Telstra announces Blackberry Bold plans, but is the iPhone 3G better value?
We examine what Telstra customers should be buying.
Telstra has announced that it's starting to sell the recently launched Blackberry Bold 9000 Smartphone, with the first shipments of the smartphone hitting Australian shores last weekend. Telstra will sell it to its enterprise and business customers (according to the company's release) on a variety of data plans, either on a 24 month contract (where, as is the norm, the phone is "free"), or on a month by month basis for the Blackberry email service alone.
A little while back, we ran a comparative feature looking at the Bold in the context of the 3G iPhone on a technical level . How then, do the phones compare on pure pricing?
Whatever you think of the Bold or iPhone 3G , the pricing makes it pretty clear which way you should jump (at least as a Telstra customer) -- not so much on price, which is going to be high, but depending on your needs.
The Bold can be had either outright for $999 and then $49.95 for the email service on top of a phone plan, or over 24 months, either on a $39.95/month email plan bolted onto a post-paid plan, or with a no-plan, 50c/30 second/25c flagfall/25c SMS plan. If you're a heavy phone user -- greater than $150/month -- then Telstra will drop the email charge to $29.95 month over 24 months. Email remains the Bold's biggest strength against the iPhone without a doubt.
Even with a degree, you could still have an embolism trying to decipher Telstra's iPhone 3G plans, but again we'd say it comes down to usage. The iPhone 3G does a better job with Apps and browsing, but not as well with email as the Bold. The one key thing to bear in mind here is that while Telstra will sell you an iPhone 3G outright, and even slightly cheaper than the Bold, all of its iPhone 3G plans are still 24 months only, so if you're stuck in Telstra-only areas, there's not much point in doing so.