Whenever you hear a bell ring, an angel gets its wings, and whenever some poor sap/lucky bastard buys an iPhone, AT&T gives Apple $325

File this under "holy crap."

Matthew Miller of ZDNet elaborates:

AT&T is subsidizing the iPhone this time, much like the other mobile phone purchases made in the United States and may be paying Apple as much as US$325 for each iPhone 3G that is purchased.

...

Don't worry about AT&T though, since they will make up this $325 and a bit more with the increased data and text message rates. Plus, with the new lower initial out-of-the pocket price for new subscribers we may see a lot more iPhones flying off the shelves next month than when the first generation iPhone started off at $599 last year.

For the record, I wasn't worried.

In other iPhone news: AT&T wants 3G users to pay more for data and text messages.

An observation from one poor SOB: That's me, in case you hadn't figured it out. I've found a lot more people out there with cell-phone data plans than I expected. Many people are happy to pay $70 a month to talk/text/browse/e-mail from their mobile handset, be it a Blackberry, iPhone or other such keyboard-equipped device.

Not being a user of either the iPhone, Blackberry or ... anything beyond my now-ancient Motorola phone, if e-mail is really important, a Blackberry or Palm Treo with a full QWERTY button keyboard seems to be a better choice than the iPhone's touchscreen. I say seems because I really don't know, but I'd like for anybody out there who has experience with such devices to tell me.

Send me an e-mail at steven.rosenberg@dailynews.com.