After waiting for the best part of a week for my iphone, it finally arrived on Friday 18th July 2008.  I had to travel to the not so near postal collection point to pick my new gadget up, and I excitedly drove back home and carefully removed it from its packaging.

Once I had inserted my SIM card I was almost immediately struck by the feel and quality of the phone; I had heard on the grapevine that the build quality was reduced hence the new cheaper price but that didn’t seem to be true at all, in fact the iphone feels very substantial.  So with the quality issue out of the way I started finding my way around the interface, at first it was a little awkward mainly because of the size of my hands and the small qwerty keypad but this didn’t last long, eventually the natural feel of the iphone kicked in, I was using a mobile phone in a way I could never have imagined it just feels so natural, slide the menu, press the options and away you go.

Next I started to test the features. I had to get my phone on the net and so setup the WLAN which took no more than a minute, once I was online the true magic of the phone started, the built in youtube, itunes store, app store and maps work to perfection taking your browsing experience to the next level couple that with cute little extras you can download for free such as; facebook and twitter applications you will never need to browse the web on your computer again!.

So I had completely fallen for this piece of tech, but then the small disappointments started to creep in. Firstly I discovered to my surprise that the bluetooth connectivity is limited to headsets only, which in my opinion is a mistake in a world of sharing and interactivity between people, Apple couldn’t have made it more difficult (maybe that was the plan), then I remembered a couple of reviews I had read that moaned about the lack of MMS capability, this proved to be a niggling issue too but I could just about live with it, thinking this would be the end to my disappointment I discovered two other problems; custom ringtones are difficult at best to load and the iphone has no native flash plugin thus making flash sites pretty useless when surfing.

As you can tell this is an early review just to offer a real opinion to those who are sitting on the purchase wall, and those people shouldn’t be put off by the negative end to this review, overall the iphone is amazing and I am sure that Apple and other developers are busy working on great apps to help resolve the issues I have mentioned, ultimately this is the future of mobile communications and if you do buy one you won’t be disappointed.

With the N95 being the only Nokia that would even slightly cut it I started my search for alternate options, this included the Sony Ericsson W960i and the Blackberry range.  I wanted something that would handle pretty much any technical demand that I threw at it but at the same time was functional and felt slick to use.

The W960i is a slick looking phone with touch screen and symbian OS it answered the brief but the reviews were mixed at best and my own doubts started to creep in; while the Blackberries are just not attractive, I can’t work out whether it’s the overall design or just the ridiculously cramped qwerty keypad but something just wasn’t right.

So there I was, none the wiser and stuck with my old phone that was getting more redundant as the days rolled on, and then it happened!  I had noticed the iphone phenomenon happening late last year and avoided it with a gut feeling that Apple may be stepping a little too far out of their comfort zone.  I couldn’t have been more wrong, and while this revolution happened around me I finally started to take interest and that was when Apple announced the new 3g iphone, well the timing couldn’t have been better with my contract up and looking for a phone that was a bit special I ordered one.

Phew! My search was over, but had I made the right decision?  Well my brand new gadget is arriving on the 11th July so I will be putting the iphone through its paces and I will post in a few days with my views good or bad!