The cheap SIM trick that saves you £300 on an iPhone 16

The new iPhone 16 will cost between £30 and £50 a month for the standard models. You can see the best and cheapest iPhone 16 contract deals here.

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The handsets cost £799 for the iPhone 16, rising to £1,119 for the iPhone 16 Pro Max model at the top of the range. You can buy the handset on its own here.

For those who buy the handset only they will need to find a cheap SIM only deal and the best on the market at the moment is from little-known network Smarty. The brand is a budget SIM provider but has a host of benefits including free EU roaming, something that is not available on many major networks.

Smarty also promises no mid-contract price rises and flexible one-month rolling contracts, as well as 5G connectivity.

The brand is offering a SIM card with 5GB of data for just £5 on a rolling monthly contract. It comes with unlimited texts and calls and no speed caps on data use.

The deal is one of the cheapest SIM cards on the market and when paired with an iPhone 16 could cost just £60 for an entire year. For those who regularly use less than 5GB of data it could mean buying an iPhone outright and then signing up for the Smarty deal is cheaper than signing up to an iPhone contract. You can get the deal here.

For example, our pick of the iPhone 16 contract deals costs £200 up front and then £30 a month across 36 months. That is a total cost of £1,280.

Buying the handset for £799 and then using the Smarty card would mean a total cost over three years of £979, making it more affordable if you can buy the phone up front.

The iPhone 16 is one of the biggest tech launches of the year. Revealed this month, pre orders for the phone opened on 13 September and the first deliveries of the iPhone 16 started on 20 September. Pro models are due to arrive in October and Apple Intelligence, a huge AI update for the phones, will be rolled out in December.