iPhone price UK: The best deals on the new iPhone Xs and Xs Max from all the networks

The new iPhone Xs and Xs Max are finally available to buy in the UK, just over a week after Apple unveiled its most-expensive ever handsets.

Apple showed off a whole host of new features in its launch event: upgraded camera smarts, a stunning new gold colour, and improvements to the speed and performance of the phone. But they come at a cost, and one that is not easy to swallow.

And from Friday the Xs and Xs Max have gone on sale in the UK and around the world, meaning UK networks are battling to offer customers the best deals on the new iPhones.

(The iPhone Xr, which might offer considerably better value for money, is not going to be released until October. It might be well worth waiting for: it has many of the same features as the Xs, but starts at £749 rather than £999.)

Buying a phone is not necessarily the cheapest way of buying an iPhone, and it requires you to have the most amount of money to hand. But the flip side is that you get everything sorted out in one go, you won't have payments hanging over your head, and you're free to do what you want with the phone.

The best way to get the new phone outright is to head to the Apple Store – either the websiteor the real one, next week. You can pick your size – Xs starting £999 and Xs Max starting at £1,099 – as well as choosing your colour and storage and then get onto buying it.

iPhone deals UK: You want the best deal overall

While that approach has its advantages, you are still going to have to have a contract anyway. So it can be worth going through your network, and paying upfront for the phone with them while still committing to a phone plan.

The best way we've found to get that is to go with EE, which is offering the phone for just £22 per month if you pay £700 for it at the beginning. That makes it very cheap over the 24 months, keeps your payments down and even gives you a relatively chunky allowance of 4GB data as well as unlimited minutes and texts.

If you're on the other side of that situation – you don't want to pay upfront at all, and offset the cost through the length of the plan – then there are plenty of ways to do that. Obviously, you will pay for it in that the price over the two years will add up to significantly more, but you'll also have the benefit of never having to make such a significant outlay.

There are plenty of networks offering limited upfront payments, such as Virgin Mobile, which claims to have the cheapest deal with no upfront costs. You can get the Xs for £41 per month without any initial payment, and pay an extra £9 for a full 50GB per month.

The least painful way to get the iPhone Xs or Xs Max is probably to go somewhere in between. Which is best will depend on how much you want to pay upfront and what sort of allowances you want, of course, but the networks are falling over themselves to offer you deals on the new phone.

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Three, for instance, is asking for £59 for all you can eat data with a £99 payment at the beginning. It's not the cheapest deal, but unlimited data is rare, and it is decent.

The Max is £5 more from Three. And you can add another £6 on top per month to get some AirPods, too.

If you're concerned about committing for two years – especially when next year's iPhone is likely to offer more spectacular upgrades than the Xs – then you might want to consider Sky Mobile, which allows people to upgrade every year with its "Swap12" plan. The Xs starts at £59 per month on that plan, with a £99 upfront payment.