The Internet is full of Apple iPhone reviews but at least three people have asked me what I think of mine so I thought I’d write a post about my experiences over the last few weeks.

Firstly (and mostly for the benefit of those who compare the iPhone to a Windows Mobile device) – the Apple iPhone is not a business phone. Period. It’s very definitely a consumer device – if only because O2, who have an exclusive agreement with Apple for iPhone service provision in the UK, specifically state in their iPhone terms and conditions that:

All [mobile data and Wi-Fi] usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes.

[O2 iPhone Terms and Conditions]

So what about the feature set? Well, despite rumours to the contrary before the European release of the iPhone, there is no 3G model (yet – although O2’s CEO has indicated that there will be a 3G model in the second half of next year). There’s also no GPS chipset. No removable/user-replaceable battery. And at £269, unsubsidised, on an 18-month contract, it’s not cheap either (here in the UK we are not used to paying high prices for handsets as they are generally subsidised by the airtime agreement – possibly why the iPhone hasn’t sold too well in the UK), especially when you consider that none of the available tariffs are particularly generous (e.g. unused inclusive voice calls do not roll over from one month to the next.

But none of that matters because, unlike every other mobile handset that I’ve ever owned, I enjoy using my iPhone. Not very long ago, I sold my HP iPAQ PDA because I didn’t use it. I never really got on with a Symbian smartphone and, whilst a Windows Mobile device would be perfect for work, the iPhone seems to have struck the right balance for me in my personal life. Apple products are often praised as being intuitive and the iPhone is no exception – maybe it’s down to the touch-screen interface (and “pinching” works really well) but something about the iPhone just feels right. Even so, I still have a shopping list of features that I’d like to see (and there’s no reason why some of these shouldn’t be provided in a software update):

• A keyboard update to show lowercase letters in lower case mode and upper case letter in upper case mode (I know there’s a highlight on the shift key, but entering wireless network keys is a right pain!). A Caps Lock key would be useful too.
• Cut and paste functionality.
• Undo options (e.g. my fat fingers accidentally touched the wrong part of the screen and deleted my email signature, which I then had to re-enter manually).
• A character count on SMS messages (so that I know when I’ve hit the 160 character limit and actually sent multiple messages).
• Multimedia messaging services (MMS – what’s the point in having a camera phone that can’t send picture messages?).
• Browser support for popular plugins (Microsoft Silverlight might be asking a bit much, but what about Adobe Flash?).
• Screen rotation in all applications.
• The ability to save files on the device and access them through the iPhone interface (e.g. a PDF with a list of The Cloud hotspots).
• To-do lists.
• The ability to set different e-mail autocheck values (the iPhone does not have push e-mail) for Wi-Fi and cellular networks.
• The ability to use my normal earphones – the standard Apple earbuds are still uncomfortable.
• Voice-activated dialling.
• A cradle for integration with fully-fitted in-car handsfree equipment.
• The ability to set up my own ring tones without charge (an alternative to paying for ringtones via iTunes is iToner from Ambrosia Software).
• Third party application support (an SDK is due in February 2008).
• Freedom to choose networks!

So, what else have I found?

• Knowing that I have unlimited data has stopped me from worrying about the costs of using a phone to access the ‘net. In practice, I’ve found that I don’t use that much at all for the odd web page, autochecking e-mail once an hour, etc., although it is easy to rip through a couple of megs when you do need to look something up (this is the real Internet with full-size pages – not specially formatted pages for the mobile web, although the iPhone Safari implementation is prone to hanging when it encounters a page with unsupported content – e.g. Flash). Today is the last day of my billing period and I’ve used around 52.7MB of data on O2’s EDGE network this month but I spend most of my day with a notebook computer and it would be easy to double or triple that if you used the iPhone as a primary communications device.



• Whilst on the subject of data – free Wi-Fi is not very common in the UK and O2’s EDGE coverage seems patchy so I seem to spend a lot of time with a blue box (no E) indicating a plain old GPRS signal, which is painfully slow. EDGE is just about fine for Google Maps and downloading e-mail messages but 3G broadband would make a big difference for Safari and YouTube (which only works on EDGE or Wi-Fi connections).
• I’ve resisted buying a TomTom for years now (I have a £9.99 mapbook in the car together with a very good knowledge of a fair chunk of the road network in England and Wales!) but I really like the iPhone implementation of Google Maps – even without GPS (which I have to admit would be handy). I would also like it to do some of the things that the web version does – like dragging to adjust the route – and providing public transit/traffic information (which seem to be a US-only features). Also, searching for places seems to be very much biased towards the US (when I’m on a UK network and I search for “Reading” I probably mean the town in Berkshire, not Massachusetts).
• Leaving the original screen protector in place is not a good idea as I found when I nearly returned my iPhone for replacement beacuse I could hardly hear people calling me, then I realised the problem was that the speaker was covered by a piece of plastic! Apple and Carphone Warehouse both sell screen protectors (I bought the Carphone Warehouse ones for £4.99).
• The camera is possibly the worst digital camera that I’ve ever used, with a huge shutter delay, slow focus, low resolution and apalling image quality – even considering that it does have a tiny lens.

For Apple’s first attempt at a phone, the iPhone is pretty damn good. Sure, it’s been overhyped and there is a lot that the iPhone doesn’t do but what it does do, it does well. I can’t help thinking that Apple is learning that mobile telecommunications is a cut-throat business and, as I wrote back at the start of the year:

“Now it’s Apple’s turn for hard lessons – to find out that telcos don’t want what consumers want – instead, they want to control the platform, lock down functionality, introduce their own unique selling points, and encourage customers to upgrade to the next greatest device, in the process locking themselves into another lucrative airtime contract, as soon as the current one ends.”

(Oh yes, and to play on consumers insecurities in order to sell them overpriced mobile phone insurance that they probably don’t need.)

I think The Times summed up the iPhone perfectly when they described it as:

“Expensive but exceptional”

[Jonathan Richards, Times Online, 8 November 2007]

Even so, I’d like to finish up by quoting the eccentric but eloquent wordsmith, Stephen Fry:

“We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms – why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives? And why should Apple be the only company that sees that?”

“All the big guns want an iPhone killer. Even I [Stephen Fry], mad for all things Apple as I am, want an iPhone killer. I want smart digital devices to be as good as mankind’s ingenuity can make them. I want us eternally to strive to improve and surprise. Bring on the iPhone killers. Bring them on.”

[Stephen Fry, “Devices and Desires”]

“The rest of the world can mock as much as it likes. If you’re going to have a phone/video player/slideshow/music centre/web browser/camera in your pocket, is it so wrong to want one that makes you grin from ear to ear? Not with smugness […] but with delight.”

[Stephen Fry, “Not sensible, but, oh, the joy of it!”]

So I did it, I bought an iPhone – two in fact: one whilst I was in the States earlier this week, which I then returned because once the sales tax was added it was nearly as expensive as buying one in the UK and the risk of having a brick on my hands was too great if the AT&T unlock went wrong; the second a few minutes ago from an O2 store close to where I live.

As for all the people who queued up to get one – why? I just waited until the kids were in bed, drove into town and strolled in to the store with no queues whatsoever. One question I do have though… if, as reported, this handset is not subsidised, then why did O2 advise me to buy additional insurance because a replacement unit if this gets lost, stolen or damaged (outside the warranty conditions) will be £600 rather than £269?

My mobile handset used to be just what I needed. It’s a phone, with a WAP browser. Basically, it works for making calls and reading my e-mail via OMA – and it fits the full handsfree kit in my car that my work phone uses (yes, I have two phones… one so I can be contacted by friends and family whenever I want and the other so that work colleagues can only call me when I’m working).

But I have been tempted. I’m a geek, and geeks feed on gadgets. And whilst common sense tells me that a Windows Mobile phone would best match my needs, I am seriously tempted by the Apple iPhone, which goes on sale in the UK next week. The trouble is that even hardened Apple fanboys on some of the podcasts that I listen to admit that this is just a first generation device – an iPhone beta if you like – and at £269 (on an 18-month contract at between £35 and £55 a month), it’s expensive – especially without the 3G and GPS that other handsets offer.

I did look at the Nokia N95 but Apple’s decision not to allow their phone to be subsidised by the networks means that other smartphone vendors are pushing up their prices too (thanks for nothing Apple) and Vodafone
wanted over £300 on an 18 month contract, plus an extra £7.50/month for 120MB of data.

My existing Vodafone contract is up in a few days time, so I called them and asked for my PAC code so that, if I do buy an iPhone next week, I can transfer my number to O2. Not surprisingly, Vodafone’s customer retention department wanted me to stick with them (that’s their job). After I rejected their revised offer (“ah, the £300 was retail, but we’re able to make you a better offer”) of an N95 for £170 (still £120 more than it would have cost me a few months ago…), they suggested that if I could source an iPhone from somewhere outside the UK it would work with any UK network (UK models will be locked to O2), and they could offer me another 12 month contract, with lower charges. That sounds good, but it’s a bit underhand of them to offer that solution as I don’t think it will work – this is why:

• Even though I’m planning to be in the US next week (so picking up US iPhone would be reasonably easy) an unactivated iPhone can’t even perform non-phone related tasks like playing music and videos and activation would require a contract on a network in the country from which it is sourced (i.e. AT&T for a US-sourced phone).
• Whilst I’m sure that hackers will find a way to unlock the iPhone (again), Apple is playing cat and mouse with them, so the next software upgrade (which I could ignore) would prevent me from using my Vodafone SIM in it (and possibly “brick” the device).
• In any case, even if I never used the phone with the AT&T SIM once it was activated, I’d have problems opening an account without a US address and I’d be legally bound to a contract.

So, here’s the choice as I see it:

1. Wait until next Friday and buy an iPhone on O2 with an 18 month contract: Cost £269 + (18 x £35) = £899 (with 200 minutes/200 texts/unlimited data each month).
2. Buy an iPhone from an Apple store in the United States and use it over here (if it works): Cost £191.66 (at today’s exchange rate) + ((9 x £10) + (3 x £16) + (12 x £7.50)) = £419.66 with 75 minutes/stop the clock/120MB data each month.
3. (Wait for the next iPhone model/buy something else/do nothing).

So option 2 looks best on paper, but what if it doesn’t work? Does anyone know if I’m right about options for using an unactivated iPhone in the UK?