American operators are crooks. They charge way too much, they provide inadequate service more often than not, and they’re just plain evil. But you know what? Without them, the smartphone revolution would’ve never happened. Why? Because people don’t want to spend $700 on a brand new phone. They’d rather sign a two year contract and get the best the market has to offer for $200.

Nokia, with the N95, tried to get people to buy unsubsidized phones, but they failed. Miserably.

Sony, either in an incredible act of arrogance or ignorance, I’m not sure which one, has decided to sell the ZL to Americans without a subsidy. You’re going to hear a lot of people complain about the price tag, $760 for the LTE version, $720 for the HSPA+ version, but that’s pretty much what every high end smartphone sells for these days.

The only people Sony are “attacking”, and that’s definitely not the right word, are third party importers like Expansys and Negri Electronics. Speaking about Negri, they have the ZL on their site for $655.