It was back in June 2009 that Apple proudly introduced their latest iPhone 3GS to the market. Needless to say things have moved on since then but oddly enough in South Korea this exact model is now being offered for sale in brand new condition with its original packaging (and battery). It turns out that South Korean provider SK Telink stumbled upon a large stockpile of unsold iPhone 3GSs in a warehouse. They are to be offered SIM-free priced at around $40 (£30). This pristine example of smartphone history uses a Samsung S5PC processor running at 600 MHz with 256 MB of RAM and internal memory of 8/16/32 GB. It only supports iOS6 so many familiar present-day apps such as WhatsApp will not run on this machine.

Although selfies have technically been possible ever since the introduction of the first cameras, the practice became so much simpler using smartphones fitted with forward-facing cameras. The word ‘selfie’ was nominated as ‘word of the year’ back in 2013 and that was four years after the iPhone 3GS (which has no forward-facing camera) was introduced.  The screen is 3.5 inches and could hardly be described as retina-display resolution (you can actually make out individual screen pixels).

It is difficult to imagine that the phone could be used as an every-day alternative to a more up-to-date model but if you just want to make 3G calls, use text messaging, take pictures and surf, this could be a viable device. After nine years in storage it’s likely that the battery performance will not be up to scratch but the supplier will be checking each one to make sure they work. The other thing to watch out for is the SIM slot will not take a nano-SIM card without an adapter.