Subtraction

Do the math. 8GB = $200 + $240 (2 years of $10/mo additional) additional data = $540.

So you saved what, $60 if you held out for this?...not a big deal.

Doing the math, $200 + $240 = $440, a $160 savings.

Still, it’s not too much considering in one case I had an iPhone for a year and in the other case, I spent a year fiddling with the terrible interface on my Verizon RAZR.

This article is just wrong. 8GB iPhones were going for $600 on eBay last month, $500 last week, and $400 still right now, mostly to Europe—I know because I sold a few.

Nice analysis, Khoi. FWIW, I bought on day 1 and am not at all upset with the investment made. What annoys me is that Apple didn’t make any upgrade to the size of the HD. I wish they would have realized that I would have paid a lot more than $300 to have 32GB or 64GB. I suspect they’re going to drop a 32GB in time for the holidays, since they already have the chip in the in the iPod Touch.

Yes, but how much was using an iPhone for a year worth? Surely quite a bit. Seems like an interesting but fundamentally flawed thought experiment.

The cost of your year’s experience with the iPhone interface, from your research, then, is $500. If you’d have bought a $2500 MacBookPro, you’d not be able to sell it for $2000 , and you’d not have gleaned nearly as much as you got from the iPhone. I traveled to two foreign countries with mine (Canada counts, right?), navigated from the rear seat of cabs and cars while others were using traditional GPS units, getting better data from the web, edited databases while standing at the gate in response to emails I would not have seen, and did a dozen other things that gave me a strategic edge. I could have sat still in the backwater with my Symbian phone, hoped for more from Palm, or bowed to Redmond. I think I made the right choice, and $500 was cheap for the experience.

Truly good charts - nice one. Were these created in a charting application or drawing software? I’m inspired and would like to know more… S.

I think there still might be opportunity to sell some of the second hand iPhones to countries that aren’t getting the iPhone. It might be hard to get the 3G with the new activation restrictions. I live in Shenzhen and have contacts in China selling iPhones. if you want to sell them follow the link to my site and get in contact with me.

Has anyone seen Sex And The City - the iPhone gets a great bit of anti-product placement in that. Carrie gets handed an iPhone and says she has no idea how to use it and goes for a regular cellphone instead. Ouch.

One of the forces driving the perceived value of existing (used or new) iPhones down is, of course, the well-known anticipation of the coming 3G iPhone.

While yes, you would have been able to get the new iPhone (in another month) and have $599, you also would not have had an iPhone for the entire year. There has to be value (and cachet) attached to that. (And the value and cachet attached to having the original iPhone is/was far more than it will be with the new one. The Early Adopter Tax sometimes does come with benefits.)

FYI, here’s Gizmodo on the true cost of the new iPhone.

Prepaid iPhones 2.0 will be 499 Euros in Italy. That’s not that much cheaper than the prepaid iPhone 1.0, which costs 625 Euros in France.

If you put in the higher rates for your contract in the US I think the result is similar.

Btw the best way to ‘save’ you from this: Just buy a new iPhone 2.0, now that it’s so incredibly cheap. It’s a bit too much to expect a price drop for the new version AND expect the price for the old version to stay high ...

I’m sorry but you guys are not counting the total cost correctly.

Original iPhone - $599 + ($60 x 24) = $2040.

3G iPhone = $199 + ($70 x 24) = 1880.

You are still saving and you get better service, better features, etc.

Just my 2 cents.

Don’t be surprised if your old iPhone has a sudden rise in value. There are vast areas of the US that don’t have any 3G service. There’s no 3G in my state, nor in any adjacent state. So for those of us without any access to 3G, an original iPhone is actually MORE valuable than the new one, since we don’t have to pay for the $30/month data plan, we can use the old $20/mo plan.

Great post.

I think for those of us so used to the Apple hardware cycle (which tends to have products that stay a little more current than their PC counterparts - ie a line is carried for quite a while in very similar incarnations), the mobile world is a daunting one. Typically devices will be superseded by others in the next quarter. The relentless constant release of updates and features and the ever-more-demanding consumer is couple with (until the iPhone and soon Android) devices that can’t easily have new features added to them.

In case anyone missed it, the epitome of this curse (though I look forward to the iPhone 3G’s release here in Canada) is the Japanese cell phone market. Wired took a semi-humorous look at it a week ago. You can find the article here: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2008/06/japan_phones

Incomprehensible complexity is not a feature in my book. But in Japan it is so SUPER FANTASTIC FUN TIME.

The cost of the new iphone G3- will actually be about $20 or $30 dollars more (over two years) when you add in the cost of the new contractual obligations with the higher data fees. The older contracts had lower fees. Apple is getting an upfront kickback from AT&T.

Well, a cell phone is not a great investment these days, or ever. When I get one, I count on it being worthless, or breaking, by the time I get a new one, but one year is not long enough. Two years is more like it. Have you ever had a phone worth anything when you upgraded to the next one?

So what is one to do?

While I really want the 3G speed, I could do without the GPS. Is it worth 3G to be forced into another $300 phone purchase and adding a year and at least $10 per month onto my ATT contract (even though I do not get a signal in both of the locations where I’m currently working)?

I have not purchased the IPhone just yet. I am currently reading the feedback everyone has so diligently posted on various websites. I must say this website gave the most in site. I do have questions in my mind. In the past I was a ATT customer, and I changed to Verizon. I had trouble with my services. I couldn’t get calls in or out. I could not make or receive calls inside stores. Is anyone having this trouble since having services with ATT’s IPhones? I am considering going to the store and purchasing the Iphone. After reading the feedback today I am discovering that I maybe in one of the areas that can’t receive the additional features everyone talked about.