iPhone - Change of Mind

Loyal Etchy blog readers will remember that I wrote a blog a few weeks ago HARSHLY asserting that I decided would NOT be getting an iPhone 3G because I felt like Three HK's deal, including their plans, 'pre-payment' and its 24 month contract were not a good deal... especially for commitment-phobes like myself. :-P

Well my arguments failed to deter Olivier, and he in turn enlightened me to the fact that the deals were not quite as bad as I had been led to believe (note: Olivier is not nearly as commitment-phobic as I am!)   Specifically Olivier explained the details of how Three HK's 'prepayment' and rebate work... something not explained properly in their original online advertising or by their staff in the store I visited.

What they had told me at the store (and is implied in on the website) was that they charge you $4780 up front for the phone and give you a refund of a portion of it at the end of your contract (assuming you make it to the end).  

In actually, they refund you 1/23 of the refund amount every month from your monthly bill from the 2nd month on,  which means if, for example, you have to cancel two months before the end. you're not actually losing the whole 'deposit' you put down... just 2/23rds of it...  It also means that your monthly bill is smaller than the 'plan' you're signing up for (since you're getting some amount discounted from the bill.

OK... actually these are only minor financial details, not make or break, right?

何週前僕はｉｐｈｏｎｅのブログを書いた。その時は「ｉｐｈｏｎｅが高過ぎ！買いたくない」を書いた。でももと勉強後オリビエーと話し後気が変わった。もう外の買いたいの携帯電話の値段が高くなった。

Well the other bit of info that affected my calculations was my alternative...

I had planned instead of an iPhone 3G to get a Sony Ericsson P1i,  the much less buggy successor to my current 'smartphone' the SE P990i.  In Mongkok now some of the shops are advertising it for as low as HK$2080....

So I thought 'ok, I can stick to my prepaid plan or go for a low-cost monthly plan and use this phone for a year or two and save a lot over the total cost of an iPhone 3G...

then i went to actually try and buy one... and I found out the real cost would be a bithigher...  in reality to get a P1i with either English and/or Chinese, currently the best price is about $2380... and that's only with a 1GB memory card... and since the P1i uses the newer m2 card, my P990i's MS Duo Pro 2gig card is useless.  So if I want to approach the 8GB iPhone's capacity i'm looking at something closer to HK$3000 or more.  Doh!

Then i thought about it a bit more...  I am currently using two phones, one that writes in English and Japanese and a 2nd one that writes in English and Chinese...   just in the last two weeks I had to message/mail people in both Chinese and in Japanese and it was a huge pain to deal with two phones that couldn't do both.  This is at least one area where the iPhone 3G's feature set is superior.    and since I use mixi and other Japanese websites from my phone too,  the ability to type in japanese is something i actually will use.  

...ok,  the scales were tipping in my mind at this point.

Then there's the apps...  i'm not going to buy the iPhone 3G just so i can play with the lightsaber thing...  but in reality the fact that this is a GPS / accelerometer equipped open developers platform does excite me a bit...  the nerd in me can definitely think of some cool applications or games to write...  

外の高すぎし、日本語と中国語両方できるし、accelerometerとGPSがあるし。。。それから買った！

OK, i changed my mind...

After I picked it up in CWB on Wednesday I went to Wanchai and found a nice blue/black vinyl case... 

What do you think?   Not bad, right? They sell a variety of colors. 

ケースが如何？綺麗けど、まだ 浜崎のコンサートからジュエルスティカーが有る、使いましょうか？

ButI'm tempted to forgo the case and instead go for bling bling...   I still have this thing from the Hamasaki concert in Tokyo... 

what do you think?  too gay? ;-)　　　如何？しましょうか？ゲイ過ぎみたい？

Through the powers of Photoshop,  I can preview:

I think DecoDen master zuzu would approve, right?

Let's see what Steve Jobs thinks:

Ok,  lame joke I know... I couldn't resist...  :-P

ごめん！悪冗談ですね！

UPDATE:  I wrote that a few days ago.  I've used the phone for a few days and I have mixed feelings about it... you'll have to wait til tomorrow to get the report on that though...

明日は総説をする。。。