A co-worker with an iPhone 3GS asked me why I paid $650 in early 2010 for my N900, when I could've had a better phone with the 3GS at $199 (AT&T with 2-yr contract, with data $60-70/month). I swiftly proceeded to correct the notion what is "better" while pointing out that my month-to-month with T-Mobile plus $650 is in fact, better.

Win and win.

Yeah, our 2-year contract system is ridiculous. Well, actually North American mobile services are horrendous in general.

Only it doesn't HAVE to be that way. I have been using pre-paid T-Mobile cards without any problem for the last three years. After I got my smartphone* , I use pre-paid unlimited data/text/talk for $50/month. I can go back to my old plan anytime (I used to pay roughly $20/month with moderate use).

There is no excuse complaining about the 2-year lock-in or the bad telcos when you can actually DO something about it. Had more people chosen T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom may not have sold it...

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* - one with a proper 4+ inch screen, $400 yet missing from the poll

@Sopwith: thanks for reminding me of the pre-paid option. I often forget that before Virgin Mobile et al showing up to the market, the prepaid "phone cards" were really kind of a shiite deal, but not any more. I've been wondering what should be my next wrt provider/contract, and prepaid might just be it!

I just wanted an unlimited dataplan and that is about 30 eur/month for one year, with a 123 subsidy. Prepaid data is out of the question. About 1€/mb or something.

By the way, I use now my WP7 as a day to day phone without data. I have the data card on my N900 (As I always did. I use it only as a tablet - had a N95, moto milestone XT720, Samsung i8910 etc for a phone alongside it).
It's a nice little phone. LG's are fortunately easy to unlock (no external software is needed, not even pc connection) so I installed a registry editor, and fiddled with the (excellent, I will say it again and again) input method so now I have a native Greek keyboard. I noticed some values in the registry (nearMiss, barelyOn etc) that point to the assumption that it isn't only size that makes the VKB awesome.

I adore the simplistic user interface even if it takes up screen space. IE still sucks (only 6 tabs which get replaced without warning when you click on new links), but I'm waiting for Mango. There are some nice apps and they all look pretty good partially because the development process is somewhat restrictive. The battery lasts so much that I forget when I last charged it, and the phone doesn't need a reboot ever (unlike previous WM's) But the good things pretty much stop here.

I won't talk about the lack of multitasking, nor about the idiotic copy & paste (I still don't understand what is the gesture that enables selection, I just tap several times on the screen and chances are the handles will appear). I will talk though about the remnants of WM that are really annoying. First thing is the inability to communicate with my vehicle's bluetooth kit. It does not find it. Period. And I have used it with all the phones above plus some se dumbphones, a nokia n-gage and a T39.
The other thing is that when you search call history, the algorithm is doing a nice fuzzy search (treating latin chars the same as their counterparts in Greek for example) but this does not happen when searching for contacts.
Next is that when you click the omnipresent search button in messages, bing shows up!
And now the dealbreakers top 3
3. No usb mass storage. I have 16GB in my pocket and I can't do squat. (Ok, you can if you have zune but the point is -- you know...)
2. It published my location to windows live without my permission! (had location turned off)
1. After you answer a call it requires about 2 seconds to connect, so the other party never hears the hello. It is ultimately annoying, embarassing and sometimes anti-social. That is the reason I will go back to symbian and to the i8910.

bottom line. It's not a mobile computer of course (I didn't think it would be), but it is fundamentally flawed as a phone too. It is not difficult to fix though, and maybe after an update or two, it will be a nice phone to have.