king-abc, you are not 100% correct.
I agree that e.g. Nokia (and maybe Motorola - do not have experience with this brand) makes their phones pretty good. Another reliable manufacturer IMHO - SonyEricsson.

"A cellphone was meant to talk on the go not listen to mp3, watch videos, surf the net, get your emails, take pictures.."
I do not agree with you here since the phones evolved a lot and it's just another handy feature. It drains battery, true, but should not be avoided if it has such a functionality. If you do not overload you phone with many (running) applications, it all should be fine. I got Nokia E65 and it works as sharm with all you've mentioned ;)

Hi Matt and King,

I have the same problems with my phones. My last one is Samsung and it started having problems after a 1.5 year and it was the same story with the previous phone. But the, I was stupid enough to get another 3 years in December 2006 so now i have another year of contract and no phone working.

I actually just joined this site so that I can ask people what to do if I really want to avoid the $200 fine. My phone has a batterie problem and I was told that buying a batterie is like buying a new phone. Also, I never used this phone's sim card. I am still using my old sim card with for the last 2 years and i don't know it that's part of the problem. But I was advised by someone with no accurate info to not change my sim card if I didn't want my phone number to change (that was 2 years ago).

Anyway, what to do now. Can I find cheap phone in the market without getting into a new contract? I say a cheap phone because after the last year of contract, I want to quit the company or even all cell phones.

Theoretically cell phones are suppose to work between 3-5 years if you take proper care of it and if I'm not mistaken, I think cell phones with Rogers or Fido have a 1 year warranty (which is useless because if the cell phone is really broken, there's not much the tech team can do).

From my point of view, a 3 year contract is only good for you if you can't afford to pay the phone in full price because if you're in it for the free phone, you're getting screwed all over. Here's why, most cell phones that are given free or at a very cheap price (if you're not buying the latest cell phone model) with the 3 year contract are the worst brand of cell phones on the market (LG, Samsung, Sony).

It happened to me at least twice that my phones gave up before the agreement (because they were Samsung and Ericsson phones) and instead of replacing them I just went back to my old Nokia or Motorola phone because they were still functioning.

Why do they still work while Sony or Samsung's phone broke? Simple, Nokia and Motorola do the basic function of calling and receiving calls properly.

The bottom line is don't buy anything else than Nokia or Motorola because it won't last. I still have that big blue with the green/dark screen nokia phone from the 1990s and it's still working. It's my first cell phone ever and it's still functionnal. On top of that I have had a Razor (1st generation) ever since it's arrival on the market which is almost 4 years now and it's still working. The batteries are giving up (it has to happen someday) but I'm surprised that it's still giving juice.

A cellphone was meant to talk on the go not listen to mp3, watch videos, surf the net, get your emails, take pictures, make videos or whatever else a cell phone can do these days. I call those all-in-one phones and all-in-one phones are like 4-season-tires, you can drive them all year long but the tires will lose their grip within the 1st year so your "all-in-one phone" won't last too long either.

I hope this answers it.