As title, ive ended my contract with T-Mobile, had a Blackberry 8900 Curve for 18 months, luckily only now has the roller ball started to play up on me.

So, new phone/tariff time!

I dont really know where to head next, another blackberry (with 3G as a MUST), android, or iphone?

I must admit, the iphone does appeal to me but I wanted to get away from high monthly tariffs. Currently I pay ?36.50/month. Ideally a ?30/month contract would be great but I dont think I will get a brilliant handset for this kinda price.

I see these HTC phones evnerywhere on the sites, the desire looking like the top model at the moment?

Are the lower models still good or should I avoid these?

Blackberry 9700 also ticks the boxes for me but would have liked a change from the blackberry format. Perhaps getting one with 3G will make me love them again, my only fault on my curve was the damn GPRS browsing!!!!

Also, purchasing contacts online? Something ive never done before, are there savings to be had doing things this way or is it wise to get down the highstreet and try and haggle a deal out?

You might want to wait a month or 2 for the new Blackberry Torch 3G touchscreen/slider phone, it is running OS6 with the webkit browser so should give you a better browsing experience. I have had the 3G enabled Blackberry Pearl with the T9 keyboard for nearly 2 weeks nowand it is ok for browsing, but nowhere near as good as the Android browser but 3G and wifi transfer speeds are very good.

Forget the 9700, you might as well wait for the 9800 slider or the 9780 which is the updated version of the 9700 ie 512mb of RAM, 5mp camera and will be running Blackberry OS6 which includes a much better and faster web browser.

Many people on crackberry have sacked the 9800 and gone back to their 9700, I myself have recently sacked my android phone and gone back to my 9700, missed BBM too much, 9700 is the way to go

9700 here as well and I love it. I moved over from the old Curve as well and can only feel that the 9700 is a real step forward. My only compliant would be the occasional signal drop but I think that might be due to being with Orange!

If you want/need a Blackberry, you will know about it.

As you don't (I wouldn't buy a Blackberry as a media/general use phone), and want around a ?30 per month contract, look at the Samsung Galaxy S or HTC Desire.

You can get the iPhone 4 on a ?30 per month contract but you need around ?260 up front for the phone (32GB anyway)

Its very, very easy getting a contract phone online, go and look here -

http://www.mobiles.co.uk/

http://www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk/

Both the above websites are decent and will give you a good indication of prices.

?30 per month will EASILY get you a top end phone

The 9300 Curve is coming out pretty soon iirc, and that has OS6, trackpad and 3g? So it may be worth waiting?