Now that I’ve made the move to become contract-free, I will also be buying phones at full retail price. I’ve had my HTC Inspire 4G (aka the Desire HD) for more than 2 years, and even though its manufacturer has dropped support for it a LONG time ago it’s turned out to be a great purchase. You see, while it officially never got any newer version than 2.3.6 (=Gingerbread), the geeks out there have pretty much perfected builds of 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on this device! I flashed a ROM called “Jellytime” and now my phone is literally better than ever! It’s got all the newest Google bells and whistles and runs buttery smooth, even after installing all my apps. Can’t believe it, but I really have no need for buying something new until it breaks. The 4.3″ screen is still excellent, mapping flies, it browses nicely, it’s got the newest camera interface. The improvements Google has made in its OS are quite impressive: it’s not often that old hardware will run a newer version better than it ever ran the older one……
At the same time, I’m really glad to see that there are some great low cost new smartphones hitting the market. From Samsung’s Galaxy Ace series (4″ Android for $200 or so) to Nokia’s Lumia 521 (4″ Windows Phone 8 for $150), you can now get a device that does just about everything without breaking the bank. I’m talking full-fledged phones with the newest versions of their respective OSs, just with slightly lower specs. It just seems sillier and sillier to spend the typical $700 for the newest toy, doesn’t it?
