I found my old receipt for my iPhone and was astonished by the price.
I've become so used to looking at Android phones - which are generally released as new in the £500-£600 range - and then after 2-3 months, can usually be bought brand new for around £350 on Amazon.
A plastic 8GB iPhone will cost £429, and a normal 16MB iPhone will cost £549 - all year around. a 64GB iPhone 5 will cost £709!! When the new larger screen iPhones are released, expect that to cost more, too.
And yet Android phones typically come with 16-32GB of memory, plus can now be expanded with a 64-124GB mini SD card.
The exaggerated price difference for the Apple iPhone is hard to justify - especially when you have to pay for most Apple iOS apps - but don't for Android apps.
Let's repeat that - a high end Android phone will have all the specs of an iPhone at half the price, and the apps will usually be free - an iPhone will generally be nearly twice the price, and you then have to buy all the apps after.
If Apple had created the perfect experience with the iPhone then at least they might be able to claim some justification for the extra price - and for the main part, I agree they've gone that extra way.
But then, there are so many small but significant niggles.
Updating software with Android is smooth - I've never had any problems with it. But I have lost all my data updating iOS before now, plus losing iTunes purchases.
Additionally - iTunes. I have always had a problem with album artwork not showing. iTunes sometimes just loses some of the images for no reason. Additionally, the iPhone frequently forgets what image should be displayed with an album track, so resorts to simply displaying a text header. These problems don not occur with Android devices I use - so at double the price, Apple delivers a less pleasing user experience with music. (Though, to be fair, most providers have no equivalent to iTunes for PC, except Samsung, and their Samsung Kies is a PC killer).
Meanwhile, I noticed the Sony Xperia T2 on the international site recently:
Xperia T2 Ultra | Android Smartphone - Sony Smartphones (Global UK English)
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's coming out in the UK, though we may get an equivalent later on, as it looks like an upgraded version of the Xperia Ultra. That looks like a potentially ideal machine for me - a good-sized phablet for writing notes on, plus a strong camera, phone, and all the usual features of a high-end phone. Can be upgraded to 128GB, too.
Not that I think I'm in the market to buy at the moment, but I just can't see myself upgrading to another iPhone model. It doesn't deliver anything special above the competition, but it does charge twice the price for doing so.