Wandering around town after the Wordia press launch last week with Christian I was encouraged to pick up a an iPhone. Already had some well deserved grief over this one, but Jess came to my rescue (as usual) and co-opted the shiny little bastard as a belated birthday present. Now I can whip it out in public and deflect the “I thought you said the iPhone was a piece of crap?” comments with the my girlfriend bought it for me clause.

Less than a week old, but yeah it’s crappy in all the areas I expected:

battery life is terrible, most of the applications come from the same fuckwit funnel as the crap on Facebook, the camera is so-so and it cries out for a second camera and video capibility, then fails as an iPod replacement too due to the meager 8 or 16GB capacity.

Pushing all that aside and treating it as an extra gadget to throw in my bag it’s a lot of fun. Some of the apps are great, the screen is shockingly bright compared to my Archos and because this is the PAYG version I’m not tied to anyone for 18months. Having 3g means I can find more than enough uses for it to start bitching about the lack of a decent battery at least once a day.

I hear a rumour there’s a 32GB version on the way, which would at least bring it into line with the iPod Touch (we also have one of those in the house now – thin little fucks), but the 16GB one I have should do fine as I’m not really using it as an Archos replacement. I’ll probably hang on to my Viewty for the 120fps recording facility alone so I’m now one of those idiots with two phones.

I’m beta testing the new upgrade to LifeCast too so I will be using it as a blogging tool from time to time. As a pocket version of Twitter it’s exceptional (I use a Twinkle, Twittervision and Twitterific combo). I’ve also downloaded a handful of Japanese comic apps that are utilising the interface in an interesting way.

More on all this once I’ve got used to the thing, dropped it or thrown it against the wall…