Cell Phones

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Switched carriers over a year ago, no contract now. (And it seems T-Mobile started a revolution there as other carriers are going no contract now...) Bought pretty much the cheapest smart phone available. Big reason I switched was lousy performance from an i-phone I had just bought, so I wrote it off and left Verizon. After several i-phones that worked well, I left the tribe because one was a lemon, and I don't see spending $600 or more to give them a chance to redeem the brand for me...

So I have this crummy little Samsung Galaxy Avant. It is glitchy, the speaker sucks, the display sucks, the camera sucks... But I am also not going to drop $600 or more on Samsung's Cadillac phone...

My plan was to upgrade to a Samsung a few generations old, but it seems "the man" is onto people who do that and now they only sell the newest offerings online or in the phone stores unless you want to buy used - doesn't seem "prudent" as Bushie one used to say...

But Best Buy has a potential remedy, their "unlocked" phones which allegedly work for any carrier. When I asked the chick at Best Buy about moving the several hundred numbers and contacts from my Samsung to the "unlocked" phone she seemed to think that would not work. Is she right? Hate the thought of manually moving or just losing my whole phone book...

And, while one of the "unlocked" brands is Motorola - a brand I have had good experience with, I am skeptical about buying one and having it be only marginally better (or, gasp) worse than the crapbox I have now.

Anyone ever bought an "unlocked" phone? How is/was it?

Any tech nerds want to look here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&nrp=15&cp=1&sp=-bestsellingsort%20skuidsaas&seeAll=&_dyncharset=UTF-8&ks=960&sc=Global&list=y&usc=All%20Categories&type=page&iht=n&browsedCategory=pcmcat311200050005&st=categoryid%24pcmcat311200050005&qp=devicemanufacturer_facet%3DDevice%20Brand~Motorola

and hazard a guess as to the cheapest Motorola phone that would be a significant upgrade over my crappy little Samsung Avant?

With Appple launching a new i-phone today what is the lag time before the other phones drop price because "everyone" has to have a new i-phone and so the last generation whatever has to get cheaper to keep selling? If there is going to be a couple hundred buck drop on the latest Samsung Notem or Scrotum or whatever they call them? I would consider one, but I worry about missing the window when they just straight quit selling it and you are back to the newest Apple or the newest whatever at a price approaching a grand...

Seems the cell phone man is sticking it to us. How can we stick it to him? Half tempted to go back to a flip phone...

All right you tech geeks, solve this one! Go!