Even the original iPhone is going for over £150 on ebay, crazy. I suspect it was part of the idea to keep the new models looking very similar, so that the 2nd hand values don't collapse.

I am with you on the 2nd hand thing, but don't forget that the PAYG one is the 8 GB, the only way to get a 16 GB 3G is second hand.

Because there is no unlocked iPhone officially available in the US.

That second hand phone is still sim locked, you'd still have to crack it. I'd rather crack a new phone and hopefully have a better chance of it not failing than buy one second hand (pre-cracked or not) and have it fail the day after and still have no recourse.

For something that's used as much as a phone is, and for something as non user repairable, for me it would be a huge gamble. My old Nokia N95 still works but if it went on ebay I doubt I'd bid more than a tenner on it.

I suppose if people are idiotic enough to want to spend sums of money like that on phones with absolutely no warranties on them then so be it.

Yes, just as anywhere else -- such as when buying a TV in Comet -- how much it's worth to you to get a warranty, depends on what you reckon the likelihood and expense of a failure within the warranty period is. Do phones actually ever fail -- have I just been lucky? The first phone I had, a Nokia 8890, had an internal plastic piece fail after about five years, which was easily fixed with superglue and lasted a further three years. (Plus some of the buttons and catches had worn down a bit, and I eventually replaced some exterior panels with ones from a free cast-off phone from a friend.) No imaginable warranty would have helped with any of that.

Frankly, I'll be surprised and disappointed if I don't get the same 8-year lifetime from my second phone, a Mark 1 Iphone, especially as it has far fewer moving parts.

Peter

On rereading that, I don't mean it then broke again. I mean it declared on an innings of eight years, not out. If the Iphone hadn't come along, I'd be using it still.

Peter

You've been relatively lucky, while most of my Nokia's have been reliable, the same cannot be said for my other phones. I had 6 Motorola StarTac's before Orange gave up and supplied me with another model. I had 3 or 4 T68i's which had various crashing and hanging up problems. I'm currently on my 3rd work phone (HTC Kaiser) because one overheated, and the other could no longer read SD cards that were inserted. Even my brand new HTC Touch HD was replaced after two days because of a faulty speaker. I also know of two people who bought iPhones brand new and had them replaced within weeks because of issues. Last time I checked, you couldn't fix a non-functional accelerometer with superglue.

If I'd bought any one of those phones off ebay I'd have been screwed. I have phone insurance but I get that for free because I've been with Orange for nearly 13 years now. But given my experience with various phones, I'd still happily pay for it if I didn't get it free.

I used my N95 for nearly 2.5 years before I swapped it, it still works now, but as you can see there were plenty of phones that didn't last nearly as long.....

I should point out that bought my current TV from John Lewis because it had a 5 Year warranty even though the TV it replaced is still going strong at a cow orker's house. Maybe I'm just paranoid. But I've been bitten in the ass by technology failing just outside the warranty period too many times to think it's an acceptable risk anymore. I fully expect this TV to expire in one way or another before the extended warranty period is up.

But if I buy a new one from Apple/AT&T, in addition to the cost of the phone, I'm also on the hook for something like three years of monthly service at something like $80 a month. And it's not as if Apple's going to be receptive to fixing it under warranty once you've hacked it, which is what they consider unlocking it to be.

Of course, if you can get it on a PAYG plan in the UK, that would make more sense. However, Apple refuses to service iPhones in the US that were purchased in other countries, so that's not a solution for people in the US. Of course, if you're hacking it anyway....

In the US, one might buy the used phone because their contract term isn't up. I'm selling my Blackberry Curve for $150 on Craig's List when you can technically buy one new for $99, but that requires a two year contract.

If you're not out or nearing the end of your contract with AT&T, they will happily sell you a 32GB iPhone 3GS for $499...and re-extend your contract.

24 months, and $70 a month, or less with a corporate discount plan.

Unlocking the 3G phones isn't quite as popular in the US as the first gen iPhone, mostly due to T-Mobile picking 1700mhz as one of their 3G frequencies. It's still usable, but backs down to the EDGE speeds.

As for my specific phone, it's still under warranty for a little longer, and can be extended via AppleCare if the buyer wants. Never jailbroke or unlocked it, though either process is generally reversable.

Thats because $499 is still a subsidized price. $699 is the base, no contract price of the 32GB model. The nice thing though is that AT&T did say anyone who was going to be eligible for an upgrade by as late as September can pick up the new iPhone at the normal $199/$299 prices. Also, AT&T seems to have a separate time frame for when a user can upgrade their phone vs the end of their service contract. If you have the higher per month plans, it's possible to get an upgrade every year instead of the normal 18 months.

I was aware of that, and that only helps the point I was making, which is that the used phone price doesn't include the subsidy.

Phones that were around 10 years ago were survivors. All the phones I have from that period still work.

Phones from the last few years seem a lot more fragile. The two HTC's that I had before the iPhone both died within 9 months of buying them. Most of the people I know that have owned "smart" phones in last 3 years or so have a graveyard of dead devices.

That said the iPhone feels like an exception, at least I hope so... (that said I am on my second one, the first had crap appear behind the screen and my current one has a dead pixel)

And some of the Nokias are still well built. I wouldn't touch another HTC with someone else's barge pole.

Was at a telecomms resilience talk the other day and the main speaker said that he and his team (who deal with comms aftermath of things like the London bombings etc) would only ever use the Nokia 6310i. It is still my favourite, and although I love some of the functionality of the iPhone, it doesn't have buttons, so until the iPhone has virtual button technology...I'm out.

The Nokia 6000 series were built pretty solidly. Of course you paid for that in weight and bulk because they were solid little bricks. During the late 90's when the bulk of the 6000's were most popular, they did make for interesting conversation... "is that a a phone in your pocket or are..."

What was his reasoning for the 6310i? I had one as my first work phone, and while it was an easy to use reliable phone, it was no better or more reliable than the 7110 I had as a personal phone at the time. I know of other people who still use the 6310's, but they are people with old car kits in company vehicles.

Apple has fixed the 1.5Gbit limitation for the SATA controller in an EFI firmware update.

This one. Your direct link is something to do about iMacs and doesn't mention MBPs. No clue why Apple did that.


3Gbps isn't officially supported? Are the drives that come with the MBP SATA-I drives?

My direct link goes to a page titled "About the MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 and iMac EFI Firmware 1.4 Updates." It's a link to the parent support database about the update, where your link is for the software download page.

Weird. It comes up as only "About the iMac EFI Firmware 1.4 Update" for me. The link you gave is in the text of the link I gave. Thats why I said that it was weird that it doesn't mention MBPs.

Country specific stuff?

Shouldn't be country specific. I'm linking to the plain page without any country sub-directory. The link is this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3561 You should be able to get to the same page simply by searching support for "HT3561"

BTW, Apple don't specify what version of SATA drives are in their machines. It conceivable they use both SATA and SATA II, but it's not something that makes any difference to a 2.5" HD anyway. But machines with SSD have definitely reported 3Gbit interfaces, so they must "support" that interface in those cases. At least with the SSDs they sell.

Anyway, when has a computer manufacturer ever claimed to support any hard drive that they don't themselves ship or include in a published compatibility list? I think if you ever found a drive that didn't live up to expectations or didn't work, you'd be left to take it up with the drive manufacturer in most cases. Even Nikon and Canon don't officially support any media besides the ones they officially publish support for (and test against).

Still only shows the 1.4 iMac update.


No clue whats going on there. I'm getting the generic/US page because it has the 1-800 number at the bottom.


Ahh okay. That is why they say it isn't supported.


In the bad old days of IDE you would need a compatibility list but nothing really recent has needed that. Well... except some issues with buggy SATA controllers and buggy SATA drives when used together.