If we’re all being honest, anyone who lives a ‘plugged in’ life wants to stay connected. Any time, any where.
But with all mobile plans, contracts, schemes and networks. You’re locked to that particular network and their infrastructure, signal and coverage. Which means inadvertently if they don’t have a great level of coverage in an area, you’re left without. Not ideal for someone who likes to stay connected to the essentials of life. Most definitely not ideal in any form of emergency situation.
Enter Honest Mobile and their Smart SIM offering.
The Smart SIM from honest offers a slightly different solution. 200+ apps, all available with a Smart SIM card that roams across three of the UK’s major mobile providers (EE, Three & O2).
Pricing
Honest Mobile presents a really simple pricing structure to their Smart SIM:
- £10 Per Month
- £45 Per Year (This works out at £3.75pm)
When in comparison, these prices include unlimited use of the 200+ included apps and international roaming to a wide variety of countries (180+ as listed on their site!). They make a pretty attractive offering that is hard to beat on price point alone! All of the details can be found on the below link:
Smart SIM
Unlimited data for 100+ essential apps on EE, O2 and Three, plus free global roaming.
For full transparency, I was an early adopter of the Honest Smart SIM as soon as I saw it advertised. I currently pay £5 per month for the service but would happily pay the updated monthly or annual cost if required. I am waiting with bated breath to see Honests approach to the early adopters paying a reduced cost! If you’re reading this Honest, that doesn’t mean put my price straight up!
(Pricing correct as of Wednesday 19th March 2025)
Apps Included
With a comprehensive list of apps included, I’m fairly confident that the Smart SIM will tick boxes for all people that identify a need for something such as this. I’ve included the link to check through the apps, but will give a quick break down of some headline apps that really should show the value from the beginning:
Messaging — iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal
Navigation — Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze
Banking — Monzo, Revolut, American Express, Barclays, HSBC
Travel — SkyScanner, TUI, Trainline, Airbnb
Smart SIM
Unlimited data for 100+ essential apps on EE, O2 and Three, plus free global roaming.
Now I can hear a few heckles from the back saying “Well what if I don’t use any of them apps?”. If that’s the case, the SIM isn’t for you. It’s not a SIM for every day use, for browsing webpages, scrolling social media or catching up on your favourite YouTubers latest release.
This SIM is for the sole purpose of remaining connected, across the UK/Globe with the essential apps required to communicate and run their every day lives.
The extensive app list did get me thinking though, could I last a whole trip abroad just using the Smart SIM? More to come!
UK Testing
I’ve used the Smart SIM now in the UK for around 6 months. In that time I can honestly say I didn’t even know I had been using it.
That’s simply how smart it is.
I get an update from Honest telling me when I used their SIM each month and for how long. But without that I wouldn’t know I had switched to it. That’s the great thing about the seamless switching that they have managed to integrate into this SIM. I cannot think of the last time that I ‘lost’ signal and didn’t receive my iMessages, or a time that I was driving along and lost signal to Apple Maps causing me to miss a turn etc!
I did try a few extra curricular things such as a WireGuard Tunnels, PIA VPN, OpenVPN, CloudFlare Tunnel, UniFi Teleport etc. They just simply did not connect or work, I imagine Honest have this pretty locked down to prevent any sort of advantage being taken!
Smart SIM in the UK = Recommend
EU Testing
So, after giving a glowing review of the Smart SIM’s performance in the UK.
I had no other choice but to put it through its paces on a recent holiday to Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
After landing, I switched the Mobile SIM manually to use my Smart SIM card over my main EE Contract (so I could really test their claims of having unlimited global roaming in their listed 180+ countries).
The Honest SIM performed better than expected (I set out with zero expectations). All the apps tested worked without a hitch. Speeds in general seemed all well, in some cases better than the EE SIM when moving across the two.
I managed to message, navigate, read the news, check my banking and the weather all without issue every day. Then anything further I needed such as social media and other “heavier” browsing/streaming were all done on Wi-Fi in an evening via a VPN.
It was actually quite nice whilst away to take a break from social media etc and only have access to these apps at specific points of the day.
Smart SIM in Canary Islands = Recommend
Final Thoughts
Would I recommend the Honest Mobile Smart SIM? Yes.
For anyone that needs to remain connected, uses any of the apps listed and is looking for a cost effective solution to do so. Honest Smart SIM is the answer.
I’m very open to the fact that there may be other providers out there who provide a similar/comparable service. If anyone has any other UK based providers they use and have had good results with, reach out! I would love to do a comparison between them and see how they differ, with most importantly who comes up trumps and tops the table!
We’ll be due another trip over to the US in the next coming year, so I’ll be sure to put the Honest Smart SIM through it’s paces there too and give an updated account of how it performs!
Please Note – This is a direct copy of the article from my Medium page. Therefore the images have been removed to aid performance of this site.
Thanks for making it to the end!