What has to annoy me the most with mobiles, especially here in the UK, is the locking, and branding of mobiles on certain operators.

I absolutely loathe this.

Yes, mobiles are subsidised by the networks we buy them from, and hooray for that, but loading horrible, cheap, and ugly firmware onto a device I have just paid for is at the very least; highly annoying. And then plastering your network brand all over my shiny new device? No thank you!

I will use the example of my Sony W810i, it has Orange branding all over it (which I hate), and when I used to turn it on, and use the menu, It was all Orange branded. No I don’t use Orange, and I don’t want them infiltrating my phone. So I decided to get it debranded; now apart from the fact that none of the high street retailers knew of such a term, was irritating.

I ended up doing the procedure myself; which for about two hours nearly bricked my phone. I was panic stricken, and worried.

The point is one shouldn’t have to half scare themselves to death in order to use a mobile they paid for, in the way they like. And even if you don’t break your mobile yourself as my friend found out, Nokia’s which (can) come hard locked can cost around £25 to unlock.

My answer to this problem is now to ask the staff at mobile shops “What phones do you sell on PayG unlocked?” and from there, only the devices which are unlocked, unbranded and free for me to do whatever I wish, I will take into consideration. It’s a terrible truth, but I will not pay in excess of £200 or £300 for a network free phone, but nor will I pay £100/£110 for a mobile that is complete with horrible firmware.

So to you, another mobile consumer, if anything, if you had one thing to change, what would it be? Would it be something to do with the handsets, sales, operators, applications, or anything!