My previous article Which is more expensive: a free Treo 680 or an iPhone? received a lot of attention. In light of today’s news, I think it’s time to revisit the question.
The iPhone is now $400 instead of $600.
The Treo 680, which was previously free will now give you $50 back if you buy a Treo 680. (Note: The phone will cost you $100 today. There are $150 in rebates.) It seems a bad sign when you’re literally paying people to use your device.
Rate plans for the Treo 680 start at $40/month for 450 minutes, which is the same number of minutes that you get with the base iPhone plan.
If you keep clicking through the Treo 680 link above, you’ll get to the point where it says: “The Unlimited Data Plan for $40 is required to qualify for the corresponding rebates.” That’s actually good because to compare apples to apples, we have to configure the Treo 680 with the same features as the iPhone, which has 450 minutes and unlimited data for $60/month.
(Note: I'm rounding off pennies because I think it's ridiculous to talk about something as $59.99. Pure marketing baloney.)
The good news is that Apple has apparently dropped the 4GB model, which means that we only have to do half of the comparions that we had to do before.
Both still require two-year contracts.
Treo 680: $80/month x 24 months = 1,920 - $50 (rebate) = $1,870
(Assuming you get your $150 in rebates.)
iPhone 8GB: $60/month x 24 months = 1,440 + $400 for the iPhone itself = $1,840
Winner: iPhone.
Oh, and you still have to go buy an 8GB card for your Treo 680. Cheapest price for an 8GB SDHC card on Amazon.com today is about $80 with shipping, so you're looking at $1,950.
That’s $110 in the iPhone’s favor.
$110.
Wow.
