My Poor iPhone
Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I fumbled my iPhone good today.
Erin and I were waiting for the bus to go kayaking. I had just put on sunscreen, so my hands were all slippery when I went to text Aubri, and it just spilled out and landed face-down on the sidewalk. We both kind of looked at it for a second, not daring to pick it up and see the damage.
My first thought was, “Well, I guess I’m upgrading after all.” I had no intentions of getting the 3G version any time soon - what little money I have is much needed elsewhere. But then I realized that thousands of OTHER people are upgrading - and selling of their old ones in the process. I could just get a used one and drop in my SIM card.
Unfortunately, used first-gen iPhones are running about $250 on Craigslist here, and my search for “iPhone” returned a lot more want ads than sale ads, so it’s safe to say that demand is high enough to keep prices higher than I want to pay. Or I could pay $200 to get a brand-new 3G, at an extra $10/month for the data plan - an extra $70 over the course of the next year.
Either way, it sucks. I really don’t want to spend money on a phone right now. I suppose I could just get a super-cheap regular phone, but after having an iPhone for 10 months, could I ever go back? On the other hand, I’ll bet I would be able to receive MMS.
The screen is hard to read, but it still works, so I think I’m going to give it a week. I’m just hoping that prices on used phones will fall a bit, which might be a little too optimistic, but we’ll see what happens.
Tags: iphone
July 14th, 2008 at 1:21 am
That really sucks, hope kayaking was fun though! I’d imagine that prices will come down over the next week or two. It seems reasonable to think that there will be a lot of used iPhones on eBay.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
[...] Phone Fumble ‘08 is turning into a real kick in the crotch. More glass has fallen out of the screen, but it still works OK. I had hoped that prices of used iPhones would drop on Craigslist, but if anything, they’ve gone up - the cheapest ones have gone from $200ish to about $350, and there are still a ton of want ads on there. That may be the worst part - I could have turned a profit on the damn thing if I could have kept it off the sidewalk. [...]
July 18th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
You know, I bet you could still probably sell your first-gen on craigslist or ebay. People are paying exorbitant amounts for them, since they can still be jail-broke and used on Tmobile network. I’m sure ebay has broken iPhones that someone would salvage and pull the screen out of. So I bet you could pull 150-200 for your iPhone.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Ya know, that’s not a bad idea. Worth a shot, anyway!