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Future Android Owner - please help!

gillybean

Lurker
Hi everyone - my problem is that I would like to upgrade to an android handset this month but have a few questions about it. Firstly, my main priority is getting a cheaper than
 
Welcome!

What ever phone you go with you are likely to struggle for official updates from the manufacture. They are businesses that need to make money, selling phones makes money, spending time writing upgrades doesn't. They may do it if they feel a certain phones shelf life can be extended to get more sales but the rate at which technology is moving on and newer phones are coming out it is wiser for them to bring out a new phone with the latest ROM rather than continue with an older phone.

Having said that I have an HTC Hero (the desires predecessor) and it runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3). This is purely due to the great developer zone out there for this phone. So what might be more important is to look into what un-offical support you will get with your phone rather than what official support you will get. For instance if you go for a Motorola with a locked bootloader (preventing custom ROMs being loaded) you will be stuck with what ever Motorola decide to bring out in the was of upgrades. On the other hand if you go for the Desire which I believe has quite a development scene you will likely be set for a long time to come.

You said you were worried about bricking your phone. It's really not something to be worried about. The only real chance of bricking your phone is interrupting a radio update. You will normally never have to do a radio update. Upgrading recovery partitions or ROMs carries very little risk as one can always be used to fix the other should something go wrong.

If you are looking at older phones you might want to look into purchasing the phone outright in a discount shop like Amazon as you will be better off in the long run. Just do the maths compare paying a 3 year contract at
 
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