Me and my promiscuous mobile life

The Apple iPhone has been the very bane of my existence for what feels like all eternity.

First, there was the endless, endless speculation about the device when the name was first trademarked and the iphone.org domain name was registered by Apple.

This was all fine though, as back then I was journalisting in another area of technology altogether, so it was a nice little rumour that popped up once in a while.

But then the rumours became stronger, with the release of things like the iTunes ROKR phone from Motorola (which still makes me shudder when I think about it).

Fast forward to the present day, and I had to cover hour after hour after hour of rumour, conjecture and thought, and then finally the release day itself, where the screaming (why do people scream for Apple? It must have witchcraft up its sleeve somewhere. Or in Steve Jobs rollneck…hang on, that makes sense actually) made my ears bleed.

But the world has lapped it up, and I for one am outraged.

Keeping it real

The problem was, I've always been a real mobile phone geek ever since I got my hands on the Nokia 5110 (you remember, the first ever Snake phone? The first phone it seemed everyone had?).

I've watched as Nokia et al raised the bar incrementally. First a camera, then the ability to play music as an add-on, then inbuilt media capabilities.

WAP came and went, followed by 3G connectivity. Phones got smaller, the backlights got less green, colour screens popped up. All nice and slow in an evolution that Darwin himself would have been pleased about.

And nowadays, as technology has ramped up massively, the new range of phones in the last five years has proved just how portable life can be, with 3.5G mobile broadband speeds, the appearance of touchscreens, which were buggy and battery sapping, but above all rewarded the early adopter.

You see, here's the crux of my geeky umbrage. I have always got hold of phones too early, when the software is not quite right, when a manufacturer brings out a new type of phone too soon etc. because I love to play with it.

I adapt. I adapted to the early Nokias (though there wasn't much wrong there, as it was just a matter of making the phones smaller while keeping the phone functionality the same.)

As I grew older, I began to play the field. I put up with Ericsson's piddly little two line display in that tiny flip phone. I forced myself to get my head around Sony Ericsson's early incomprehensible texting system, I embraced the unpressable keypad of the Siemens A51, I got used to the upside down flip of the Motorola V70 (which was actually quite nice).

I'll admit it…I even owned an N-Gage.

Locked in

My point is I have SUFFERED with a number of handsets I have locked myself to for the sake of a 12 month contract and a handset subsidy.

So when Apple just turns up with a device that appears to do it all, I want to hate it straight away. When I heard the specs of the first device, I snorted derisively to my friends: "Ha! A 2 megapixel camera and no 3G? Yeah…that'll sell".

At which point they all turned away and started talking about football instead, but still, I had got my point across, and drank my Apple-tini with pride in my corner.