To give a quick bit of background, I've currently got a HTC Hero. This was pretty much the dog's when I took out my contract, but was pretty quickly left in the dust by the following Android phones that had faster processors.
Going SIM only and buying a second hand phone doesn't seem that sensible, as a half decent phone (ie, a HTC Desire S) will cost me north of £150 on Ebay, and the SIM only plans aren't that cheap - roughly a tenner a month, which with the phone cost included, works out at around £16 a month.
That leaves me looking at another contract. I could get something like a Desire S under £15 a month with some haggling, and on an 18 month contract if I go with T-mobile.
The other option is to go for a top end phone like a HTC Sensation or the Galaxy S2, which is going to set me back about £20-22 a month for 2 years.
What's the better option? I suspect with something like the Sensation or Galaxy that I'd be paying a couple of hundred quid "flash phone tax" over the contract, but it'd be more likely to keep up with technology. Or are the major leaps in phone technology slowing? Or is there something else like Nexus Prime that will instantly devalue every other handset as soon as it comes out?

