Yup, the policies offeed by phone companies are a complete rip off.
Even if they deign to pay out, you need to spend about as much as the phone is worth on administration fees. I put the money in my ISA instead and just buy a new phone when I need one.
I'm with Barclays. I dunno what they are currently offering but it can't be too different. I opened this thing quite a while back. Well worth a look though.
Another option could be adding it to any contents insurance you might have already. This can be fairly reasonable depending on how much the handset's worth of course.