Today, a decade and a half later, I’ve taken delivery of a Samsung Galaxy S II. If ever you wanted an illustration of the phenomenal pace at which technology advances, here it is. In what seems like an alarmingly short time, we’ve progressed from that rudimentary brick to a slim, slate-style affair with a vibrant full-colour touchscreen, a feature list as long as your arm, 16GB of internal storage and, well, slightly better battery life.

Consider that voice calls are now just a small part of a smartphone’s job and you could question whether the two phones are even really the same sort of device.

The change that’s really struck me, though, is the pricing. Back in 1996 I paid £30 for my old mr20, then signed up to Orange’s popular “Talk 15” plan. At £17.50 a month, this gave me a generous 15 minutes of voice calls a month, after which calls cost 10p a minute to Orange phones and, presumably, more to other sorts of phone. Hey, it was a long time ago.

As I mentioned, I couldn’t send SMS messages from my phone, and as for data services, forget it. This was 1996: most of us didn’t have the internet on our landlines, let alone our mobiles.

Now compare my new O2 contract, which starts today. Once more I’ve paid £30 up-front for the phone, and from here on I’ll be paying £21.50 a month. Accounting for inflation, that makes my new contract about 20% cheaper than my old Talk 15 tariff. Yet for that money I get vastly more than before: 200 minutes of talk time, unlimited text messages and 500MB of internet usage.

To be fair, the contract’s longer (two years, rather than one), but still, this represents an incredible increase in value. It’s easy to grumble about mobile phone providers, and often they deserve it: I’m sure we’ve all had frustrating experiences where providers switch around contracts in unwelcome ways, demand exorbitant fees for bog-standard services, screw up your credit rating or point-blank refuse to help with technical problems.

But when I reflect that, compared to my undergraduate self, I’m getting around 15 times as many minutes for my money – plus text messages – plus internet access – plus a phone that is itself, quite simply, gorgeous – it’s hard to feel too hard done by.

And I have to admit, I get a little excited trying to imagine what sort of phone I could possibly have in 15 years to make the S II look as ridiculously antiquated as the mr20 does now.

What terrible tariffs have you been on in the past? What chunky phones are you now ashamed to admit you once proudly carried around in an unseemly bulging pocket? While my positive mood lasts I’m declaring an amnesty, so share your worst!

The price plans that have been released — from O2, Orange and Vodafone — are rather convoluted, with mind-melting, eye-bleeding charts. O2’s announcement even lead to an email exchange between a bewildered Barry Collins and a losing-the-will-to-live myself, as we tried to understand whether they were or weren’t selling the iPhone at the same upfront cost regardless of contract length (they are, but it depends on how you look at it. We think. Maybe.)

Here’s our stripped-down chart to help you get started — click on it to view it in a larger size, but it’s also available here, which is probably easier to look at than the one embedded below.

Keep in mind some contracts include more features than others, with European roaming and more included in some.

How much will it cost?

So which is the cheapest contract? Again, that depends on how you look at it. The cheapest overall total cost of ownership for the 16GB version is on a £30/month, 18-month contract with O2. But while that rings in at just £749, you can get the same phone for £759 at Vodafone, doubling your mobile downloads for £10 spread over 18 months — giving you an extra 500MB per month for £0.55. O2 would charge an extra £5 per 500MB per month.

Alternatively, you could upgrade from the 16GB to the 32GB over a two-year-contract for just £44, doubling your storage for under £2 a month.

The most intriguing thing to note is how frequently the offers between rival operators work out nearly the same — identically, in a few cases. Both O2 and Vodafone offer the 16GB version for free on their top end monthly charges. The upfront cost, monthly cost, and data downloads are exactly the same, with a total cost of £1170.

It’s also worth nothing that committing for two long years might not save you anything over signing up for a shorter 18-month contract, especially on O2.

If Orange is your preferred operator, buyer beware. While the three operators are quite similar on mid-range contracts, Orange’s total cost wanders higher than its rivals on the low and high end of the scale.

With the total cost of its cheapest iPhone costing £100 more than an arguably comparable package from Vodafone, Orange also has the most expensive way to get an iPhone on our chart, with the 32GB version on a two-year, £75 contract coming in at a whopping £1,829 — but that also includes tethering, Wi-Fi, 100 European minutes and 20MB of roaming data, which would add up pretty quickly on one of the other networks.

The iPhone 4 can also be bought SIM-free straight from Apple, with only Orange currently offering prices for its pay-as-you-go plans. These include 250MB of internet access for a year. That could be the cheapest way to get the iPhone 4, but not if you intend to use it for anything other than as an object d’art to gaze admiringly at.

Click here for the updated version of the chart.

Not content with merely letting you listen to the latest hit singles from around the world (and several hundred stations intent on playing nothing but Wham! till the world ends), this new entry from Orange brings something new, and somewhat inevitable, to the table.

You see, Orange has an online iTunes-style music store which sells tracks for 99p. In case you weren’t aware, it also has a little mobile phone network across the UK. Now it has an Internet radio too, some bright spark put 1 and 1 and 1 together and came up with £££. Linking the three, when you hear a track you like you just press a magic “Favourite” button on the radio, and the next time you switch on your PC you’ll find the track there ready to download from the Orange store, or even send to your (Orange, obviously) phone.

It’s such a simple, money-spinning idea I was amazed I’d not seen something like it sooner, but apparently it’s all down to metatagging: the info that identifies the artist, track and the rest is only currently broadcast by some radio stations. Orange reckon most major UK and US stations should be compatible, but as the number grows expect to see this service become the norm – and I (for once) am not complaining.

Look out for a full PC Pro review soon.