iPhone 3GS now available officially in the UAE
Both du and Etisalat have launched the iPhone 3GS. We help you decide by looking at how much it costs to get one from either of them
The iPhone 3GS fever is certainly at an all time high with both du and Etisalat launching Apple’s new Smartphone this week. At one hand, we have du with their clear cut price structure about the device and the data plans and on the other hand we have Etisalat announcing the unit prices that are slightly lower than du but no data package.
Lets start with du- they are selling the 8GB 3G at AED 2049, the 16GB 3GS at AED 2459 and the 32GB 3GS at 2,869. Etisalat on the other hand is selling it the 8GB 3G for AED 1,999, 16GB 3GS for 2,399 and the 32GB 3GS for 2,799. If you are simply looking at purchasing the handset, Etisalat wins but things get more interesting if you’re looking at Data packages which really is what the iPhone is all about.
If you are a pre-paid customer then du offers their Pay as you Go plan where as long as you spend 100 Dirhams on your mobile phone, you get 1GB data free per month. Etisalat hasn’t announced their pre-paid offer but if you look at their previous iPhone 3G offering, you are getting 250MB of data per month for free when you buy the iPhone from them.
For post-paid customers, du offers their Elite Plan where you get anywhere from 1GB to 10GB free data per month depending on how much you spend on your monthly bill. Etisalat on the other hand, again- going by their 3G rates, offers start at AED 99 per month all the way to 449 per month and this not only includes data but voice and SMS as well.
Which one would you chose? I have an Etisalat number for the last 15 years and don’t plan on changing that. When TRA does allow me to change my provider without changing my number, I might look into moving on to du. From what I’ve been hearing, their coverage has dramatically improved from last year.
