Saturday 7 August 2010

I ♥ My iPhone

My actual home screen!
There was always a good chance I was going to love it and four months after getting one I am still besotted.  Why?  Read on...

It started with twitter, naturally.  The ease of tweeting (now supplemented with BoxCar) from the twitter app never ceases to amaze me.  And I can, 3G, permitting, use it everywhere, even in the middle of the Solent.  Take a pic, upload in seconds, add a bit of text, done.  Wanna see where I've tweeted from?  There's a map for that.  But I knew all that anyway, my iPod Touch had given me that previously while I was at home, but the difference between that and taking this lil device everywhere with me was a revelation.

And it just keeps giving.

The football season started today and Southampton were on against Plymouth.  I was at @3Stars_left's with no Sky but did that stop me watching?  Hell no.  The Sky Player app allowed me to watch the second half on my phone.  Now that was via her WiFi so you'd expect a good reception and the picture was, indeed, crystal clear with no pixelation whatsoever.  Surely it wouldn't be as good over 3G on the boat when I wanted to catch up on the days news?  But it bloody well was.  It's also free for Sky Sports subscribers until January.  Nice.

The brilliant TVCatchup website that opens in Safari allows access to a wide range of Freeview channels for free over 3G and WiFi and is another must have.  I watched a penalty shoot out during the recent World Cup whilst I was on the bus.  Much to the annoyance of the douche bag next to me.

The battery life is a bit rubbish, not because it's a shit battery really, but because of how much you tend to use the damn thing and the edition of the Veho Pepple has been a god send.  It's a little bit of a drag to take it with me everywhere but it will charge the iPhone around four times and is a neat way to keep it topped up throughout the day.

The constant access I have to facebook, twitter, email and all the normal functions of a phone (you know, like texting and phoning people, remember them?) mean that I can check in and out of my bizarre online existence whenever I want to.  I can even blog from it via BlogPress although to be honest I've only used it a few times.

The new Android phones look interesting, it's clearly a decent competitor for iPhone as an operating system and is currently 'outselling' Apple's phone.  However if it wasn't it would be a bit of a miracle as nearly every other phone company has started producing Android phones, so the 'outselling iPhone' statements are more than a little misleading.  No other phone company has innovated in quite the same way or made the Smart Phone such a must have for everyone as Apple have.

The ease of use, even once you start poking around in the settings is a joy to behold.  It's not perfect and the 4G launch has dented the iPhone's reputation a tad but it's still selling by the shed load because, for the most part, the iPhone does exactly what you want it to and then some. 

Four months after I got mine I can honestly say that it's my favourite gadget of all time by country mile.  (Sorry PS3.)  More and more people have one, which makes any exclusivity to ownership feel a bit lame.  But is that a reason to not have one?  No.  If you bang on about how brilliant something is all the time then eventually you'll hook your mates and we'll all get them.  For me that's exactly what's happened, the iPhone has gained iconic status and desirability that's off the scale.  That means that even someone who's never going to buy an app is going to want one, which doesn't lessen how cool an iPhone is, it just means that some people's iPhones are cooler than other people's iPhones.

Obviously I've ruined mine with the background image, but hey, I've never been cool, I'm just a geek with the best phone ever in my pocket.

One day we'll all live in iHomes and catch the iBus to work.  

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