Lab

Prepay mobile phones

We review mobile phones every month in our What's New section. These are often amazingly powerful miniature computers, but they can be incredibly expensive, even with a monthly contract.

Not everyone wants to spend a fortune on a phone or be locked into paying a set amount every month for a year. Fortunately, you can get most of the features of a top-of-the-range contract phone with a prepay phone costing as little as £50. If all you need to do is make calls and send texts, you can even pick up a simple handset for just £10.

We've gathered 12 phones available on various prepay tariffs. All can make calls and send texts, while most have cameras, can send email and even browse the web. Whatever your needs, there's a handset here to suit you.

Before you buy a prepay phone, it's important to check that it does everything you need it to do. Prepay phones tend not to be smartphones, so you usually can't install additional applications to replace any missing features. You also need to check that you can buy the phone on a tariff that suits the way you'll use it.

Don't forget that if you are a heavy phone user it may be more economical to buy a phone on a contract, as this will give you free minutes and messages as well as a subsidised handset.

Suits you, Sir

Even though all the phones in the group have address books and enable you to make calls and send texts, most people want their phone to do a little more than the basics. Nine of the phones have integrated cameras, but three have only a tiny 0.3-megapixel resolution so the images are no good for viewing on a PC.

Nine of the phones can connect to POP3 or IMAP email accounts and download messages, and eight have a built-in MP3 player. If you want your phone to double as a music player, look for a handset with a memory card slot for adding extra storage. Also, bear in mind that most mobile phone headphones are pretty poor, and the only handsets in the group that provide a standard socket for replacement headphones are Sony Ericsson's W200i and W880i.

You should also consider which extra programs you need on your phone. Some of the phones have useful extras, such as powerful organiser features that can synchronise your contacts and calendar with a PC, as well as helpful utilities such as currency converters and countdown timers. We've mentioned in the individual reviews which phones have a comprehensive suite of applications as standard.

Surf's up

All but the very cheapest phones in this month's Labs can browse the internet, but the quality of their browsers varies significantly. None of the internet-capable phones had any trouble with dedicated mobile internet pages, and some could even reformat full-size webpages to fit the screen. They don't have particularly powerful browsers, though, so for serious mobile internet use you should buy a fully fledged smartphone on a contract. Five of the phones in the group support 3G data, which is a much faster connection than GPRS.

If you intend to travel outside Europe with your phone, you should look for a tri-band or ideally a quad-band phone, as these will let you connect to most mobile networks worldwide.