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Deals of the day: Cheap pay as you go mobile phones

Pay as you go phones might not be the most glamorous handsets but they don't half know how to be utterly bargainous -- here's five of the best value around at the moment

Jason Jenkins Director of content / EMEA
Jason Jenkins is the director of content for CNET in EMEA. Based in London, he has been writing about technology since 1999 and was once thrown out of Regent's Park for testing the UK's first Segway.
Jason Jenkins
2 min read

Pay as you go phones might not be the most glamorous handsets but they don't half know how to be utterly bargainous. If you need a second phone for a holiday or festival, or want to be in touch with your kids, we recommend you cast your discerning gaze over these beauties.

1. Samsung C300, £20 from Orange
The C300 is a slick slider phone for the skint. It used to cost a measly £40 when we craved it earlier this year, but now Orange has slashed another tenner off the price. Its features are relatively limited -- it's dual-band only, for example -- but it does have decent battery life as you'll get around 7 hours of talk time from it.

2. Sagem my220x, £15 from Argos
Cheap pay as you go handsets tend to have all the sex appeal of John Major, but that's certainly not the case with the My220x. Despite costing less than a cocktail in a swanky London bar, it's a thing of beauty thanks to its gorgeous golden finish and ridiculously slim 10mm frame.

3. Fly Mobile SLT100, £60 from Curry's
The SLT100 will set you back just £60, but it's got the looks and features of handsets that cost three times as much. The list of impressive goodies includes a touchscreen, MP3 player and TV output for playing back videos on your telly. It's available in girly pink or a more macho black finish. Check out our full review here.

4. Sony Ericsson W810i white, £60 from O2
Why bother buying a separate mobile and music player when you can combine the two with this neat handset? It includes the top class Walkman music player, so you can catch up on your tunes when you're not nattering on the blower. It used to cost around £130, but now you can get the white version for half that from O2. Here's our full review.

5. Nokia 6300, £70 from Play.com
The 6300 may not be the most advanced handset in the world, but it looks gorgeous and is incredibly easy to use. It cost around £200 on pay as you go when it was first released, but you can now pick it up on Vodafone for just seventy quid. We thought it was just great value we made it our Editors' Choice for 2007.