Getting a 'Deutsch Handy'

My current mobile phone, or handy in german, a samsung (something or other) has served me well for nearly two years now, so i aint getting rid of it and shall remain my Irisch handy when I am in Germany. The fun bit will be what operator? What phone? what what what? all with me having a bad grasp of the German language!

So what I can figure out, Germany has 4 mobile phone operators (thank you wikipedia!) T-Mobile owned by Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, E-Plus owned by KPN and 02. Now who to go with?!?!

Okay so eventually I found all the websites (the german ones and deciphered this much from them!)

E-Plus is one of the newer players in the market and has a very small selection of phones (5 to be exact!) So they are out, no matter what the pricing!

For some reason I cannot find the pricing on the O2 website so they are out!

So then there were two.

Well here in Ireland (or back if your reading this after January 4th!) I use Vodafone, so lets have a look here. I think Vodafone Germany's version of Ready to Go is called CallYa. I found this website very hard to follow and confusing but i think i figured out the pricing structure. Emphasis on 'figured' and 'think'!

T-Mobile just has a prepay service, with an easy to follow website to the Handy's and the tarriff structures. Even for someone with very lttle German like me!

So we have a winner! I shall be buying a T-Mobile Handy on the 5th of January 2008!

PS Im probably going to get the Samsung SGH-M300, I have a thing for samsungs!