So I’m thinking of upgrading my iphone 3g to the new 3g s. Some of you may be thinking “what’s the point? The new phone isn’t that much better and the current 3g is fine”.

True. All so true.

But, let’s look at it from another perspective. How much would a first generation iphone fetch these days? $200 bucks? Max?

How much would a 3g fetch? Well a used unlocked iphone 3g fetches around $600 on ebay.

Optus is offering to discount 40% off the upgrade fee if I decide to upgrade. After several phone calls to Optus nobody seems to know how much I’m meant to be charged to upgrade. Currently I’m on the $49 cap. I have 12 months left. So I only have to pay 49 * 12 = $588. Given the 40% discount that ends up being $352.80. Now I also have to pay another 12 months worth of handset payments which equate to $144 for a total of $496.80 in order to upgrade.

If I can sell my phone for $600, it’s the equivalent of being paid $100 to trade my iphone 3g for the iphone 3g s!

It’ll be even better if they charge me based on my original $39 plan in which then it’ll only cost $424.80 to upgrade. It’s starting to sound better and better :P

So there you go, from a purely economical standpoint, I should upgrade my phone. I just need to visit an optus store and see how much I can cut down the upgrade costs to :P