A bad version of the Iphone?

Recently it has come out that the new 3G iPhones are cracking at stress points, such as near the volume buttons, the headphone jack, the power button, and the connection port and many of these phones were reported to spend the entire time the owners had them inside a padded case. The iPhone 3G has one very important difference in manufacturing process, the metal case that existed in the original iPhone has been replaced with a glossy plastic (which is why the 3G iPhone is available with a white or black backing), and this would be a benefit to the iPhone, as it makes it look good, however with the cases breaking Apple (AAPL) has had to replace thousands of iPhones.

This all got me thinking, what does the 3G iPhone really have on the original edge iPhone?

Speed: Yes when you’re out and about the 3G iPhone will load pages faster, roughly 3 times faster, but with modern web pages the load time of the iPhones is measured in seconds. However, both phones work on Wi-Fi, and load the same National Geographic page for the iPhone in 17 seconds according to apple, so if you are sitting around at home, 3G iPhones and a edge iPhones should connect just as fast.

Price: Yes, the 3G iPhone is only 199$ but you can find an edge iPhone for only $100 on eBay in fairly good shape. In addition to this, by some reports, the 3G iPhone can cost the average user over $500 more over the span of the payment plan than what the original would have cost.

Firmware: This is what makes the iPhones work, and they are the same on both, both phones will use the same incredibly entertaining applications.

Hackability: This is a concern to some users, as they may be on T-mobile. Apparently while they both have been successfully hacked to work on any network that uses sim cards (sorry Verizon users in the United States), however I have been told that for future updates it is also easier to hack the edge network iPhone.

GPS: The only real unavoidable advantage of the 3G iPhone in my opinion is the GPS, however in areas like New York with tons of reference points for its Google (GOOG) driven cell phone pinging technology, the edge iPhone technology usually gives a good enough location to figure out your location.

Overall, the only superiority the new iPhone has is when your out and about, but that may not be a good idea, because you might break it.