Originally Posted by
chrestomanci
The cheapest way to get most phones is to buy it SIM free, and then subscribe to a prepay contract, or something like O2's no ties deal. Any other contract will cost you more in the long term, and unless you use all the bundled airtime, texts etc, you are not getting value of money.
Also, there was a story a while back about several networks crippling the firmware on the N95 phones (and some others like the E65) that they provided on contract. They locked out features like VoIP in order to make you spend more money on their network, so if you do buy an N95 on contract, make sure you get one stock nokia firmware.