Consumers should think hard about whether the $49.99 iPhone 3GS is worth the purchase.
Now more than two years old, the iPhone 3GS is still a hot seller thanks to a steep discount offered by Apple and AT&T. It's a brilliant move by both companies: Apple gets to tap into a new base of price-conscious consumers, while AT&T gets to sign up even more customers to their pricier data plans.
But it may not be the smartest move for the consumer. The iPhone 3GS offers a slower processor than even mid-market smartphones in the market. Its older design means it can't take advantage of features such video calling on FaceTime, and it is unclear how well it will run the next version of iOS; older iPhones have been notorious for running into trouble when they upgrade.
Still, people want their iPhones, no matter what the form. AT&T said yesterday it activated 3.6 million iPhones in the quarter. While the company doesn't break out how each iPhone did, you can be sure the lower end version provided a healthy boost. Verizon Wireless, which only sells the iPhone 4, said today it sold 2.3 million such smartphones in the period.
And while the iPhone 3GS is a cheaper purchase upfront, you end up paying the same monthly bill through the life of the contract (AT&T offers data plans between $15 and $45 a month in addition to a minimum $39.99 voice plan). With most locked into a two-year contract, customers risk exiting their service plan with a four-year-old smartphone. Here are some other reasons why you're better off with another option:
The "S" stands for slow
When the iPhone 3GS first debuted, the "S" in the name stood for speed, both in terms of network connection and processing speed. It uses a chip that runs at roughly 600 megahertz, great for its day, but positively crawling compared to phones in the market now.
In comparison, the iPhone 4 runs at 1 gigahertz, while other phones such as the Motorola Atrix or HTC Evo 3D run a dual-core 1-gigahertz processor.
That's important for keeping the phone running smoothly if you run multiple applications at once, or run one particularly intensive program.
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