Originally Posted by ACU:
“I doubt you will be able to get an unbranded phone on a monthly contract.”
Of course you can! It's the norm when buying from many resellers who simply sell the same handset that they'd sell without a sim, but it's subsidised because it comes with a sim card and contract.
You can even save money with pay as you go this way. I bought my Desire a few months ago from Carphonewarehouse sim free. I was about to pay a lot of money for it when I asked how much it would be if I bought it with a pay as you go sim. The shop assistant sold me an Orange pay as you go sim with it with £10 credit on it and I saved a couple of hundred pounds of the sim free price - without buying a contract and I got the very same sim free, unbranded handset. I never used the pay as you go sim, I just chucked in my TMobile sim and that extra £10 saved me a couple of hundred pounds.
Funny thing is the CPW employee didn't tell me about this until I asked him!
YOU CAN GET UNBRANDED FROM NETWORKS, just buy from a reseller.
Originally Posted by ACU:
“The phone initially may not have branding, due to operators eagerness to get the phones out. However there will be OTA update once the network sorts it out.”
Rubbish. Operators cannot brand handsets that were initially sold unbranded with OTA updates, it would cause one hell of a stink if they even tried!
The software ID on the handsets is different. Example (with made up codes),
HTC Desire HD unbranded - HTC123UNB
HTC Desire HD Vodafone - HTC123VOD
So when your Desire HD goes online to check for updates it sends it's code to the update server. The server checks the code and only tells it when an update is available for that product code. This way branded handsets don't get unbranded updates and unbranded handsets don't get branded updates.
If you buy unbranded you will not get branded.