Anybody who follows me on Twitter (or Facebook) will know that I’ve been counting down since yesterday. Today is 3 days to go.

To what?

Yes, it’s finally come around. My contract with Carphone Warehouse and O2 has been cancelled and expires in a couple of weeks – time to get a new one. And the HTC Hero it will be. Or, rather, the G2 Touch, which is T-Mobiles name for it.

T-Mobile it is simply because of the cost. Where everybody else is insisting on £35 a month for a reasonable number of minutes and text (and unlimited data) for 24 months, T-Mobile is offering it at £27.50 for 18 months. In all cases, the phone is free. With a £35 Quidco cashback, that equates to £460 over the contract period. This compares to £680 at Vodafone or Orange and £760 with 3.

On top of this, I also need to consider selling my Nokia. When doing something like this I’d recommend using the MobileValuer site which can compare the various companies that pay cashback for them. At the moment my N95 is worth £122.51. Again, factor in cashback from Quidco and the final tally is £122.51. Take that off my contract and my bill over the next 18 months is £337.49. Not bad.

Now I’m trawling through the huge number of sites that recommend Android apps to see what I’d like to install – I plan to make a lot more use of this phone than my N95, which I didn’t really get on with. It’s very confusing though, with many people recommending different apps – trying them together I suspect is going to be the best way.

Naturally, expect to see my own lists sometime soon. If you have any of your own that you’d like to recommend, then please let me know.