Don’t buy the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra SIM-free – this deal is much better value for money

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is still a very sought-after smartphone. Despite coming up on a year old (and soon to be supplanted by the S25 Ultra) the Galaxy S24 Ultra remains a powerful, long-lasting and feature-rich handset, holding fast in its position atop our list of the best smartphones on the market.

So what’s the best way for you to get yourself one of these big-screened beauties? I’ll go into more detail below but, if you want to just cut to the chase, I’ll make it simple: click the link here and you’ll see a bargain Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra contract that gets you the phone and buckets of data for a lower total price than buying the phone outright.

View deal at Carphone Warehouse

Under normal circumstances, I’d be out here shouting about the benefits of buying pricey smartphones SIM-free to anyone who would listen. Nine times out of ten, buying the handset separately from the SIM works out in your favour long-term – not to mention it also gives you the flexibility to upgrade whenever you want, without having to potentially wait out a lengthy contract.

Black Friday, however, is the one time out of ten in which anything goes, and as it turns out, buying the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra SIM-free doesn’t get you the best price. Not by a long shot.

Over on Amazon, the S24 Ultra is down to £999 right now, which, in fairness, is a decent chunk off the average price of £1,161. But it’s not the cheapest that it’s ever been – it was a little less at £949 during the summer Prime Day sale.

Compare that to buying the phone through Carphone Warehouse, with an iD Mobile contract that is currently offering you a massive 500GB of monthly data for the price of 100GB, and you’ll see just how much further that cash can stretch.

The first hurdle to get over is the £199 upfront cost. I know that’s a big ask but it’s worth it in the long run. Paired with monthly premiums of £30, this deal adds up to a total of £919 over the two-year contract. That’s already less than you’d be paying if you bought the phone SIM-free, and it comes with that massive data package, too? Bargain.

If the £199 upfront cost is too steep, you’ll also see a deal on that page that charges only £9 upfront, with monthly payments of £39. This is still better value than buying the phone outright but it’s not quite as good as the £199 upfront and £30/mth deal, with a total lifetime cost of £945.

View deal at Carphone Warehouse

So that’s the deal I wanted to highlight: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with 500GB of data for £199 upfront and £30/mth, lifetime cost of £919. But what about the phone itself? In our review, we rated the S24 Ultra five stars out of five and adorned it with our Best Buy award – in short, we loved this thing.

The build is beautiful and wonderfully sturdy, thanks to the premium titanium frame, the screen is large, bright and colour accurate and you even get an S-Pen bundled in. The flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset delivered phenomenal speeds in our performance tests and went even further in power efficiency, with the Galaxy S24 Ultra scoring the best battery life we’ve ever tested.

Cameras are versatile and effective, with bold dynamic range, beautifully rendered colours and crisp, detailed night photography. Video quality is excellent in 4K with noticeably improved stability for the 8K recording. The real stars of the show are the telephoto lenses, however, with impressive zoom range and clarity, making the Galaxy S24 Ultra easily the best choice for zoom photography right now.

Rounding out the package is a sprinkling of new features via Galaxy AI, including live translations, transcription and summaries for recorded notes and a few camera additions like frame interpolation, which uses AI to add frames to video for boosted framerates, and generative fill that allows you to rotate images without having to crop into them.

View deal at Carphone Warehouse

It may be due to be replaced in the next month or so but, for my money, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is far from obsolete. The most important thing here is that, like the rest of Samsung’s 2024 flagship lineup, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is promised a massive seven years of software support. With the forecast of updates pushing into the 2030s, there’s never been a better time to skip the upcoming new models and get a great deal on a slightly older, but still incredibly impressive, flagship smartphone.

I’ve got even more phone deals over on my live smartphone blog, with discounts across a range of prices from all the top brands. Otherwise, be sure to check out our main Black Friday deals feed for all the biggest bargains on everything from headphones to air fryers.