I'm afraid you are wrong about GSM network support. Integrated chipsets commonly have support for 4/5 bands and EDGE+HSPDA on board no matter what features the

I'm afraid you are wrong about GSM network support. Integrated chipsets commonly have support for 4/5 bands and EDGE+HSPDA on board no matter what features the manufacturer turns on. In fact there are a couple of really cheap phones out there that have chipset support for WiFi and Bluetooth because it's cheaper than getting a custom chip set! Obviously the antennas (and drivers) supplied change which frequencies/networks you can actually use, but even the iPhone has support for multiple GSM bands - you can jail break it and drop pretty much any GSM sim in it. GSM vs CDMA is a different matter, although there are a few handsets with enough hardware to do it including some from RIM. Those do tend to be expensive but I imagine that has more to do with licenses than hardware costs these days. (By the way $400 phone with no contract is cheaper than $50 phone with a typical 2 year $50/month plan. To use the UK as a suitable example a reasonable plan would cost about $50/month with a phone or $25/month without. That's a saving of $600 to put towards the cost of the handset.)