breaking/amending o2 contract

randalf72

Hi looking for advice on the cheapest way to get an upgraded smartphone and possibly break/amend a mobile contract.

I'm 9 months into a O2 18 month deal that included a blackberry curve.

While I like some of the features such as push email, editing of spreadsheets and the rather nice keyboard I'm struggling with the pathetic choice of applications (predominantly priced at extortionate levels), a battery that seems to discharge at will and a user interface that seems designed to frustrate and make things difficult.

In some ways I prefered my old windows mobile handset.

The obvious choice seems to be either an Android or an iPhone.

Can I tap into the collective wisdom of the board and find out if either the iphone or android phones can be configured to manage email in the same way as the blackberry? What is considered the best android phone? Is it possible to swap phones within a contract with o2 as I don't fancy starting the 18 month clock again and convert the blackberry data add on to a android/iphone data add on?

Probably most importantly, whats the cheapest way of doing the above?


Cheers

Randalf

Jon_01

O2 won't offer you a new handset until your in the last 3 months of the contract and even then it won't be much of an offer, you need to be out of contract for a good deal to be done.

There's a new iPhone being announced in the US tonight, so the price of the 3GS may go down later this month.

Best Android phone would be the Desire.

You'll need to buy a handset either on payg or sim free and stick your sim in it. O2 may lower your tariff a stage, but I'm not sure if they allow that at the mid point of the contract or in the last few months.

Fire_Fox

After nine months you may be able to reduce your contract by a level. Then the only way out is to buy yourself out of the contract, selling the handset to fund the buyout. There is no cheap/ easy way to get out of any legally binding contract - you have to ask yourself what is in it for O2? Even if O2 allowed you to start a new 18 month contract they would tack the nine months you still have remaining onto the end of it. It is always worth asking if they will allow you to change to another type of contract (e.g. iPhone friendly) but you would still then have to buy a PAYG handset at £450.