Those wanting an iPhone in the Philippines have had only two options. The first option is to get one from a carrier, either on a postpaid or prepaid plan. The second option was to go to the grey market. Apple's iPhone is now being offered unlocked on retail shelves with a full 12-month warranty. However, the model being offered right now is the three year old Apple iPhone 3GS 8GB. The price for the new phone ranges from Php13,990 to Php14,990 depending on the retailer.
If you have been wanting a unlocked low cost iPhone, well now you have one. But unless you are dead set on an iPhone, this is not what we would recommend. While there is nothing particularly wrong with this phone, it is just that it is starting to show its age. The 3.5 inch (320 x 480) display has half as many pixels as you find on similarly priced phones. The picture quality 3.25 MP camera makes you realize why Instagram was so popular with iPhone owners. The 256 MB of RAM, 600 MHz ARM Cortex A-8 processor and HSPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity is no longer up to snuff. On the plus side, it does run the latest version of iOS. It currently runs iOS 5.1 well enough given the hardware. The iPhone 3GS will also be getting the next version of iOS, iOS 6 minus several features. So on the operating system front things do not look so bad.
If you want an iPhone, this is the cheapest one you are going to find with an official warranty. If you are open to other smartphones, the Sony Xperia U, Sony Xperia Neo L and HTC One V are much better choices for the same, or even less money.
This offer might be a good alternative for iPod Touch 4th gen buyers at the noted price point, sans the better screen resolution and Retina display of the latter. iPhone 3GS seem to offer a balanced feature set than that of iPod Touch.
ReplyDeleteI agree Robert. I was looking at it this way: If you would settle for iPhone 3GS primarily as a PMP and (occasionally) use its mobile phone functions, I believe it should give the buyer a better feature set than than of iPod Touch within the budget range.
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