Rob Clymo: Columnist - Tech & Gadgets
The Clymo Brief: Time to buy an iPhone?
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Having my trusty mobile phone trashed recently could have been a sign that I finally need to get an iPhone. And when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced on Monday an improved model at a lower price, it should have sealed the deal. “It’s more affordable,” said Jobs, conceding that 56% of people who haven’t yet purchased an iPhone say it’s because of the price.

Unfortunately, as soon as somebody spilled that bottle of cheap white wine all over my old Nokia, I went straight out and bought another, erm, Nokia. Hey, I’m short on patience and can’t wait for July 11, OK?

In pictures: the iPhone 3G

But while the N95 is arguably a better handset with sporadically pacy web browsing and a decent camera, since Apple is offering the new model for £100 then perhaps I should have reconsidered. Absurd cost has always been the major turn-off until now, but a killer price-tag allied to 3G performance makes the iPhone tempting. However, I just couldn’t hang on.
“What do you use your phone for?” barked the surly salesman, as I shopped for a replacement for my heavily soiled handset.

“Um, making calls…sending texts…” I replied, stating the bleeding obvious. “Pictures, what about pictures,” he demanded to know, sounding like a graduate fresh from the Margaret Thatcher Charm School. “To be honest, I don’t take pictures on my phone that often,” I confessed. That’s mainly because they’re rubbish. Besides, I’ve got at least one digital camera that does a better job. In fact, I’ve got several.

All-rounder
What I really need is a good all-rounder - a phone that will do everything and cut down on the gadget overkill. At the moment, I need a man-bag for all the gubbins I have to drag around. Strewth, it’s 25 degrees outside and I’m still carrying a fleecy jacket, simply because it’s the only thing that can hold all my ‘stuff’.
In any one day, my pockets are usually bulging with a phone, iPod (various), PDA, cameras (numerous), sat-nav bits and bobs alongside house and car keys, plus a dazzling array of memory sticks. I need features on a phone that can do away with all, or at least some of that.

The iPhone’s new and impressive technical spec includes GPS – which sorts out sat-nav - but I think it will be its applications where the exciting developments really happen. I’m particularly keen on how the iPhone could become a cross-platform organiser using the MobileMe feature. “It’s Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us,” beams the affable ‘John’ through dazzling pearly-whites in an Apple promo video clip.

Immense potential
A feature like this will whip up interest with business users who would normally use a BlackBerry due to its excellent emailing capacity, but it also has immense potential for crossover users – like me.
As someone who uses both PCs and Macs, this promises synchronisation of email, calendar, contact lists and photos between the iPhone and all your computers. If it functions as smiling John says it does then I’m sure I’ll love it.

The service keeps all your data stored on a virtual ‘cloud’ (or secure online server to you and me) and, using a push email system, ensures you’re always viewing up-to-date information. There’s also an online storage supply of 20GB that could prove very handy as I’m forever running out of disk space.

Web preview
Hopefully the iPhone 3G will also make mobile surfing of the web a worthwhile pastime. Up until now it’s largely been rubbish. I remember getting an internet-enabled phone years ago and being hugely excited about exploring every nook and cranny of the web while travelling. Except it didn’t work.
Fast forward to this year and even browsing web pages using the new BlackBerry Pearl 8100 is little better. The Nokia is fairly good but the iPhone not only promises to do it faster but on a screen where you can preview and read pages whole, rather than a few lame lines at a time.

Sadly, back on the point of pictures, it looks like the lacklustre two megapixel camera remains the least inspiring iPhone feature. So we’re still a way off having a do-it-all gadget that’ll allow me to forget the silly man bag idea and leave my jacket at home. Nevertheless, I think the case for buying myself an iPhone is a stronger one now than it was before.

Ultimately though, is that pricing really any better? It’s easy to use the £100 ballpark figure to reel people in but, on closer inspection, the contracts still look pretty pricey to me. Saying that, it seems contracts will include unlimited data browsing – which will be the first topic of conversation when I head back to see Mr Angry on or around July 11.

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Rob Clymo is a journalist employed on a freelance basis by Microsoft. The views in this article are those of the author and not of MSN or Microsoft.