So, I am lame. I am writing about replacing an obsolete device with an obsolete device, but I did a pretty extensive search–no luck. Anyway, there seem to be plenty of 3G owners out there that did not recycle their originals. If you are like me and you don’t want to ‘spring for the goods’ until you are sure that a newer, shinier, cleaner iPhone is coming down the pike, substituting another Original may be a good short term solution.

1. Make sure to get a really good backup of your current iPhone by syncing with iTunes.

2. On the replacement phone follow these steps: Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and Settings on your original iPhone. FYI-this takes a stupid amount of time. When the iPhone says 1 hour to erase it means 1 hour. Watching the progress bar move is akin to watching a seed germinate.

3. After the erase completes, eject the SIM card out of your original iPhone.

4. Insert SIM card into the replacement iPhone.

5. Plug the replacement iPhone into the computer that contains your last good backup of your original iPhone.

6. Follow the prompts as if you are setting up a new iPhone. Most of the pertinent prompts should be populated from the SIM card. You will be prompted to enter your zip code, last four of social, and iTunes credentials.

7. Finally, you will be presented with an activation screen. At first, I backed away from this because it looks like you are creating a new account, but click submit.

8. After the phone is activated, you will be prompted to either setup a new iPhone or restore from a previous backup. Restore from the last good backup that you made in step 1.

Cheers to being cheap! Now, watch Apple is going to annouce this tomorrow.