Idiot needing help with mobile phone purchase and giffgaff

[Squirrelface]

I am thinking of buying a smart phone and using giffgaff, as it seems to offer the best value for money. However I'm woefully behind the times on understanding this stuff. As giffgaff use the O2 network, will it work if I buy an O2 pay as you go phone (such as one on Tesco mobile), and then put in the giffgaff sim card?

Also can anyone recommend a good inexpensive smart phone?
Thanks!

Yes, it will work with an O2 phone. Cant help you with the phone except if you are looking for cheap dont get an iphone5!

To use giffgaff,you need an unlocked phone or one running on the o2 network.I havent used Tesco for about a year now but recall that an o2 locked phone will work on the tesco network but a Tesco locked phone will not work with an o2 sim card,so you would not be able to put a giffgaff simcard into a Tesco locked phone.

Thanks for your help (and info on Tesco phones).... just need to select the phone now!

Before you jump to choose some O2 phone, be aware that GiffGaff is planning a price rise and changes to their plans, moving the unlimited data to some higher cost option.

Also, have seen some speculation that they are given lower priority than O2 customers (so texts might be delayed, data a bit slower). I've no personal experience of GG myself, so am just going by what I've read over past months.

Worth checking Asda for an O2 phone (unlike Argos, Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U, Asda rarely demand payment of a 10 quid top-up [which you'd probably want to use, or flog SIM on Ebay before inserting some other SIM])

What are you after from your phone ?

What do you regard as expensive / inexpensive ?

Are you after the phone for its camera, as a music player, for using the internet...

I'm getting the phone for my 18 year old daughter to take to university. Her priorities are texting, facebook, looking things up on the internet a bit, access to some apps, and enough talk-time to not be afraid of using it. (Her current payg mobile eats up credit at an incredible rate). She also wants a camera/video facility, but it doesn't have to be top quality. She doesn't particularly want it for music, as she's happy with her MP3 player, nor for extensive game-playing.

We're currently looking at the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, as she likes the slide-out qwerty keyboard. It seems to be available at O2 for £100. (I've had to revise my ideas about what is inexpensive since looking into this!).

Have you done any checks on signal coverage where she'll be
a) studying
b) sleeping (student block?)
c) evenings (bound to be out sometimes late night, so town centre coverage also worth checking)

Yes - I've checked the coverage, and all seems fine.

Actually, at 100 quid it's far from the maximum I've seen the phone listed at...

Like the look of it myself, esp QWERTY (and more memory than one I would have suggested, namely the Galaxy Ace - which also has 5 Mpixel camera, similar 32 GB microSD storage option, and pretty much everything else is similar, though Galaxy has a slightly bigger screen).

Interested to find that it (appeared to me) seemed to be hidden away on the O2 web site. Would have suggested the Galaxy as that seems on Three (contract costing 13 quid a month) to have the phone coming in the deal for free.

Reason I'd suggest Three is because of unlimited data as pretty much standard on many of their plans, though that's also the case with GiffGaff albeit they may increase the cost in a month or two... from 10 to 13 or 15 quid