The iphone may be highly priced but they hold their value very well.I bought a 6 month old 16gb 3GS for £350 (£400 new) and sold it 12 months later for £320.HTC seem to hold their value too but not as good as Apple.Iphone prices remain static while HTC phones drop in price after a few months.The HTC Desire was £400 when it came out its now down to £250 - £299 recently.So i would say its well worth buying an iphone as the resale value remains so high.

I don't think the iPhone is particularly high priced in comparison with other top end handsets, if bought on PAYG.

The thing I don't really get is why the huge differential in price between the iPhone and the iPod Touch. If you compare the 32Gb versions, you seem to be paying something like £400 more for the phone functions!

When you are talking about £450 phones, whether that be an iPhone 4 or some other phone (the Samsung Galaxy S II has been priced at £600+ at pre-release), you are talking about the latest technology with expensive components and companies wanting to recoup R&D costs, so it isn't really overpriced. Technology generally has a short optimal value life, which is why you get prices reduced after they've been out for 6 months or a year. If you wanted a top of the range games machine then you may be looking at £2000, yet if you went for a spec that's been out 18 months but able still to play latest games you could half or even quarter the price, so mobiles are not alone.

If you use your phone for talk/text with some web browsing then there's a wide selection of phones, that luckily for you, have depreciated to an extent that they are cheap-ish. Luckily those who want the latest tech are willing to pay for it and those pushing the boundaries are able to charge enough to keep pushing the limits. Dual core androids are coming out, and I'm sure iPhone 5 will blow people away. Next year we could be on about quad-core mobiles and get to a stage where the only difference between a mobile phone and a laptop is size.

Nope, you can get better phones for the same price that have things such as better batterly life, camera, sound quality etc. If you have an iPod/any form of media player there really is no point.

No I don't think the iPhone is worth £450, The thing I can't understand is the price never drops, it just stays at the same price from release right through to a new iPhone comes out then just disappears. Take the iPhone 3GS, when it came out it was free on £35 per month tariffs, almost 2 years later its the same price and when the iPhone 5 comes out it will just vanish with no price reduction.

If we look at the Desire or SGS, they came out a year ago free on £35 pm tariffs, now you can get them free on £20-£25 tariffs

if an item is £35pm at launch then gets reduced to £20-£25pm further down the line, then only one explanation is needed - the item is obviously over-priced at launch

That is a little too general. As items (cars/phones/straw donkeys) are made in greater quantities, additional economies can be found in their manufacturing processes, which ultimately bring the costs down.

However, in the world of electronics and phones, I agree with you (in part). Most items are priced at what companies think the consumer will pay and then they can be reduced over time, while still maintaining a specific profit margin, helped in part by my explanation above.

I have to say i dont think blackberries are worth the money. My iphone has broke and is out of warranty and so i went to buy a blackberry on payg and its just awful. The screens too small, the web browsing was awful, and the menus just look pre-historic.
Definately not for me. The iphone is much more user friendly and 10 x quicker.

Most people get them on contract anyway and never total up how much they are actually paying over their 2 year contract.

Like to know where the OP is getting an iPhone 4 for £450 that's a bargain they are £510 in the Apple store

Obviously it was once worth £450 to very many because of a visible choice of one.