iPhone 4 Ordered!

Spent the past week trying to figure out why in the world I qualify for a new iPhone 4 at the full AT&T subsidized price when I just got my iPhone 3G S last year around May. My coworker who got his iPhone 3G S before I did last year didn't qualify. Today I finally figured it out.

• March 2008: Wife's Motorola Razr falls out of her pocket and into hot tub. We dry out the phone and it works.
  
• April 2008: Wife's phone won't charge. We deal with it by swapping batteries as we both have Motorola Razrs.
  
• May 2008: Wife's phone fails completely due to water damage. We're able to get a new phone at a discount (not full subsidized price, but better than full price) by renewing our contract for another two years.
  
• May 2009: I'm eligible to get subsidized price for iPhone 3G S and upgrade.
  
• June 2010: 2-year contract with AT&T signed in May 2008 is up, and wife has had her phone for 2 years, making both phone numbers eligible for upgrade.
  

So I promised my wife a new iPhone for as a graduation gift (she finished grad school in May.) So I tried pre-ordering her phone on June 15th. It would just not go through. Tried again on the 16th with the same results, but I was able to get my new iPhone ordered. Tried again to order my wife's phone on the 17th and yay the order went through so both of us will have iPhone 4s soon! Just not on June 24th, so I'll have to go without for a week or so in order to sell my iPhone 3G S via Gazelle.

Timing is everything, though I never figured a water damaged phone would somehow work to our advantage.

iPhone 4 Announced

Apple announced iPhone 4 today at WWDC. One of the most interesting bits is that AT&T is offering full subsidized price ($199 for 16 GB, $299 for 32 GB) to anyone who's contract is up in 2010. On a whim I checked, and yup I'm eligible. Cool, but I don't have $299 for an upgrade.

I previously heard about Gazelle.com on one podcast or another on Leo Laporte's TWiT Network. Gazelle.com is an online service where you can sell your used gadgets for cash. I checked it out. My iPhone has spent most of it's life in an iFrogz case, so it looks perfect to my eyes. Gazelle's offer for a good condition iPhone 3GS 32 GB is $274, and $304 for a perfect condition. The offer is good for 30 days, so if you sign up today and get your iPhone back to Gazelle by July 7th, 2010 you're good to go.

So I'm going for it. Will let you know how it goes as things progress.