3. As above, if you play your cards right you can get a 16Gb 3GS for £250-300 which IMO is a bargain.
Well, having raised funds by selling an old guitar, some Technic Lego, my old iPod dock and a briefcase, I've just managed to buy a 16Gb black 3GS on O2 for £258 inc, which seems a fairly good deal.
Slightly apprehensive as the guy I bought it off only has 4 feedback, but he's got no bad stuff and it looks like he just doesn't use ebay much. I've e-mailed him about upping the postage from RMRD to RMSD (don't want it getting clunked in the mail with inadequate insurance), so if his reply seems off kilter or I smell a rat I'll pull out.
The back of the phone looks a bit scratched, but I'll be putting it in a heavy duty case anyway (I've dropped my touch twice in a week and just ordered a case for that...) so I won't see it anyway. It seems funny that the back of an iPod is so prized so everyone sticks a case on it, but then you don't see the damn thing anyway.
I was looking at paying more than that for an 8Gb model, so it leaves me a bit of cash to spare if the battery needs replacing or anything like that.
Also slightly nervous that I'm massively duplicating functionality by having both an iPhone and an iPod touch, but I have over 30Gb of music, and a 32Gb iPhone is already hilariously expensive, so I figure it's worth having both, as it'll be the touch that gets filled with the media and the iPhone that does the other stuff, not to mention that only the iPhone is any use for anything requiring an Internet connection once I'm away from a Wi-Fi network.
Now I just need to ride out my wife's sneers after I got all sour grapes about the iPhone being a waste of money when I couldn't afford one.