Hang on to that 1st gen iPhone!
If you take a look at ebay or craigslist right now, you’ll see that people are selling off their ‘old’ iPhones left and right. The prices are dropping through the floor as the ‘new’ iPhone 3G gets closer to release.
But I say hold on a minute.
Many sites are reporting that you will no longer be able to walk into an Apple or AT&T store (in the US) and leave with an unactivated iPhone. They are changing their previously open policy of letting you activate it at home. Unfortunately for them, a lot of people were unlocking and using them in other countries as Steve Jobs implied during the keynote on Monday.
What this means is that currently, aside from craigslist or ebay (and similar places) selling the 1st gen iPhone, there won’t be any place to get an unlocked iPhone without some kind of contract (string) attached. Even after the 2.0 firmware has been unlocked, most, if not all, 3G iPhones out there will be part of a contract. The 1st gen iPhones will also be getting the new firmware (and many features aside from 3G and GPS support, of course) so that will inevitably be unlocked as well.
To me, it seems likely that the value of an unlocked iPhone will start rising very soon. Even with 1.x version firmware, these iPhones will be a hot commodity to people that don’t want to lock into a long contract, users that live in countries that have multiple GSM providers or those that do not yet have the iPhone.
Even if I get the 3G iPhone (and who am I kidding, of course I’ll get some of that 16 gig sweetness), I’m going to hold onto my version 1.0 phone as well. For one thing, if I’m traveling I want the option of having a pocket wifi terminal and something that’ll work in any country in the world with that country’s own SIM card. Plus it’s a decent phone regardless, even without GPS and 3G.
I like how you wrote and express through your article post… Well, keep it on my friend ;)
Funny that I came across this, I still have my 1st gen, wrapped and sealed in it’s original packaging in my office closet. I won it at a company conference raffle in Las Vegas the very year it came out! Just didn’t know what to do with it.