Smarty

OverDrive · 13 Jan 2020 at 12:34

Has anyone any experience of Smarty?

I understand that they are an MVNO and wholly owned subsidiary of Three UK.

The 30GB with unlimited calls/texts for £10/month they are offering seems excellent value.

I’m currently with giffgaff (O2 MVNO) paying £15/month for 15GB with unlimited calls/texts and wondering if I should switch?

I can see that Smarty really is ‘bare bones’ though, much more so than giffgaff, e.g. there is no community forum, they do have a comprehensive support/FAQ section on their website though. I’ve also noticed they don’t have their own mobile app for monitoring data usage etc like giffgaff and most other operators do, granted you can just do this by logging on via the web.

I’ve been very happy with giffgaff over the years, so would like to know more before moving over.

Any advice/opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

joelk2 · 13 Jan 2020 at 13:03

my current sim only contract is up this weekend. i was planning on switching to smarty in the meantime as im not overly impressed with current phone offerings and i dont want to tie myself into another 12 month sim only deal.

i first heard about them through a friend who is on the network, i have previously been with three so in my area the signal seems sufficient, i never had any issues that i recall, no more so that my current provider EE.

i seem to read a lot that Three have a lot of issues in the london area due to congestion though. do you know anyone on three you could ask their advice on signal issues in your area etc..

for the price its hard to beat and for that price im happy to accept if speeds arent 100% what they should be.

Tuvoc · 13 Jan 2020 at 15:15

I changed to Smarty a few months ago. Main reason was that roaming costs for receiving calls outside the EU are very cheap. I'm happy with it.I love the fact that I get refunds for unused data.

It is as expected. It runs on Three and mirrors my experience with that network. That is, poor coverage and loss of signal in certain areas, but otherwise fine.

ANDARIAL · 13 Jan 2020 at 16:29

I got Smarty for my home internet.landline upto 3meg

Smarty upto 50meg

Got a referal link where we both get a month free if interested

jsmoke · 13 Jan 2020 at 16:34

I've just heard about them might try them but you have to order sim which means a day or so wait, they're pretty similar setup to Giffgaff.

£15 for 45gig.

silverblack · 13 Jan 2020 at 16:34

Also use Smarty for home internet get 80mb speeds.

Kainz · 13 Jan 2020 at 17:56

I put my parents on Smarty about a year ago. They’re on the £7 package and since they very rarely use data they end up with about £2.50 in data discounts each month. So I end up paying about a fiver per.

Smarty is of course subject to Three outages like the big October 2019 one but they’re ok for light users due to that unused data discount.

I left Three in November last year because of that outage and their ever decreasing speeds in London. Best move I ever did, even though I’m paying twice as much (£20).

OverDrive · 14 Jan 2020 at 00:44

Thanks for the informative replies all, they are much appreciated and have been very helpful. I live in Herts and work in London, so it's possible that I may have issues if Three's capacity in the area is currently strained. However, it will be interesting to see how Smarty evolve. I think the implementation of a community support forum would be a great thing as this works very well with giffgaff.

benparker · 14 Jan 2020 at 10:35

silverblack said:
Also use Smarty for home internet get 80mb speeds.

Lucky you, getting around 15-20

joelk2 · 18 Mar 2020 at 15:15

just for anyone interested. smarty are doing double data for 1 year on their 50gb tarrif. still a 1 month cancel anytime deal but you get 100gb data for 15 quid a month now.

lmfy2k · 18 Mar 2020 at 17:30

my bro is on the unlimited plan, pays £18.75 and has the sim in a home 4G router, uses around 500Gb per month with no issues

hes really impressed with them

joelk2 · 18 Mar 2020 at 21:17

lmfy2k said:
my bro is on the unlimited plan, pays £18.75 and has the sim in a home 4G router, uses around 500Gb per month with no issues

hes really impressed with them

That's good to hear. I'm with EE currently and am paying £20 per month for 20gb data, SIM only. Signal not great at my work though which is where I use my phone the most. 100gb for £15 was a no brainer. SIM only contract ran out a few months ago, want to upgrade phone to something newer but didn't think at this current time was a great thing to do. Reducing my tarrif and getting 5x more data for the time being seems to be a good idea. If the signal is bad then it's not hard to change back.

benparker · 4 Apr 2020 at 15:28

Anyone else notice slow downloads and uploads?

silverblack · 4 Apr 2020 at 15:52

benparker said:
Anyone else notice slow downloads and uploads?

Yep half speed here.

marms · 5 Apr 2020 at 07:07

I use Smarty for my home broadband and 4g was pretty much useless yesterday, i set my router to 3g mode and it wasn't too bad, 4g is back up to speed today though.

benparker · 5 Apr 2020 at 19:12

marms said:
I use Smarty for my home broadband and 4g was pretty much useless yesterday, i set my router to 3g mode and it wasn't too bad, 4g is back up to speed today though.

I find that 3g gives me better download speeds and 4g better upload speeds

brian100 · 28 Jul 2020 at 15:12

Hello
New to this site.
Just got a smarty sim everything ok but can not make hotspot with iphone just keeps spinning.
Got in touch with smarty they say iPhones will not do hotspot. Anybody got hotspot working with smarty sim.

NightSt@lk3r · 29 Jul 2020 at 23:57

I had one of the Smarty unlimited sims but didnt keep it for long as the signal was terrible pretty much everywhere i went.

brian100 · 30 Jul 2020 at 08:13

Hi.
No problem with the signal or download speed. Just can not create a hotspot.

sandys · 30 Jul 2020 at 13:36

Must be an iphone specific problem as I can hotspot with my Samsung on Smarty coverage seems good to me.