HTC One V to be a truly budget offering

13 April 2012

First contract deal prices phone at £13.50 per month

The main networks have yet to confirm their pricing for the baby of the One family, the HTC One V, but if one online retailer is anything to go by, it will be a seriously tempting offering.

The phone, which was unveiled as a part of the One range in February, has a decent feature set for an entry-level handset, offering a 3.7-inch touch-screen, a 1GHz processor, a five-megapixel camera, Beats Audio technology and Ice Cream Sandwich. Yes, that's right, Ice Cream Sandwich for the operating system. So how much would you pay for that?

We would have expected something in the £20+ monthly price range. But retailer BuyMobilePhones has come out with a monthly price of £13.50 via the O2 network. Admittedly, the allowance of 50 minutes, 250 texts and 100MB of data isn't exactly plentiful (especially in terms of data) and you will be tied to the network for two years. But that looks like decent value to us. If you want to buy the phone outright, the price being quoted is £230. In that case, you can choose your own SIM deal.

A further downside is that this is a pre-order deal with a fairly vague shelf date, delivery down for sometime in April right now. But it does draw a line in the sand, a tempting one too. While the V is the bottom of the One range, it still looks a cut above many entry-level smartphones - and you'll be hard pushed to find a cheapie with Ice Cream Sandwich at launch.

Get that deal now or see if the high street stores match it. The other contract deals should be here in the next couple of weeks. For a hands-on with the phone, see here.

Source: Crave