for just £17 a month for two years. These are the two contracts linked to this deal:

For users who like to chat, the 3 deal offers 500 inclusive talk minutes, but a data download limit of 250MB. For those who prefer surfing the web, the O2 contract offers 500MB of data, but only 300 minutes of calls.

With both deals costing £17 a month for two years, the total contractual cost comes to £408. This is around half what you'd pay for a similar tariff with an iPhone 5 handset. Indeed, it works out at less than 56p a day, which is a bargain for a quality smartphone.

Is this a good deal?

Of course, it's much cheaper to get an iPhone 4 deal simply because you're buying a handset that was originally launched almost three years ago.

Even so, this mobile phone gives you a high-density 'Retina' display to browse the web, send and receive texts and email, use social-networking sites such as Facebook, shoot high-definition videos, take photos using a five-megapixel camera, play music and games, use GPS navigation and much, much more.

In addition, you can choose from well over 800,000 apps (many of which are free) available via Apple's App Store. At the end of your two-year contract, you'll own a handset based on a five-year-old design. Even so, this will still have some resale value, as it will always be worth something to someone.

A tempting tariff

This new price plan is available online and in-store. To me, it seems like a pretty sweet deal. You get a fairly high-end handset -- complete with the iOS 6 operating system and access to the App Store -- at an affordable price of just £204 a year.

Compare phone deals at Recombu

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