fruitie, you never consider sign up a contract with Telco and get the phone at much lower price?  Eg, S3 can be bought at as low as RM999 during launch with 2 years data contract, since you are going to use the data anyway.  Of course, for those who change their phones every few months, this is not their way. 

i think for normal use, 3GB data a month is quite sufficient.  With light usage, I normally use around 1GB.  Without a data plan, a smartphone usage is quite restricted.