iPhone 3G to keep or leave?

I’m feeling very conflicted about keeping my iphone 3G. Is it shiny? Yes. Does it make calls? Yes. Does it tether? sort of…

iPhone Tethering

The most important thing about getting a phone was that I would be able to get high speed internet anywhere I was. I was really looking forward to that functionality. So far I’ve had occasion to use it twice tethered with my laptop and both experiences were lack luster. I followed this guide and tried a few different things. I did manage to get all my apps to connect to the internet by setting my entire computer to use the SOCKS proxy settings required, so at least I could use all my apps with out reconfiguring every last one of them.

Problems with tethering

The biggest problem with tethering is that it depends on your iphone to maintain the right route to the internet, that is to say, it has to continually default to it’s 3G or edge connection for the proxy to function. This has not been my experience, every 5 minutes or so my iphone would default back to the wifi connection and I’d need to reload a page on the iphone to reset the route. That is a pain in the ass and a piece of functionality that is very easy to use in almost every other damn smart phone. Plus it kills the battery life.

So can I really justify paying for an expensive data plan when I could do what I want on any other smart phone for much cheaper? I have a little more than a week to decide whether or not I will take my phone back. What do you think?