Can you recommend a festival phone to use on Three please?

[nothingcomestonothing]

I want to get my dad a cheap basic phone for when he looks after my DC, it only needs to make calls and text and ideally not have teeny tiny buttons. I've got the Nokia C2 on Three, which I could only love more if it made my dinner, but the Three website (where I bought it) have only got refurbed ones now and they seem to cost more than mine did new. All the basic unlocked phones I've looked at on Tesco etc can't be used on 3G, can anyone recommend me something please?

[NetworkGuy]

I'm guessing you mean when you are away at a music festival - title line puzzled me a bit!

The C2-01 was 49.99 for a long time (2012/13) until Autumn 2013 when it went down to 29.99 for a while (I only took notice for my 70+ yo BiL. I suggested Three to my eldest sister in 2012).

Three-Clearance.co.uk is out of stock but they were showing the C2-01 at 24.99 so not sure what prices you have seen...

A search on GSMarena.com found over 100 which were
(A) 3G (include 2100 MHz band
(B) 'dumb' - no touchscreen

However, when I started looking at them the names and models were definitely unlikely to be available now. I then filtered for more recent models and it went down to about 8 - see link

Big problem if you go to 99% of mobile shops will be that they will want to flog a top-up with any of these and it may mean your mobile gets locked to some other network. I suggest searching Ebay for one of those listed models, or the C2-01, and if any are listed as businesses they may be able to help identify 3G mobiles in the style you want.

When I looked on Ebay for C2-01 some C2-05 phones were shown (but note these are not 3G so would not work with Three anyway).

Not sure I can really help - I know that you're after a non-touchscreen for use on Three but no suggestions at present for where to buy something suitable, sorry.

[nothingcomestonothing]

Okay, thanks a lot for looking into it for me, I'll have a rethink.

[NetworkGuy]

The 'problem' with Three is that any phone needs to be 3G whereas with other networks you can get any old 2G handset.

If you have a chance to use another network than Three, how about T-Mobile...

Here's a link to a 20 quid Flip Phone and 10 quid of that is credit, so you could just flog the SIM on Ebay and then get a free PAYG T-Mob/EE SIM to put in the phone when you need it to be accessible.

I really couldn;'t get my head around when it would get used (music festivals, or all year, and you were cribbing the Three website 'festive' gift, for the thread title). If you were choosing Three because the credit stays for longer than a month, then some other networks could also be considered.

[nothingcomestonothing]

Yes mainly for the everlasting credit, as the phone will hardly ever get used, plus I'm with Three and very happy with them. I'll have a look at that link, thanks a lot for your help.