Next August, my 3 year contract for the iPhone 3GS with Rogers is up. Unfortunately, that’s still 10 months away. The question now is whether or not to upgrade early to the iPhone 4S and pay the silly extra fees they want me to pay to do so.

I checked when the new phone came out. Rogers wants a $45 Early Upgrade Fee and a $35 Hardware Upgrade Administration Fee. I assume that the 45 bucks is either to move to a new contract before my time or finish paying off my 3GS. The 35 bucks is probably to pay the retailers for putting the SIM card in and setting things up. But why price all that and then say that there is also some $50 Hardware Upgrade Credit???? Would that be for my old phone?? Who knows.

The pricing of network services (including phone and cable) continues to amaze me, but that rant is for another post. grrr.

Anyway, the new iPhone has a faster processor and the camera is a huge improvement over my current iPhone camera. Those are really the two reasons I might upgrade before my time. I’m finding the old 3GS is running slower and slower with the OS upgrades and the camera is not quite to the point I’d like for a day-to-day point and shoot camera.

Most of the rest of what the 4S offers is nice, but not really that important to me. I’m also hearing about some problems with battery life and extra network usage by Siri, the new voice command and control assistant. iCloud still seems to be a work in progress as well, but perhaps that’s just my impression.

So with all that, the 4S sort of sounds like a stop gap to keep us Apple fans happy until the iPhone 5, which would bring iCloud and the phone together as one. Just speculation on my part, but there ya go.

So, would you upgrade your phone early for a little extra speed and a new camera? Or would you wait for the iPhone 5 next spring/summer? Inquiring minds would like to know.