Sky makes the iPhone 17 more affordable but we found a cheaper overall deal

The iPhone 17, Apple’s latest flagship smartphone, is now available to pre-order. That’s the weird term retailers use when you can put down your money and buy a product before its on sale date - if you pre-order the iPhone 17, it should ship to you on September 19, 2025.

Express.co.uk has been scouring around the web for the best prices for the iPhone 17, which includes a much upgraded display over older regular iPhone models.

The iPhone 17 finally has a 120Hz ProMotion screen, bringing it in line with the iPhone 17 Pro and the new slimmer iPhone Air. Previously, the regular iPhone models had inferior 60Hz screens, but no longer.

Available in black, white, lavender, sage and mist blue, the iPhone 17 has a 6.3-inch screen, larger than ever, with dual cameras on the back and a much upgraded front-facing camera that lets you take landscape selfies even if you’re holding the phone vertically.

Perhaps best of all, Apple has upgraded the base storage capacity of the iPhone this year, selling the cheapest £799 model with 256GB rather than the 128GB it offered for the cheapest iPhone 16 last year.

But not everyone can afford £799 upfront for a new phone. If you want to upgrade, Sky Mobile has a very compelling pre-order offer on the iPhone 17 that could get you it today with no upfront cost and just a £26 per month charge.

This is on a 36-month repayment plan of £25 per month for the phone. You then need to add a mobile plan on top, the cheapest of which is £1 for 1GB monthly data. This isn’t much, but if you’re connected to Wi-Fi most of the time it might work for you. The total cost of this deal over three years is £936.

“You can swap to a new phone anytime after 31 days, or from 24 months at no extra cost,” Sky explains, which is a good perk.

You can always pay extra for more data if you need it at point of purchase. Sky is even offering unlimited 5G data for £19 per month, so that’d be £44 overall.

Though Sky has the cheapest monthly price we’ve seen, there is a cheaper overall deal from Mobiles.co.uk, even though the monthly cost is slightly higher.

For £29.99 per month and an upfront cost of £159, you can get the iPhone 17 on a 24-month contract with 100GB monthly data, plus unlimited texts and calls. This is 100x more data than Sky offers, and is better value.

Not only that, this is only a two year contract rather than three, and when all the maths is done, the overall cost is actually less than Sky’s cheapest deal, at £911.76. If you can afford the upfront cost, Mobiles.co.uk’s deal is preferable as it gets you much more data and the contract is a whole year shorter than Sky’s.

We also have rounded up all the best prices from various retailers for the iPhone 17, iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro.