iPhone 4 price plans: Etisalat vs du

So the iPhone 4 launched in UAE yesterday, with both the telecom operators providing some exciting plans for customers. Today I’m just going to look into what options are provided by both du and Etisalat and which one provides better value for money and suitable for people with different needs.

du

Basically du doesn’t provide any subsidized plans for the iPhone 4; you pay the full price of the unlocked phone upfront, and then apply for any of their postpaid packages or get a prepaid sim card. While I won’t go in depth about their prepaid packages and various benefit schemes, I will talk a little about their Elite plans (postpaid subscriptions).

Since the iPhone 4 isn’t subsidized, du offers a lot more rewards in return for the larger (than their competitor’s) upfront fee for the headset. The 16GB iPhone 4 will cost you AED 2,449 and 32GB for AED 2,849. Speaking of which, here’s the lowdown on du’s price plans.

*Fair usage policy of 10GB per month applies.

**For customers subscribing to a Regular Elite Plan with an iPhone 4, a subscription to Elite Super 100 or a minimum commitment of AED 100 per month is required. The Standard Elite plan costs AED 25 per month (55 minutes national calls, 55 national SMS and 5MB of data), so you will need to spend at least AED 100 per month on that plan to be eligible for the free 1GB of data per month.

If you’re not one to spend a whole lot on phone calls every month, then the Elite Super 100 plan is the best of the bunch. You get 100 minutes of national calls, 100 minutes of international calls, 100 SMS (50 national + 50 international) and 100MB of data, plus an additional 1GB of data per month free for purchasing an iPhone 4 from du. Of course, this is a yearly contract, so what plans du comes out with in a year’s time, I can’t say for sure. However, at least for this one year, your brand spanking new iPhone 4 will be set for all round usage, and honestly, a 1.1GB data package per month is more than enough for regular data usage (checking emails, browsing the net, downloading apps and games via App Store and checking out the occasional YouTube video).

Of course, if you’re a heavy user, then any of the top 3 plans will work out nicely for you, depending on how deep your pockets are and how long your phone calls go on for.