3 Giving iPhone Away for $0 with $298 Plan

Need more proof there will be a new iPhone soon?

3 has a new price plan for the iPhone in Hong Kong, but can you blame them? Hong Kong is one of the only cities in the world that you can buy an unlocked 3G iPhone from Apple and from other electronics stores like Broadway, so what can 3 offer but a really crazy deal like this.

Of course you are still prepaying the full handset price, but you can get out of it in 18-months, instead of the 24-month one most people (like us) signed up for last year when the 3G was first released. Comapre the tariff plans here.

In the US, you can get a refurbished (i.e. second-hand) 16GB  iPhone from AT&T for only US$149 (HK$1160) which is lowering the cost of entry into the “iWorld” (but the lowest data plan in the US is still HK$500+). The day you are waiting for is most likely June 8th, the first day of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. So if you can hold out till then, you just might see the next iPhone in 6 short weeks. And with a little more luck: Steve Jobs’ return to the Keynote!