See Also: • 6 shopping questions • Smallest Phones Around • 5 steps to buying a phone

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You can't buy a cell phone like you'd buy a ghetto blaster: with a ghetto blaster, you can always hop from station to station in a wink, but with a cell phone, in most cases, you may stay stuck with the network company that sold it to you! In a way, you are almost getting married with the company that you choose.

To make sure, let's compare marriage and buying a cell phone:

1- commitment
Marriage: you commit for life
Cell phone: you commit for one year or two (unless you buy a phone with no service, usually at a higher price).

2- for better and for worse
Marriage: you usually discover the worse after getting married
Cell phone: same... many people enthusiastically buy a phone then discover that they can't use it in rural areas, can't input a programmable ringtone, and so on. To prevent that, read my "5 catches to avoid when buying a cell phone":
http://cellphones.about.com/library/bl_catches_to_avoid.htm

3- termination
Marriage: divorcing may cost you a fortune
Cell phone: canceling your subscription before the end of the term incurs a fee that can reach more than a hundred dollars.

4- selecting a new partner
Marriage: you can always marry another person, but you will have to pay again for a new marriage.
Cell phone: same, you can always change your cellular service provider but, in most cases, you will have to pay again for activation and buy a new phone because the one that was sold to you is "locked" for exclusive use on its original network.

5- "going going going... gone!"
Marriage: according to the judge, the furniture will go to your former spouse.
Cell Phone: according to some fuzzy logic, phone manufacturers are making sure that almost nothing is standard (even among phones from the same company) so all the accessories that you bought for your pervious phone (extra batteries, car charger, data cable, flashing antennas) will quite likely be lost.

6- friends
Marriage: You will have to contact all your friends to refute all the gossip spread about you by your former in-laws.
Cell Phone: You will have to contact all your friends to inform them of your new cell phone number, since, in most cases, companies cannot activate a phone with a phone number first issued by another company.

So, which is the worst, marriage or cell phone? In fact, both can be a great experience, as long as you are careful about selecting the right partner from the beginning. That's why it's so fundamental to choose your cell phone carefully. To make sure you miss nothing with your next cell phone, visit my shopping advice sections, complete with buyer's guides, shopping advice and cell phone reviews at About.com's cell phones site:
http://cellphones.about.com/cs/buyersguides/index.htm

• know someone who is buying a phone soon?
• or someone who has been married in the past?
• or worse, someone who is about to get married?