'cause I is a tart I will in all likelihood get an iphone4 before too long. Is there an aftermarket for my old phone? Can I give it to a pal to use on pay as you go or with a contract with a different SIM?

http://www.o2recycle.co.uk/

3G 16GB is worth £154, 3Gs is more.

Jeepers that's pretty good……I only need to pay £175 for a 4G and extend my contract.

Been debating whether to flog mine or get it unlocked and put a PAYG sim in and use it as a backup. Probably flog it, in reality.

Sell it to me for much cheapness

If it's on o2 they will unlock it for free if you follow the link on their web site.
Then you can either:
1) give it to a mate to use PAYG
2) sell it on fleebay or flog it to one of the many recycling sites

I took my 16gb 3G to CEX and got around £190 cash if my memory serves me!

MM – you could call it your "vintage" phone. Bargain basement label queen that's you.

mine went to phone bank yesterday, £158 for a 18 month old 16G 3G, that paid for my new iphone 4 and the months months rental, that leaves £4 change for the pocket, perfect,

fonebank.com

I'm still running my 'vintage' 2G!

See http://mobilevaluer.com/ for best prices.

You'll get more still if you flog it on eBay, they only downside there is having to deal with the great unwashed.

My current favorite.

Apologies for hijack, and for probably a numpty question.
How do you clear the memory of the personal info that's kept on a phone such as an Iphone? Mine has alot of stuff that I wouldn't want to pass on any more than if I sold a PC without scrapping the HDD.

Plug into iTunes then click summary and restore which takes the phone back to factory settings

Cheers ta.

Good question Pickers.

On a similar vein, anyone know how I go about loading up the new phone with my existing apps? Via iTunes too? Going to be a shag if they charge me twice for them, hope not.

Just plug it in and set it up on your computer, iTunes will take care of the rest. The apps are purchased by you and not the phone – you can use them on any iPhone/iPod touch that is registered to your account.

You won't get charged twice!

Give it to an Iphone 4 user because yours works properly?

iPhone is Settings / General / Reset. (Did this to OH's phone last week)

how I go about loading up the new phone with my existing apps

Via iTunes, but they're not synced by default – you've to go into Apps and manually tick all the ones you want transferring.

There's also a 'transfer paid apps' function, I played with this before I found the above so don't know if it's necessary or not.

Other top tip, you can rename the phone by double-clicking on it in iTunes. Lot easier to keep track if you don't have two devices called "iPhone".

When you get a new phone iTunes let's you restore it from an existing backup when you first plug it in. Do that and you will have all the apps, contacts, tunes, videos and even SMSes from the old phone.