I bought my iPhone only recently, I was a slow adopter and despite the rumors of the next-gen iPhone I didn't think the hardware changes would be significant enough. I was right, what it is now is enough for me.
Over the course of the two year contract, an iPhone 3G will cost you a full $360 more than a first-generation iPhone would. This means that with the same ATT service plans, the $199 8GB iPhone 3G will actually end up costing you $559, where an 8 GB iPhone 1.0 will cost you only $399, representing a savings of $160! The iPhone 3G isn't cheaper at all, it is in fact far more expensive.I feel the same. I am content with my current purchase and can do without the extra charges. Ironically I bought the iPhone for the hardware. I will pay good dollars for it, but I consider the cellphone and data service a commodity, which should be cheap considering the number of service providers. ATT obviously disagrees with me though and sees their service as a luxury that people will pay through the nose for. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market.
The counter point is that I may just be a grumpy old arsehole who thinks the commodity component of a service should be deflating, not inflating, and that digital movement of information, such as data and text messaging should be decreasing in price, not increasing. The cell providers in the US have been going the other way. There was recently an article which compared the cost per byte to recover the data from a hard drive in a crashed Space Shuttle, and it was cheaper than text messaging.
Whatever the market will bear. It is a shame that NASA doesn't offer text messaging services though.
