iPhone 3GS 16GB with Vodacom

By Jay, on January 18th, 2010

I have waited a very long time for my iPhone, a total of 16 months to be precise.

I sadly, signed a contract with my old Cell Service Provider just before the iPhone 3G phone came out, and was quite sad that I hadn’t done the research before hand to see its arrival date. However, since I had a 24 month contract with my Cell provider, and the fact that the cancellation penalties were so high, I grinned and bared it and kept my old phone.

The good news, December 23rd my contract was due for expiration, and I had already placed a port request (to move from MTN to Vodacom, since only Vodacom has the rights to sell the iPhone in South Africa) to take place on the 23rd of December so I could finally get the iPhone, and by now of course the even newer version (iPhone 3GS) had been released which was in my favour of course ?

Now I had had many discussions with friends about the iPhone and the hefty price tag attached to the phone, even on a really high monthly package. In South Africa (at time of print of this) the iPhone 3GS 16GB will set you back between R2,000 – R5,000 ON A CONTRACT! There is currently no option to buy it on Pay as you Go, and there is no way to get one for free, regardless of the package that you subscribe to with Vodacom. Vodacom also have a sneaky way of getting you to buy the higher end package. I was previously on a 300 (free minute with per second billing option) which was more than enough for me in most cases. Vodacom however, have a 240 minute package (per MINUTE billing) or you can go for the 500 package which does have per second billing. This pretty much forces you to go for the higher package, and of course a higher monthly cost then I was paying for before.

It was the above reasons why so many of my friends had made the statement, “It’s not worth the money, after all, it’s just a phone”

Well, I took the plunge and decided I would go for it even with the extra cost, and after having the phone for almost a month now, I can confirm, this is NOT “just a phone”. With over 120,000 applications available for the iPhone (A lot of free, but even the paid apps are cheap, mostly been under R8 (£0.59) ($0.99)) it can do pretty much ANYTHING you want it to do.

In conclusion, I don’t think I will ever go for another phone, and certainly recommend the iPhone to anyone in the market for a new phone, and yes, it was worth the wait

Just a warning though, if you do get this phone, expect to spend a few hours a day addicted to it, and constantly looking for new apps and features for it!

City: Johannesburg

Country: South Africa