To iPhone Or Not To iPhone

So the latest Apple toy has hit town. Branding my initials, the iPhone 3GS has taunted and tempted me for quite a while now. I have friends who are true Appletons and constantly are whispering words of temptations into my unbelieving ears. "Of course, it's the best" "It's not a phone, it's a computer" "See how easy it is to use" "See how cool this app is" "Blah blah"

A few days ago Singtel, the only provider of the great i in Singapore, announced prices and I quickly calculated that it'll be a minimum spend of $1334 and a maximum spend of $4920 over 2 years, adding price plans and initial cost of acquisition. I posted that on Twitter and Facebook, and lo and behold, comments poured in. I was suprised at the urgent reaction. In the end, it became more about additional cost of getting the iPhone versus what one was using and paying for now (There are more mobile phones than people in SG).


I thought about this for a little while longer after screencapping and posting the graph - how do I assess value of a mobile plan. I thought of ratios and products. If a plan had 100 free mins, 500 free SMSes and 1GB of data, then the min-SMS-data product would be a good indicator of value, 50000 in this case.

If the plan cost $10 or 1000 cents a month for 24 months with the initial cost of the purchase set at $100 or 10000 cents, the total cost would be 34000 cents. The ratio of price to value (PTV) then would be 34000/50000 = 0.68 (I decided on cents because it'll kill off more zeros in the division). So the smaller the number, the more value for $ the plan would be.

With this logic, the new Iphone plans for the 8GB model would give the following ratios:
- iFlexi Lite - 5.3360
- iFlexi Value - 1.4820
- iFlexi Plus - 0.4560
- iFlexi Premium - 0.0729

Clearly the highest end plan for a huge $205 monthly outlay has the most value but who really, who needs 1500 free mins and 1500 free SMSes? The ratios for Plus and Premium are also lower because the 8GB iPhone comes free with those plans.

My current MIO plan has no free data roped in and I pay $48.15 monthly. But if I added on a 1GB/mth Broadband on Mobile (BBOM) data plan for $19.90 (same amount of data for iFlexi Value) and got the 8GB model at $198, the PTV ratio becomes 1.5408, close to the 1.4820 for the iFlexi plan.

If one could get the iPhone at iFlexi plan and add on the 1GB BBOM plan, the PTV ratio is 2.4443 - already better value than the orginal plan.

Well if the maths doesn't get you, I know some people who are getting it because it's pretty. And now has a compass for fengshui.

Time to commit? Perhaps. My N73 is showing signs of crossing over to the mobile phone junkyard in the sky.