Need some help finding the right phone/contract.

apeZ · 28 Oct 2011 at 01:39

Hi.

Because my phone is getting a bit old and irritates me to no end (poor battery life, still annoying to text on, etc) and because I've been shown the wonders of smartphones by some friends, I'm considering getting a new one.

I think I'd like a contract...but I'm not sure if I use my phone enough to need one. I'd only really want 200-300 texts/month and 500-1GB internet. I almost never make calls.

Quite a few of my friends have BlackBerries, and I like those... but part of me wants to get onboard the Android hype train. At the moment I only really use my phone for texting, but I'd love to be able to use it more often as a diary and portable internet browser. I'll mainly be browsing news websites, reddit, forums, and Facebook.

I'd like good battery life, and generally good performance. I don't need an amazing camera or tons of additional features, I just want good bang for my buck so to speak.

Network doesn't matter.
Budget: 100-150 quid PAYG or ideally less than 15/month on contract.

I'm sorry if this isn't an awful lot of information, but I've always been out of touch with phone technology and I've only recently seen what they are capable of now (and I want in on the action!), and decided that my phone needs an upgrade. I'll happily take any suggestions onboard!

Thanks.

apeZ · 28 Oct 2011 at 15:51

A couple of phones I've seen deals for so far, can you tell me if they are any good?

- Blackberry Bold 9780 - £14.33pm by redemption, 24 month contract. 100 mins, 500 texts, 500mb internet and unlimited wifi.
- Blackberry Curve 9360 - £14.33pm by redemption, same deal as above.
- HTC Wildfire S - £13.44pm by redemption, same deal as above.

apeZ · 28 Oct 2011 at 16:51

Yeah, I plan to read all the t&cs properly.

I'm leaning towards the Curve 9360 more than the Bold 9780, because of Blackberry OS 7. It got a very favourable review on Techradar http://www.techradar.com/reviews/ph...ackberry-curve-9360-1035394/review?artc_pg=13 but there were a few things they picked up on (slow browsing, weak battery) that looked like they would irk me. Plus, I'm not sure whether I'd prefer one of the Android phones with bigger screens rather than the Blackberry form factor.

apeZ · 28 Oct 2011 at 17:50

What do you guys make of this?

http://hotukdeals.com/deals/new-bla...ract-360-upfront-8-months-free-1033023?page=2

apeZ · 3 Nov 2011 at 00:59

Little update: I decided to spend a little more because the geeky side of me wants to play around with Android.

After a lot of umming and ahhing, I plumped for a HTC Desire S.

12 months contract. 30 quid per month, but redemption and quidco brings this down to 20/month, so 240 quid total. This was on mobiles.co.uk.

400 mins, 1000 texts, 1GB data. Pretty good deal I think considering I didn't want to tie myself to a 2 year contract, and the phone looks like a pretty good performer. Can't wait for it to arrive!