The iPhone price not an issue

To correspond with the launch of the "Pricey" £269 iPhone O2 will be releasing 3 new tariffs.

1) £35 for 200mins and 200 texts per month 2) £45 for 600 mins and 500 texts per month and 3) £55 for 1200 mins and 500 texts

Pretty reasonable tariffs but on top of that you are given free voicemail and unlimited data access via EDGE/GPRS or Wifi Hotspots (subject to fair use). The minimum term of the contracts are 18months rather than the standard 12.

I am currently with O2 and pay for a £45/month tariff. In addition to this I pay an extra £15/month for a data plan that isn't unlimited. So over the period of 18months the new iPhone £45 tariff it should save me.... £270 - so basically a free iPhone.

However, price was never my issue with the iPhone. It's the missing features. No 3G even in the UK edition means no video calling and slow web access when away from wifi hotspot. It also is missing picture messaging and the ability to record video with the built in camera. Some of these features are of little interest to some users but not missing my baby daughter doing something new because my wife can video call me or send me a video/picture message has become something I'd find hard to do without. On top of that are several PocketPc Apps that I regularly use on my XDA Exec which I'll miss badly such as iSilo which allows me to used condensed versions of big apps like encylopedias and Office. Not being able to write word documents will be a pain. Although I don't watch many movies on my phone as I have a PSP and laptop for that sort of thing when on the go, I do watch the odd episode of my favourite shows on it. This is usually when I'm in a rush and don't have time to encode it for the PSP. With the iPhone only supporting one format of video I would have to convert anything I want to play on it which is time and space consuming.

I had considered the XDA Orbit with built in GPS which is again another key feature sadly lacking in the iPhone

So my dilema is not going to be is the iPhone worth the money but is it worth giving up a host of features I am used to having in exchange for a snazzy interface.