When it comes to American phone carriers, upgrades and contracts are a complete nightmare. For most people in the U.S., when you buy a phone you must wait 2 years before you can buy another. This is of course completely illogical because at the rate technology is currently progressing, your Android phone is out of date if you’ve had it longer than 2 months. At the same time, these carriers are completely eliminating unlimited contracts and moving to only tiered plans.

Vodafone on the other hand, is taking an entirely different approach. Instead of purchasing a phone at discounted pricing and being locked into that phone for two years, you can simply rent it. With Vodafone’s Red Hot service, you simply pay a little for the phone, and then a year later, you give it back and get a new one. With this system you get a new phone every year while still maintaining a generally cheap phone payment.

The only aspect of this plan that might not sit well with customers is that you actually pay monthly for the hardware. As an example, the Galaxy S3 is currently priced at £47 per month under this plan, with the fee including unlimited voice minutes and text messages and 2GB of data. Still, on the long run, getting such a deal might be more admirable than paying significantly more up front.

UK Android handset buyers, will you sign up for Vodafone's Red Hot plan?