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My new mobile phone cost HOW MUCH?

I've been living with and hating my cheap LG phone for several years now - but it had been working just well enough to stop me from tossing it in the bin.

I almost biffed it when it demonstrated that it suffered from a Y2.013K bug and randomly reset the date to some impossible number on the first of last year -- then refused to allow me to reset it.

I almost biffed it when it began dropping calls and going into "stealth mode" (ie: it was missing calls and SMS messages seemingly at random).

And finally, yesterday, when the 7/PQRS key stopped working altogether, I figured it was now definitely time to consign this piece of shirt to the recycling pile.

So off to The Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain and a money back guarantee with proof of purchase - unless it's a DVD, CD or phone) I went with plastic in hand.

After looking at the various options which went from another uber-budget $29 LG phone, right up to an expensive Samsung Galaxy that was way beyond my price-range, I noticed something that really got my sporran in a spin.

It was a Samsung Keystone2 GT-E1205T phone which looked as if it would meet all my stringent demands for such a device.

It is small, black, has a nice colour LCD display, a *real* tactile keyboard, will fit into the little belt-pouch I use, and has a 720-hour standby time (nya na na na nya na to you smartphone users who need to recharge every night!).

The clincher was of course... the price.

How much would you expect to pay for this little beauty?

Well I remember back to my first mobile -- one of those beige Motorola bricks that were all the rage in the 1980s. Powered by a hefty nicad battery it, like today's smart phones, also needed a daily recharge and wouldn't fit in a shirt pocket. The Motorola however, cost a hefty 800 (1980 dollars) or so and my wallet really felt the pain when I splashed out on that.

So the price of the little Samsung was quite refreshing.

No annual contract, no long-term commitment, I could use my existing prepay SIM card (which costs me about $20 every 3 months to keep working).

How much did I pay for this beauty?

Well just nine dollars.

I kid you not!

Last week (finished yesterday) the Warehouse had a special on these phones and they were just $9 each -- complete with a brand new 2 Degrees SIM card!

How the hell can they do that?

Perhaps 2 Degrees saw this as a loss-leader to get more folk onto their network -- but that was an epic-fail in my case because I just threw my Vodafone SIM in and away I went. The phone isn't even locked to the 2Degrees network!

So now I'm happy again, having spent most of the kids' inheritance on this new phone but once again being able to ring numbers that have a 7 in them and no longer having to carefully construct my SMS messages so they do not contain the letters P, Q, R, or S.

To be honest, I think everyone should have bought one of these $9 phones just as an emergency device. Charge the battery and throw it in the glove-box of the car (with or without SIM). If you ever needed to make a 111 call and your own phone was dead -- the $9 phone would be a great backup and for that price, why not?

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