After a morning looking at phones to buy the ideal combination to me would seem to be the Nokia N97’s hardware running Android – alas such a combination doesn’t exist, if I want Android I have to put up with the ugly HTC G-Phone range. Iphones are getting a little tired and I miss things like contact groupings and MMS so they’re a poor option (when comparing to my existing N95). The Blackberry storm looks nice, but I really like Android as an ‘open’ operating system – there’s also the pain of getting the bloody things unlocked.
This lead to some reflection on the current length of mobile contracts e.g. 18 months or 24 months (Orange.co.uk) – for those of us who remember it used to be 12 months, and that was considered a long time. I would think that, because of the extended minimum length of contracts from the Mobile Phone operators, phone providers are going to be forced to push down their prices for sim-free handsets. No matter how hard I try I doubt I could make a new phone last two years, i’m going to need to buy a new one before then and I can’t ‘abuse’ my operator’s free upgrade any longer. Yes, this does mean operators can expect more ‘direct’ business (i.e. not through mobile operators) but at the same time they’re going to be experiencing a loss as the operators buy less from them. People like my mother for example would get a free upgrade simply to sell it on on a website like ebay, not actually needing a new phone – these people are going to stop doing that with longer contracts and companies like Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry and HTC are going to suffer. Hopefully this will lead to phones that aren’t more expensive than a high-end PC.