At long last, last week I finally joined the world of the iPhone! 

Having been stuck in a contract for some time with a Nokia N95, I’ve been struggling to be patient awaiting my chance to move on!  So what conclusions have I reached after a week?

My iPhone is the 3GS 16Gb model which seemed a good compromise, as I wanted the better bits of the 3GS but the 32Gb required more upfront cost.  I don’t see me having a problem with 16Gb – there’s plenty of space at the moment!

My favourite features to date:

- The User Interface.  The UI has to be iPhone’s biggest selling point and it has impressed me even more as I live with it.  Very little need to check how to do things as it is very intuitive, and menus are very logical.  I found I adapted to the touchscreen very quickly, and even text entry has taken very little time to get used to.

- Integration with Google Apps using Google sync.  This was ridiculously easy to set up, and immediately synced my contacts, calendar items and emails.  It’s so nice to have a properly synced calendar available, rather than having to wait until I plugged my phone in at home with my previous phone, which of course I usually forgot to do!

- Apps!  Of course, the app store is another huge selling point for the iPhone.  I’ve been playing with the obvious apps, such as the excellent Facebook app, and the Google app – I especially love voice search, although it doesn’t always get what I said first time – I’ve found trying a bit of an american accent seems to help!  I’ve also downloaded lots of games, I enjoy little puzzle games and have spent far too much time on Minesweeper – it’s taken me back to my early Windows days!

So far, I’m less impressed with:

- Signal strength.  My Nokia was awesome at finding a signal.  I live mid-way up one side of a quite steep valley, and a lot of people struggle to get a signal at my home.  My Nokia always managed, but the iPhone never gets beyond half signal, and sometimes loses signal entirely.  I realised that I am using a three or four year old SIM card, so have ordered a new one – hopefully this might help as other users have reported benefitting from a new SIM.

- Battery power.  The downside of such a useful device is I do play with it a lot, and on one day I nearly exhausted the battery in one day.  It’s not the end of the world, but just need to make sure I charge it when I get the opportunity.  I’ve ordered a car charger and another USB cable to use at work, so this will help.

- Addiction.  I’ve spent far too much time recently playing with my phone.  I find myself in social situations ignoring the conversation to read an email.  Not good!  Hopefully the excitement will wear off enough to enable me to revert to being a bit more normal (I’ve never been all that normal!).

In conclusion, I’m definitely converted, the iPhone is everything I’d hoped, and I’m looking forward to playing with lots more apps – I’ll try and talk about the best ones here.