iPhone 4

There are lots of hardcore Apple fans out there but I have to admit to not being one of them. I’ve never owned an iMac or G5 (but I have been tempted) and I turned down the offer of an iPod some years ago. But the iPhone is different.

I’ve had a few unusual phones in my time from the Nokia 7110, the consumer version of the phone Neo had in The Matrix, to the tiny, at the time, Motorola V50. My last non-iPhone was the Nokia N95; a lovely little slide phone with some great features.

And then I brought into iPhone.

That was May 2009. A photographer friend was responsible for the initial spark and, at the first opportunity to upgrade, I was free of my cracked-screen N95.

I’ll admit to being honest about the iPhone and it’s place in the grand scheme of things in that it’s not even been that great a phone. As a thing of wonder, yes, it never fails to impress but as a standalone phone, it’s never been that brilliant.

And then there’s the HTC desire etc. My brother flashed his HTC at the Farnham Beerex a few months back, and it is a nice phone. I got the usual “It’s superior, it’s cheaper…” etc but didn’t for one second feel disappointment or regret in my choice.

I’ve had a go on another Android phone and I must admit it wasn’t that intuitive; trying to install foursquare was a right tricky business, but hey, it eventually… No it didn’t, we never got it working.

So here I am, writing about a phone that I was never totally enamoured with and yet I queued at 5:45am to get the new iPhone 4. With 16 people in front of me and a total of 100+ punters by 8:02, it wasn’t going to work with an estimated 50 phones in store.

And why did I get an iPhone 4 when I could have grabbed a Dell Streak or tried a Blackberry 9700, maybe forced myself to try out an HTC? I don’t rightly know; I wasn’t impressed too much by the WWDC when Steve Jobs went on about iPhone being 12% or 1.2mm thinner, I just wanted quality, a new form, better battery life, a flash for the camera, a front-facing camera, zoom, multitasking please… Really, that’s all I wanted. And yet I was prepared to queue for 3 hours to get my hands on one.

I got everything I wanted in my iPhone 4 plus the beautiful “retina display” resolution and the yet-to-try FaceTime. iOS4 was great to play with for a few days and that makes improvements plus there are bragging rights, that early adopter buzz and being in line was fun, if not a little cold (I was totally underwhelmed by the original Xbox launch; I ordered Halo & Project Gotham Racing and excitedly stood outside Electronics Boutique in Camberley with just a 10 year old boy and his dad waiting in line!)

And here I am, writing my blog on an iPhone 4, using the WordPress app and failing to be able to create a richly-built XHTML document full of useful links with tool tips & images because I’m not sitting at my laptop with the full freedom and set of controls that a desktop/laptop commands. Maybe, as a wannabe perfectionist, I’ll pop back later and enrich this post with links but until then, let’s just see, aye? [08:03 – I did – I just couldn’t resist]

In the meantime I’m just quietly satisfied that I’ve got my hands on an iPhone 4 and this is it for the next 2 years, we’d better get along nicely. And the funny thing is that, nearly 24 hours later I’ve not received or made one single phone call

As for those iPads, I still can’t quite justify the expense of what I see as an 11″ digital photo frame, albeit a smart and interactive one at that.