Even if you don't have a Virgin Mobile store, you can see available phones in other stores. I pretty much narrowed it down to two or three and then irritated other stores by going in, touching the phones, and not buying them.

Oh yeah, good one.

ita,

I have spent a LOT of $$ on apps (and a small amount of $$ on in app purchases). I think I am probably on the medium side of iphone users.

I need to go to my Itunes receipts to determine, but let's just say I know I have purchased a $30 app to access my work computer and dammit that was worth it. I made that purchase years ago. The first year of iphone was expensive, but since I've held on to apps that I spent $$ for, it has become less expensive.

I spent $23 on apps last month (which isn't really typical), $14 in November, and $6 in October.

I paid $9.99 to upgrade to the Pro version of IM+. Other than that I can't think of anything on my phone that cost more than $3.

(Some of the games I have on my iPad cost more for the "HD" versions, but that wouldn't be a factor if I switched phones.)

I definitely consider myself a power user, and I've spent $0 in the past three months on apps. Maybe $15 in the past six? But probably less than ten.

Are the platforms that different, or are our consumer profiles the distinction?

perhaps I am a power user!

consumer profiles are a bit different, ios people are more likely to download apps and more likely to spend $$ on apps. I have an app that alerts me to when apps go on sale, so that helps quite a bit.

I've probably spent less than $20 on apps? Most are free, a few I've got the free version, and only a few have I spent $1 (a couple of games, maybe?). And even fewer, I've spent $2-3.

I use the apps I use a lot, but I don't use that many, I don't think?

I feel like I've spent $$$ on apps, but I suspect that mostly that's things like magazine subscriptions, since I've decided I would much rather read periodicals electronically than on paper and also shell out for back issues because I am a sick completist. That adds up. And all shows up as iTunes on my CC statement.

I think I've bought one or two pretty pricey apps because they were particularly useful to me, but I don't remember what they were, now. It's possible that my "eh, for $0.99 I'll give it a try" attitude has added up to a lot, but not so I've noticed.

You can get an 8G iPhone 4 for free at Verizon right now with a 2 yr contract. Your monthly bill with 2G data would be between $70-$80, and unless you're going to stream music or movies that should be plenty.

ios people are more likely to download apps and more likely to spend $$ on apps

Oh, I have seven million apps. I don't think there's a single use case I don't have two apps to do it, and often as many as five. But I'm clearly not buying all of those, because that would shift me into crazy CRAZY land. As opposed to the slightly insane place I now inhabit.

I found WebOS frustrating because they wanted me to pay for so much--I was used to the Android experience of getting so much for free that I turned around and found that I'd invested so much time, that investing money wasn't as big a deal. But WebOS, for myriad reasons including business, pretty much asks you to commit with your wallet open, and I can't even find a try-right-after-you-buy option like Google Play (which is still the dumbest name ever--I can lend them a dictionary if that would help. Or maybe it's their thesaurus that's broken.)

So, on HP, I have paid money for two clock/alarm apps so far, and I don't like either of them enough to just use one--I'm still using a different alarm app from the one that shows me the time.

That's just not how I get into a platform. I want to find out I love something so much I'm throwing money at the people who made it, not exchanging money for the opportunity to see if I can fall in love.

It's a net-related adoption model, but I do kinda exercise it on my desktops as well, for a certain level of use cases.

I have iPad and iPhone. On my second of each. I have a TON of apps. Vast majority are free, or the $0.99 sale right before Christmas and Graduation season (to beef up "popularity" in the App Store for the folks who get the iOS device as a gift). Although, one time during those sales, I did drop like $20 on 20 games. But hey, free updates! There are plenty of games that are free, and try to get you to do an in-app purchase. I play them as long as it's viable, then toss them like yesterdays paper. I have paid some big bank for work related apps. But that's for work, so, doesn't really count, right? The apps I use the most are free. Mail. Calendar. Safari. Solitaire. Pandora. Netflix. The Weather Channel. You can do a lot with the free apps.