Well yea, but there are carriers / retailers that sell the devices without contracts too. Although, depending on the device, it may be too expensive for the thread opener.

In the US T-Mobile is the only carrier that will give you a break and won't require a contract if you come with your own phone. Yes, even if you buy your own EVO, for example, Sprint will require you to sign a full priced, 2 year contract before they will grant you service. That the DOJ isn't all over this kind of shit is a testament to how much corporate America has their fingers in government.

Ah well that's too bad. Here at least, nearly all of the phones, I think the iPhone was the only exception, are available from the carriers, in a sense similar to retailers. You just pay for the phone. They really don't require that you sign a contract or get a prepaid number, or anything else.

Signing contracts will get you a lower price, but the fact remains that the phone is freely available for purchase.

For example, LG Optimus 7 (running on WP7) is available for around 25,000 MKD (which translates to something around $550, from Vip. This is the price you pay for the phone alone, without signing any contracts and stuff.

I got the phone for around 4,000 MKD, or for around $90. My whole family was on T-Mobile, on a family contract, and just before the contract ended, literaly a few days only, we transfered to Vip. For transfering and making new contracts, Vip was offering discounts / free phones, and similar promotions. So, we choose to get "value" for our contracts, and merged them together, and that's how the phone got down to $90.

Basically, right now I use the phone without any contracts, and I'm not obliged to use a Vip SIM in it either. My family's contract package got extended by two years though, now on Vip. But all is well, since we have free 1000 minutes in the Vip network, and the price per minutes for other networks is a lot lower than before when we were with T-Mobile.

Bah, off to confugure SQL Server 2008 R2 now...

Well, that's what happens when there's actual competition I guess. The problem is we only have 2 GSM networks here, T-Mobile's (which blows for reception, even in their supposedly great coverage areas) and AT&T (which is oversold and their network goes down really easily in urban areas, they also have horrid customer service and won't sell unlimited data plans anymore).

So that means everyone else has a CDMA network (or one that works like it) whereby you can't hook up whatever you want, you can only get a carrier phone. Android phones, which aren't all that great, tbh, are the only ones that you can easily unlock and flash. There's a hardcore flash scene for some other popular phones, but those phones always had limited featuresets. So if you want a phone on a network and you can't or won't use T-Mobile or AT&T (which even in a huge, high tech US city in which I live both blow badly) you are screwed on phone and feature choice. You'll also be locked into a contract, and if you opt to not renew and get their new, shiny toy at the end of it, you still pay the same price even if you aren't repaying them for a subsidized phone.

Ah, that sucks then.

Competition is high here right now, yes. Several years ago, it was terrible, because there was only one carrier. Then there were two, but there was absolutely no competition. Right now with Vip in the game (which is a big player around here in Eastern Europe), its very different.

They were working for three years without making money actually, pretty much up to a few months ago when they saw a few thousand euro of profit for the quarter, had many millions in negative. But they got the people to actually join them, and that's what's important. I think they were named the best IT company in my country for 2010, way ahead of its rivals.

I don't have any options because I have always just used an ipod...

However, I wanted to just make you aware of the fact that most of the stuff you may have bought on Itunes over the years will likely have to be burned onto CD's as CD audio, and then re-converted to whatever format your player uses.
Apple's DRM makes it a huge hassle to switch from their device to someone else's.

I bought a Nexus One off of Ebay that I use as a phone and a media device. So I would suggest getting an Android phone.

Not since a couple years ago, or whenever it was they switched their complete catalogue to MP3, of course anything bought when they still only offered DRM'd AAC files (and if you didn't opt for the DRM free "Itunes+" version during the time they offered both) would still be a bitch to get a copy of without additional loss of quality.

Prog Music

y u so many MBs

as fair as i'm concerned there is not alternative.

How does the J3 compare with that gigantic brick I bought, the A3? That stupid joystick was the most annoying thing ever. The A3 did do literally everything, the problem was 90% of the time I was doing the same darned thing and it was just a pain to use. I think my battery finally went, can't find my charger cable and I haven't gotten a replacement. It was so damned heavy I normally just used it on the treadmill to watch some Japanese westerns or something else odd that no one else wanted to see.

I really wanted to like the A3, I spent over 200 bucks on the thing, I can't say I was disappointed with what it could do, I was more disappointed in the polish. The finicky joystick, poor menu system, and the enigmatic power button (who knows what that thing was going to do whenever you pressed it!).