It will be cheaper to get a new contract, if you shop around. I have just got a Nokia 6030 free by taking a 12 month contract with 02 via mobilephone.com. I get 200 free cross-network minutes per month (more than I use) and 50 free texts per month (more than I use) and I get cashbacks from mobilephone.com (if I remember to demand them at the specified times) that over the first 12 months equal the total line rental over that period. Free phone, free line rental, free calls. Works for me.

You can ALWAYS port your old phone number by demanding a "PAC number" from your old service provider and telling your new one what it is.

Regrettable I find the Nokia 6030 as a phone pretty crap - the buttons are too small and there seems to be no volume control for the speech (although there is one for the ringtones). On the plus side, the phone is simple - it is specifically for people who just want to make 'phone calls (and send texts). Whatever will they think of next!

My daughter has just got a new 'phone free by batting her eyelashes at someone who loves gadgets and so had got an all-singing all-dancing new phone, and was about to bin the previous one, less than a year old and working perfectly. Even if the new phone is "locked" to a given network, it's dead easy to get a scally to unlock it for a tenner.

You can often get not-that-old mobile phones for nothing on Freecycle (www.freecycle.com). Batteries often start to get tired after a couple of years, but sometimes you can refresh them by "deep-cycling" - ie let the battery go COMPLETELY flat, and then charge for 12 hours - twice in succession, or 3 times if you can.