Last night, the Design Museum in Kensington played host to a glitzy bash to commemorate the best in mobiles. From the year’s best handset to the network of the year, as well as prizes for best roaming, fastest network and many more, prizes were handed out, speeches were made and celebrations were had. Here’s what went down at the 2020 Uswitch awards.
Sky Mobile has been crowned Mobile Network of the Year at the 2020 Uswitch Awards, with the good people at Sky also taking home the award for Best Network for Data.
Best Network for Coverage went to O2, a big win for the brand who can now say they have the biggest coverage for customers throughout the UK.
With an emphasis on great customer service, affordable plans and flexible benefits, Sky Mobile has beaten off the competition and come out as the best network.
And with one of Sky Mobile’s biggest benefits being its data rollover bonus, which sees any unused data added to a rolling data pot, it’s no surprise the network bagged the Best Network for Data prize too.
Plusnet Mobile were big winners too, taking home two awards for Best Value Pay Monthly and Best Network for Customer Service.
Vodafone deservingly took the Best SIM-only award thanks to a big year for the network where it delivered affordable unlimited data plans with super fast 5G included at no extra cost.
But the Best Value SIM-only prize went to SMARTY, thanks to their amazing offers such as the current 30GB for £10 deal.
For pure speed, EE could not be beaten this year so they raced off with the Fastest Mobile Network award - which was verified by the mobile data specialists at Opensignal.
No other network could match Three’s international reach, and they were handed the Best Roaming award for allowing customers to use calls, texts and data allowance in a whopping 71 destinations at no extra cost.
Off the back of a great year for smartphone releases, the Best Manufacturer went to Samsung. The past year saw the Korean tech heavyweights release the S10, Note 10 and Note 10 Plus, as well as a number of 5G devices.
Of course, Samsung also wowed the tech world with the attention-demanding Galaxy Fold, for which tied for the Tech Innovation of the Year award. Who was the other winner? Audacious, the SIM-only network that embeds hearing aid tech into its SIM cards to help users with hearing loss experience clearer call quality.
With this game-changing tech, it comes as no surprise that Audacious was also awarded the prize for Best Newcomer of the Year, to give them two highly-coveted gongs.
When it comes to actual smartphones, the entry list for Handset of the Year was heaving. Apple, Samsung, Google and more all released an impressive selection of devices. However, only one phone can be the best and the votes went for the Huawei P30 Pro. With its supersized battery, gorgeous display and incredible, market beating camera, voters looked past the Chinese brand’s problems and recognised the achievement in handset tech.
The full list of winners is:
Best Network Coverage - O2
Best Network for Customer Service - Plusnet Mobile
Best Network for Data - Sky Mobile
Best Network for Roaming - Three
Fastest Mobile Network - Based on analysis derived from Opensignal* - EE
Best Pay Monthly Network - Sky Mobile
Best PAYG Network - VOXI
Best Retailer for Customer Service - Tesco
Best SIM Only Network - Vodafone
Best Value Pay Monthly - Plusnet Mobile
Best Value SIM Only - SMARTY
High Street Retailer of the Year - Argos
Manufacturer of the Year - Samsung
Handset of the Year - Huawei P30 Pro
Mobile Reseller of the Year - MPD
Network of the Year - Sky Mobile
Online Retailer of the Year - Amazon
Best Newcomer of the Year - Audacious
Most Popular Mobile Network - Three