Carphone Warehouse New Phone Contract Deals: The Real 24-Month Cost

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Carphone Warehouse lists 131 pay monthly handset deals and does something most phone shops still avoid: it prints the price you will be paying at the end of the contract next to the price you start on. A Samsung Galaxy A16 4G shows as £11.99 a month, increasing to £15.59, with £5.00 up front. A Google Pixel 10a 128GB is £14.99 rising to £18.59. A Samsung Galaxy A57 5G is £19.99 rising to £23.59. Delivery is free and next-day seven days a week on mainland UK orders, an old handset can be traded in against the bill, and an existing customer can move to a new deal free of charge up to 75 days before the current one runs out.

Every deal on that page is a bundled contract: one monthly figure covering the phone and the airtime together, on a 24-month minimum term, with no separate finance agreement behind it. That single structural fact decides almost everything else on this page — what the deal really costs over two years, what happens on the day the term ends, and which regulator's rules you are relying on if something goes wrong. It is worth understanding before you pick a handset, because the arithmetic is not difficult and the retailer has already published every number you need to do it.

The choice is between two networks. iD Mobile carries 100 of the 131 handset deals and Vodafone the other 31, with Vodafone's own dedicated page listing 101 devices from £13.00 a month, increasing to £18.00, on up-front costs running from £9.00 to £199.00. A Samsung Galaxy S26 FE sits at £29.00 a month with £39.00 up front. Alongside the handset deals there are 72 SIM-only plans — Vodafone 46, iD Mobile 22 and VOXI 4 — starting at £6.00 a month for 10GB with unlimited minutes and texts on a one-month rolling term.

The price you see is not the price you finish on

Since 17 January 2025 a mobile provider selling a new contract has had to state any future increase in pounds and pence at the point of sale rather than tying it to an inflation index. Carphone Warehouse does this in the listing itself, which is why every deal carries an increasing to figure beside the headline price. Those two numbers are not arbitrary, and the gap between them is the same on every iD Mobile deal on the page.

iD Mobile publishes its schedule openly. A 24-month phone contract taken or upgraded between 15 January 2025 and 10 March 2026 rises by £1.50 each April. One taken on or after 11 March 2026 rises by £1.80 each April. SIM-only and pay as you go customers are excluded altogether — iD Mobile's SIM-only listings say "No annual price rises!" in as many words — and so are phone contracts predating 15 January 2025.

Run that against the shop window. The Galaxy A16 4G goes from £11.99 to £15.59, a rise of £3.60. The Pixel 10a goes from £14.99 to £18.59: £3.60. The Galaxy A57 5G, £19.99 to £23.59: £3.60. In each case the increase is exactly two lots of £1.80, because a 24-month contract signed in the autumn passes through two Aprils before it ends. The advertised end price is not a worst case or a projection. It is arithmetic, and it is correct.

Vodafone works to a different number. Its annual change is £2.50 on pay monthly plans with airtime or data, applied on 1 April, and it explicitly does not touch device plans. Two Aprils at £2.50 comes to £5.00 — which is precisely the distance between the £13.00 starting price on the Vodafone handset page and the £18.00 it increases to. Vodafone's SIM-only listings show the same mechanism spelled out month by month: "Monthly price increasing to: £9.50 from 1ST Apr 2027" on one plan, and "£25.50 from 1ST Apr 2027 £28.00 from 1ST Apr 2028" on a longer one.

One legacy figure survives on both networks and is worth knowing about. Out-of-bundle charges — calls and data used outside the allowance — still rise by the January Consumer Price Index plus 3.9% at Vodafone, and the iD Mobile pay monthly terms document served from the Carphone Warehouse site carries the same CPI plus 3.9% formula for charges generally, with the note that an increase on that basis does not give a right to leave. That wording governs contracts taken before the pounds-and-pence rule applied. If you are signing today, the number that binds you is the £1.50 or £1.80 printed on the product page and repeated in the basket, the Contract Summary and the Contract Information document.

£332 for a £169 phone: doing the arithmetic

Take the cheapest deal on the page and follow it through. The Galaxy A16 4G at £11.99 a month with £5.00 up front, bought in September, spends seven months at the opening price, twelve months at £13.79 after the first April rise, and five months at £15.59 after the second. That comes to £327.36 of monthly payments plus the £5.00 deposit, or £332.36 all in. Multiplying the headline price by 24 and adding the deposit would have given £292.76 — the two April increases add £39.60 that a shopper doing quick mental maths will not see.

The Vodafone equivalent moves further. A £13.00 deal with £9.00 up front spends seven months at £13.00, twelve at £15.50 and five at £18.00: £367.00 plus the deposit, against £321.00 on the headline. The £2.50 annual step adds £55.00 over the term. Both figures shift by a few pounds depending on which month you sign in, because what matters is how many Aprils fall inside the 24 months and where.

Now set that against buying the two halves separately. Carphone Warehouse lists 165 SIM-free handsets in the same shop — a Samsung Galaxy A17 4G 128GB at £169.00, a Pixel 10a 128GB at £429.00, a Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra at £1,899.00. Pair the £169 handset with the £6.00 rolling SIM and two years costs £313.00, about £19 less than the bundled A16 and with a newer phone. The comparison is not clean, because the £6.00 plan carries 10GB against the far larger allowances on the contract deals, but it shows where the money goes.

Ofcom has done the same sum on a flagship and found a wider gap. Its Pricing and Consumer Engagement report of 26 February 2026 concluded that buying an iPhone 17 with airtime from a mobile provider typically costs over £8 a month more than a SIM-only service used with a separately bought handset — roughly £200 across a 24-month term. The same report found SIM-only had reached 50% of pay monthly subscriptions by June 2025, average SIM-only spend was around £18 a month in Q2 2025, mobile switching was steady at 16% a year, and mobile prices fell 6% in real terms year on year while average data use has more than doubled since 2020. Bundling buys you the phone without paying £429 in one go. It is a convenience, and it has a price.

The day the contract ends, and the notice you are owed

The most expensive month of a 24-month contract is usually month 25. Ofcom's answer to that sits in General Condition C1, following its statement of 15 May 2019, with providers given nine months to build the systems and customers receiving the first notifications from 15 February 2020.

The rule is specific. A residential customer must get an end-of-contract notification between 10 and 40 days before the minimum term ends, and it must tell them the contract end date and any notice period, the current monthly price and what it becomes afterwards, the services covered, any other contracts they hold with the same provider and when those end, how to terminate and what any early exit would cost, and their options — staying, switching away, or dropping to a SIM-only deal. Anyone who then stays out of contract must be sent best tariff information at least once a year.

Those rules exist because of a measurable problem. In its statement of 22 July 2019 Ofcom put roughly 2 million customers on bundled handset contracts past the end of their minimum term — about 11% of the bundled base — of whom around 1.4 million were overpaying by just under £11 a month, some £182 million a year between them. The providers were asked to fix it. Virgin Mobile and O2 agreed to move out-of-contract customers onto an equivalent 30-day airtime-only deal; Tesco Mobile agreed to adjust the monthly charge to its best available airtime tariff; Vodafone and EE agreed to discount customers who had been out of contract for three months or more, all by February 2020. Three declined to apply any discount at all. Ofcom expected the package to reach nearly 80% of those overpaying.

Whether the notifications work is a fair question, and Ofcom has published both halves of the answer. Research it released on 6 May 2022 found the share of customers taking a new deal rose by 13 percentage points at Plusnet and 10 points each at BT, EE and Virgin Media, with some customers saving an average of more than £110 a year, while broadband customers sitting out of contract fell from 8.7 million (40%) in 2019 to 7.4 million (35%) in 2020. Its ex-post evaluation of 10 May 2024 was more mixed: annual best tariff notifications lifted re-contracting by 4.75% at Three, 2.02% at O2 and 1.28% at Tesco, but end-of-contract notifications showed a negative 8.6% effect on re-contracting at EE and negative 2.4% at O2. The notification is a prompt, not a protection. What protects you is acting on it.

Carphone Warehouse opens its own door earlier than the regulator requires. Its Vodafone upgrade page states you "can upgrade for free up to 75 days before the end of your contract", and that a part-way upgrade may be possible for a small fee. That window opens well before the 10-to-40-day notification lands, so an alert customer can be shopping before the network has legally had to tell them anything.

Leaving, switching and the three short codes

Moving a number away from either network takes one text message. Send PAC to 65075 for a Porting Authorisation Code if you want to keep your number, or STAC to 75075 if you do not. A PAC is valid for 30 days and a fresh one can be requested if it lapses. Hand the code to the new provider and the number "should normally be ported and ready to use with your new services within one working day". Ofcom has also banned mobile providers from charging for notice periods that run past the switch date, which removes the old trick of billing a month of service you are no longer using.

There is a third code worth knowing. Texting INFO to 85075 returns your switching position, including whether you can leave without charge. Carphone Warehouse's own switching page points customers at it. If you are still inside the minimum term, leaving means buying out the balance — the retailer's guidance is blunt about it: "You'll be expected to buy out your contract, meaning you'll pay the total remainder." On the £11.99 A16 deal, walking away after twelve months means settling roughly twelve further payments at the then-current rate.

Both networks support eSIM, which changes the mechanics of switching a handset rather than a provider. iD Mobile sends the profile as a QR code by email, tells customers to dial #06# and look for an EID to check whether the handset supports it, and warns that the download "might take approximately an hour to complete". Its eSIMs are for phones only and are not currently compatible with tablets or wearables.

Cancelling outright is where the paperwork stops agreeing with itself, and it is worth reading both documents before relying on either. The iD Mobile pay monthly terms give 30 days to cancel at no cost other than charges incurred where the agreement was taken with iD Mobile or over the phone, and 14 days where it was taken in a Currys store or on currys.co.uk. The Carphone Warehouse switching guide says something different: "If your contract was taken out online or over the phone, you have a 14-day 'cooling-off' period", and that the protection does not apply in store. The retailer's separate terms for the purchase of goods give 14 calendar days to cancel a distance order with the goods returned within 14 days of telling them, "complete (with any accessories, leads or other items provided with the Goods) and undamaged, with proof of purchase". Three documents, two different cooling-off periods for a phone order. Ask which applies to the exact route you are buying through, and get the answer in writing.

One checkout, two adjudicators — and a third for the handset

A bundled deal from this shop creates more than one legal relationship, and each has a different escalation route. The handset is sold by Currys Retail Limited, registered in England under number 02142673. The airtime on an iD Mobile deal is supplied by Currys Group Limited of Currys Newark Campus, Long Hollow Way, Newark NG24 2NH. A Vodafone deal puts the airtime contract with Vodafone.

That matters because Ofcom approves two alternative dispute resolution schemes and the networks sold side by side in this shop belong to different ones. Vodafone and VOXI are members of CISAS, the Communication and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme. iD Mobile is a member of the Communications Ombudsman. Buy two phones in the same basket on two different networks and a service complaint about each goes to a different adjudicator.

The timing changed recently and in the customer's favour. From 8 April 2026 Ofcom cut the wait before a complaint can be escalated to ADR from eight weeks to six, or sooner with a deadlock letter, which must then be used within 12 months. Eligibility covers residential customers, small businesses of up to 10 employees and not-for-profit organisations. The reason for the change is stark: between January 2022 and 2024 roughly 700,000 consumers still had an unresolved complaint at the six-week mark, and "only around one in five (about 19%) were able to get their issue resolved or referred to ADR ahead of the current, eight week threshold".

Neither of those schemes will look at a faulty handset. That is a retail matter for Currys, and a payment dispute over the goods is a different route again. Establish at the outset which company you are complaining about — the shop that sold the phone or the network that supplies the signal — because sending the right complaint to the wrong body simply restarts the clock.

What a bundled deal gives up against a split one

Because these are bundled contracts, no consumer credit agreement sits behind them. That is not a criticism of the retailer — it is the normal shape of a UK pay monthly deal — but it is worth seeing what the alternative structure carries, because the same handsets are sold both ways.

Buy a phone direct from Vodafone on its EVO device plan and the finance half is a Fixed Sum Loan Agreement regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974. The creditor is Vodafone Limited, registered in England under company number 1471587, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference 712210. The agreement runs at 0% per annum and 0% APR. It carries a statutory right under section 66A to withdraw "without giving any reason by notifying us before the end of fourteen (14) days" from the latest of the agreement date, receipt of a signed copy or receipt of the equipment. It carries a right under section 94 to "repay this Device Plan early in full or in part at any time and without charge". And Vodafone commits in the document itself that it "will not charge you any late repayment fee or any interest on any late or missed payments under this Device Plan".

A bundled contract has none of those. Its protections come from consumer contract law and Ofcom's General Conditions instead, and the charging position is different in kind. The iD Mobile pay monthly terms served from this site set a £5.00 collections administration fee for late payment plus daily interest at 2% above the base lending rate of HSBC Bank Plc on overdue amounts. The retailer's own purchase terms set late payment interest at 2% per calendar month. Neither of those is unusual, and both are larger than the zero Vodafone commits to on a regulated device plan.

The split structure has a cost of its own, which is why it is not simply better: when a Vodafone device plan is paid off it "will simply be closed, and no more payments will be needed", but the airtime plan does not follow it — "If you still have an active Airtime or Data Plan, this plan will continue", and the customer has to actively cancel or renegotiate. Run the other way, if the airtime plan ends the loan survives it: "your Device Plan will not come to an end and…you will be required to continue to make the payments due under the Device Plan". Two contracts means two things to remember. One contract means one price you cannot unpick.

Trading the old handset in

The trade-in service is a genuine discount and it is documented properly, which is more than can be said for most of them. Carphone Warehouse quotes up to £200 for an eligible working handset traded against a Samsung Galaxy S26 FE, with named examples of up to £170 for a Galaxy S25 FE and up to £120 for a Galaxy S24 FE. The quoted value holds for 21 calendar days from acceptance, and payment is made "via BACS for the Quoted Value within three to five working days of receipt of the Device".

The grading is defined rather than left to judgement. Working means no major damage to case, screen or buttons, functioning cameras, microphone and speakers, a battery that charges and no liquid damage. Non-working covers any of those failing. And there is a floor: "If the device is bent, broken into pieces or any of the internal parts are showing, it is classed as 'Beyond Economic Repair' or BER. A device that is BER has ZERO value and cannot be traded in." If the phone arrives in worse condition than described, a revised quote is offered or the device comes back free of charge.

Two things to weigh. The home page advertises "Get up to £265 for your old phone" while the trade-in page's own headline figure is up to £200 tied to a specific new handset, so the higher number depends on a promotion the trade-in page does not describe — worth confirming before you count on it. And even at £200, the trade-in is set against a device that cost several hundred pounds new; a phone in demonstrably good condition may fetch more sold privately, at the cost of doing the selling yourself. As a straight deduction from an up-front payment on the day, taken with free next-day delivery and no haggling, it is a reasonable trade.

The old handset going back into the system also matters for a reason nobody advertises. Retailers selling electrical equipment carry take-back duties under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013, which set out obligations for distributors at regulation 42 (take-back), regulation 43 (returns) and regulation 44 (information), with regulation 46 exempting distributors who belong to an approved distributor take-back scheme. A trade-in that pays you is the commercial version of a duty the retailer has anyway.

The gaps in what is published

Three things are harder to establish than they should be, and all three are visible from outside.

The first is the device count. The main pay monthly page reports 131 devices found and its own network filter splits them iD Mobile 100 and Vodafone 31. The dedicated Vodafone pay monthly page reports 101 devices found. Both are the retailer's own counters on the same day. Something is being counted differently — most likely colour and storage variants against distinct models — but nothing on either page says which, so a shopper trying to judge how much Vodafone choice exists gets two answers three times apart.

The second is the cooling-off contradiction described earlier: 30 days in the iD Mobile terms for a phone or online iD purchase, 14 days in the retailer's switching guidance for the same route, and 14 calendar days in the goods terms. These are three of the retailer's own documents and they do not line up.

The third is early termination. Neither the iD Mobile terms nor the retailer's guidance publishes a worked example or a formula for what leaving early actually costs. The terms define early termination fees as "the charges made up of the remaining time left on your plan" and the switching page says you will "pay the total remainder", which leaves open whether the remainder is charged at the price you signed on or the price after an April increase, and whether any discount is applied for early settlement. On a regulated device plan the answer is settled by statute. On a bundled contract it is settled by whatever the terms say, and here they do not say.

One further absence is structural rather than the retailer's doing. There is no Defaqto rating for a phone contract, no Fairer Finance ribbon, and no independent ratings agency covering mobile retailers at all. The nearest independent measure is Ofcom's quarterly complaints data on the networks a shop sells, which says nothing about the shop. Any review score displayed on the retailer's own pages is collected on its own behalf rather than awarded by a ratings body, and should be read that way.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 4 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.