Everyone who owns a mobile phone knows that buying a handset isn’t the only cost you have to factor in. To be able to use your phone, you also have to subscribe for access to a mobile network. And that means paying for a SIM card to put in your phone.

SIM stands for subscriber identification module, which pretty much sums up its function - your SIM confirms to the network that you are a paid up customer, which then allows your phone to connect.

Originally, there were two basic options for buying a SIM. One was to sign up for a contract, which involves paying for your data/voice plan plus any additional usage on a monthly basis. Also known as pay monthly or post-paid contracts, these deals can last anything between six and 24 months. Contracts invariably included a handset as part of the deal, with the cost of it spread over the course of the agreement, so you’re paying a portion of the bill for your phone on top of usage costs.

The other option was pay-as-you-go (PAYG). This is also known as pre-paid mobile, because instead of paying for what you have used after the fact, you buy a SIM with a fixed amount of credit on it, and when you have used all of that up, you either top up the same card or replace it. PAYG is generally considered a better value option for low to moderate mobile use, plus of course there is the flexibility of not being tied into a contract.

Just a SIM

Then, a few years ago, another option came along. It is known as SIM-only - as in, you get just a SIM, with no bundled deals involving a phone or anything else as part of the package.

Sometimes SIM-only gets confused with PAYG, or there is an assumption that they mean the same thing. This probably stems from the fact that, before SIM-only was a thing, PAYG was the only way you could get ‘just a SIM’ - as we have said, new contract deals always came with a handset included. So if you had an old handset you wanted to keep using once your contract expired, you’d have no choice but to use PAYG SIMs.

In recent years, sales of second-hand smartphones have been rising steadily - much faster than sales of new phones, in fact, which have started to flatline. Mobile operators realised there was a new opportunity here - to offer SIMs on a contract basis, but without a phone being part of the deal. This was how the term ‘SIM-only’ came to be used in the mobile market.

In practice, a ‘SIM-only’ deal can be either a contract where you are sent just a SIM to slot into a phone you already have, or it can be a PAYG deal where you buy a new SIM with pre-loaded credit from a shop. At the same time, PAYG doesn’t necessarily mean SIM-only - you can buy mobile phones with a PAYG SIM included.

Once you have found your perfect mobile, you can head to ROW to get some cover for your handset. 

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

Choosing a TV just seems to get more and more complicated. Don’t get us wrong - choice is great. But with all those abbreviations flying around - LCD, LED, OLED, ‘full’ HD and ‘ultra’ HD (or UHD) - it is easy to get lost in all of the technical detail.

For the purposes of this blog, we thought we’d focus on two of these terms - LED and UHD. Just so we all know exactly what we’re talking about, UHD stands for ultra high definition, while LED is short for light-emitting diode.

LED technology is found in all sorts of types of display, from computer screens to public digital messaging boards. Along with plasma and liquid crystal displays (LCDs), LED was key to the emergence of flat screen TVs in the late 1990s, which marked a significant break from the bulky, curved screen TV sets of old that were built around cathode ray tubes.

20 years on, and TV manufacturers are keen to promote the idea that we’re seeing another stepchange in the evolution of screen technology. Nowadays, if we put aside the development of smart TVs for the moment, much of the talk around the best TVs to buy centres around display definition, with so-called ‘4K UHD’ the current standard. 

As a result, it is not uncommon to hear advice such as ‘don’t bother with LED screens anymore, just go for UHD instead’. But just how useful is this when looking for a new TV set?

Clearing up confusion

It is actually misleading to try to compare LED and UHD TVs, because they refer to two completely different things. LED is the technology which lights up a screen; UHD is a description of the image quality the screen delivers. In fact, the majority of ultra-high definition TVs available on the market do, in fact, feature LED screens.

Confused yet? Let’s try to break it down further. UHD is a measure of screen resolution, which in itself is one factor that influences the quality of picture your TV delivers. For many years, the industry standard for ‘high definition’ or HD screens was a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels per screen.

That, however, has now largely been supplanted by the ‘UHD’ resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, which means there are roughly four times as many pixels on the screen - or four times the image definition, four times the level of detail captured, four times the sharpness.

LED technology is perfectly capable of achieving 4K UHD resolutions, particularly in so-called ‘full array’ set ups where LEDs are located across the rear of the entire screen, rather than just at the edges as is common with lower cost sets. While other types of backlighting technology, such as OLED and quantum dots, are pushing conventional LED set ups hard on image quality, full array LED sets can easily deliver 4K UHD.

When you do choose your next all-singing, all-dancing, razor-sharp display TV, don’t forget to protect your investment with our outstanding value TV insurance. With prices starting at just £1.49 a month, you can’t go wrong.

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.