Free HTC Hero

by Tyler Miller on June 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm

It will cost you a few years of your mobile life; but free is free, right?

Here’s what you need to do to get a free Hero:

Orange:

  • Be a new customer
  • Sign a two year contract
  • Have a minimum rate plan of £39.15 per month

T-Mobile UK:

  • New Customer
  • Sign a two year contract
  • Have a minimum rate plan of £40.00 per month

It looks like T-Mobile UK will be renaming the HTC Hero to the T-Mobile G1Touch. Lame. The whole G* series should have stopped after one.

We weren’t able to find any details on the price of phones for existing customers; perhaps we’ll update the post in the future if we come across any rumors.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

  • Zlatan

    40 pounds per month!? Is that normal in the UK? :|

  • StatiK

    Lame
    only because
    i live in Florida

  • Ant

    Before any new price cut, you could get a G1 free for £30/month, 18 month contract.

  • Ellis

    Uh after looking at T-Mobiles twitter page they say the plan is £40 a month for 18 months, still im getting the magic =D

  • http://archosfans.com Charbax

    The phone is free if you pay £960 over the 2-year plan.

    Seriously uys, stop saying the phone is free when you actually have to pay at the minimum £960 over a 2 year contract.

    And no, the phone is not expensive for HTC to make, probably below $150 including both Bill of Material and Manfucaturing costs.

    And no, the network coverage and bandwidth of the carrier does not cost £40 per month per user, far from it. Actually the carriers actual cost is near zero per customer if they have already made back all the money it cost them building the network. Simple mathematics, someone should blog about how much Orange or T-Mobile UK has paid to deploy HSDPA antennas for example in the UK, you should divide that by the amount of customer/months that they have had so far on that network. Then you should come up with what their “actual” cost is until they make only profits (network fixes and upgrade costs are minor compared to initial deployment and HSDPA licence cost).

    I’m waiting for the £100 Android phones to buy totally unlocked, use any HSDPA SIM card in it and use only VOIP and IM services, no stinking voice or SMS plans ever again.

  • anonymous

    Wasn’t Orange supposed to have some kind of exclusivity on the Hero in the UK? And now everybody’s talking about it being also released by TMobile UK…
    WTF?

  • chuksy

    @ Charbax

    well said

  • itswulfy

    i cant wait for this to come stateside, has the price of the device come out yet for the people that have g1s that want to upgrade to hero

  • Scott

    Damn, why doesn’t O2 get a hold of themseleves, when i saw 2 carriers i thought “scroll down, o2 will be there” but no there too busy with that evil iphone, i dont want to leave O2 but this is getting annoying, i just hope they get oneby october when my contract runs out because the hero looks really coool

  • Ben

    If you want to get it on a lower monthly price plan, can you pay in some extra at the beginning? That would seem sensible to me as the £40 price plan is a bit high considering I don’t make that many calls.

  • Zlatan

    5. Charbax wrote on June 24, 2009

    The phone is free if you pay £960 over the 2-year plan.

    How can this be? I saw it today on a Dutch site and it says 480 euro’s. http://www.pdashop.nl/product/71594/htc-hero-absolute-white.html

  • Ellis

    Orange has exclusivity on the “Graphite” colour and t-mobile have exclusivity on the “Black” model. And as for cost, meh the same could be said about computers and all tech, yet here i sit with my iMac haha.
    I just signed an 18 month contract with vodafone at £30 a month for 600minutes, unlimited texts and “unlimited” internet for the HTC Magic. I figure the phones arnt that much different and the sense will get ported i imagine

  • H

    Flext 40 is currently on 18month contract only. So I’m not sure about the 2 year thing!

  • http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog mo

    we will be getting UK stock SIM Free in (White) in the first week of July. Selling for around £430

    http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/sim-free-htc-hero-p20549.htm

    not cheap, but a lot lower than the £960 estimate!

  • Mark

    O2 has the Samsung Galaxy in the Uk but i think thye are stalling because they are to busy with the Iphone.

    The problem with the Hero is that it’s more expensive than the 8Gb Iphone so £40 is a bit much.

  • JAB

    Expansys have got it listed on their site for £425 SIM free. I haven’t seen any official T-Mobile figures yet.

  • macs

    That’s a crazy price. The magic is £25 a month for 18 months on an 18 month contract. Thats £450 over the contract compare to the £960 Hero.

    Whats even more strange is the magic on Expansys is £504.99 compare to the £424.99 Hero.

    What a joke.

  • D

    Is it me or is the price set really high for the Hero, £40 a month over 2 years?! Especially when you can get the Magic cheaper as Macs says above. If HTC release Sense for the Magic why would people go for the hero?

    It’s putting the price near iPhone territory and I consider that too expensive!

  • Sohip

    -In Europe you can get a Free android phone + £40(~$60) for the 2yr contract.

    -In America you can get a $180 android phone + ~$75 for the 2yr contract.

    looks like we are getting robbed in this side of the world …

  • itswulfy

    @sohip i feel you man the wireless data rates are way overpriced

  • http://www.play.co.uk suhail

    play have it for 399.99gbp and if you go through quidco you get 4% cashback not a bad deal free delivery to.

  • Tim

    As it’s 18 months, taking the ‘free’ phone at £40/month will cost £720. However, that also gets you 18 months of phone connection and data access.

    You could buy the phone for less than that, but you’d still need to get your phone connection somewhere and I’ve not seen any places that will do a suitable tariff for less than £20/month, which would end up costing you £790 anyway.

    I imagine T-Mobile will have some cheaper tariffs that will cost a little less overall but will require you to pay more upfront for the phone.

    For instance, by comparing the price of the Blackberry Bold (which currently costs £30 if you get an 18-month £40/month Flex tariff, and £215 if you get a £20/month Combi tariff), I’d estimate that if you go for a £20/month Combi tariff you’ll have to pay in the order of £185 for the handset up front, leaving you with an 18-month total cost of £545 for handset and contract.

  • suhail

    best deal iv found is £390 through gummobile.com emailed them and asked for a little discount as more reputable companies have got same price as them they gave me a £10 discount code better then nothing il be placing my order with thehm in 3 days time thats when they say they will have it officially for sale and not pre order anyone else find a better deal?

  • Paul

    Expansys have:

    HTC Hero + T-Mobile Combi 30 + Web N Walk

    for 34.26 monthly for 12 months + 79.99. That makes it just over 491.11 for the year in total which is only then about 100 more than just the phone.

    If only they had the brown or the graphite as not keen on the white.

  • steptoe

    eXpansys UK Shop are offering HTC Hero at £399.99p with a

    £30.00p eXpansys voucher if purchased in July

    Get £30 of eXpansys vouchers
    eXpansys have a stunning exclusive offer available to UK customers – order your HTC Hero between June 29 and 31 July 2009 and we will send you £30 of eXpansys vouchers* to spend on accessories at eXpansys.com!

  • Paul

    Ended up ordering a brown one from Handtec as just about the only place I could find selling them. Say ‘pre ordering’ for release some time in Q3 so a bit surprised when I then got an email within an hour saying it had been shipped on next day delivery. So new toy tomorrow hopefully!!!

  • b7ryn

    Yeah – saw the expansys deal… but the wen n’ walk thing is a 1GB Fair Useage limit.

    :-(

  • Mr Gooz

    @Paul

    Did you get the Hero?

  • David Peters

    I got mine on a free upgrade today…they said I can keep my existing tariff (£25 a month) and have it for free as a loyalty bonus…common Orange!!!

    coming on Tuesday some time between 8am and 6pm…lucky I’m a student out of work, otherwise I dunno how I’d get it! haha

  • Matt

    I whish it while show you the price of the phone an is relly good dell for you an when will it get to the USA I hope it’s soon becase I won’t to get one soon

  • Jag

    I saw a really cheap sim free htc hero for £389.95 @ cleverkit.com

  • http://nil MJ

    Which one would you go for White or Graphite?

    Im geting Graphite on contract but I think the white (+teflon coating) looks better….

  • fahad

    I got the graphite for freeeee. On a 12 month contract and am paying 30 pounds a month. Boooooyaaaaa. The benifits of having a friend working at orange.

    This phone is awesome. Just installed the snes emulator and playing street fighter and super mario!

  • chris

    Orange has got a deal go to orange.co.uk and phone then and say you want the htc hero on a 24 month contract you can get it for £25 month or if u order it there and then u can get it for 20 a month for the next 18 months



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