iPhone Home
After a year with an AT&T contract, I qualified to purchase a new iPhone 3G. So, I sold my 8 GB iPhone to a private party, and bought a 16 GB iPhone 3G from the Apple Store. There is an aftermarket for the original iPhones. People like to buy iPhones that no longer have network contracts attached to them. The purchaser wanted to take pictures with the camera on the iPhone, then email the pics to her friends via WiFi from a coffee shop. She did not need to activate it as a phone, she just wanted the camera, email, and WiFi features of the original iPhone.
I upgraded to the Apple 16 GB iPhone 3G for more memory, faster network connectivity, and better sound quality. I like the new features on the iPhone 3G, and that AT&T subsidized part of the cost, making the price even more affordable.
The trade-off is, my total monthly AT&Tphone bill went up, to over $100, due to a $30 monthly data charge for 3G network access (and now charges for each text message – AT&T only charged $20 a month to access the Edge network, which included 200 text messages).
The added feature of GPS used with Google Maps in the iPhone 3G is more accurate and helpful then the previous iPhone which triangulates your location from cell-site towers.
At home, I dock my iPhone 3G in a Sony RMTC1iP clock radio (iPod/alarm/AM/FM). The Sony charges the iPhone 3G, while playing songs to go to sleep with a music timer, and then wakes me to music from the iPhone 3G. The Sony clock radio is able to hold the iPhone 3G in the cradle, even while it is in a Griffin leather case. I also use the audio port in jack, to amplify my MacBook Pro audio output.