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Good grief.  Cruising over at the AT&T site and like some adult sites, you’re whisked away to refurb-phone-land looking at an 8GB 3G iPhone and asking yourself, why look at anything else?  Does an Android phone, a BlackBerry, webOS or WinMo phone even come close?  Chances were pretty good you’re considering getting a new iPod anyhow.

Palm will be launching their new Pixi, the cute candybar webOS sibling on Sprint next month at $99.  The phone, to its credit looks great, runs the fun webOS and even one-ups the Pre with a new Facebook app.  But can it stand a chance against the $49 iPhone?

AT&T and high monthly data plans might give the others a chance.  Carrier loyalty might do it as might the stigma of refurb (my iPhone is a refurb - shhhh).  Nah, none of this.  It is the in-store gotta-have-it-now crowd that will keep a refurbed $49 iPhone our secret.  And I am sure that works for them.

You’ve got to wonder what lower monthly data plans might do to iPhone sales.  Provide a GB limit of data transfer and make data a palatable $20 a month.  Now AT&T isn’t about to do that, they get a lot of income out of the hefty iPhone data fees, but we can dream about demand curves, right?

Over in refurb land, you can find the Pantech Matrix Nokia Surge, LG Vue and Samsung Rugby as well.

Product page: [AT&T Wireless]