Being such a techno boffin, I decided to go and get myself an Apple iPhone 16 gig 3GS from the same provider I've been with for over 10 years. What do I think of it? I will just say this... I've had it a total of 5 days and I changed providers based on the lack of service and my utter hatred of the iPhone itself. I mean, I thought it was going to be really cool, cos I like listening to music on my phone and the screen is nice and big, but I hated the PC-iTunes interaction. Often I would lose stuff when I try to sync other media to the iPhone. As for the phone itself, I found it cumbersome to carry. It's fairly thin, but it's wide and long. Plus I hated the fact that it always tried to get online when I do simple tasks. All I asked my provider is that I change phones, since I understood that I had a 10 day grace period to change my mind. Apparently, this option was removed 2 years ago.

Enter the Nokia N97... the phone that my original provider refused to get for me based on their obsession of the NextG network. In fact, most of the Nokia phones which are half decent are not available. When I changed networks, not only were they happy to give me the N97 free upfront, they also gave me a much more lucrative plan than my previous provider. As for the phone, it's awsome! I've had Nokia phones for about 12 years and I'm sorry I strayed based on popular opinion.

Being a Flash developer myself, the iPhone didn't allow me to use a lot of the regular media formats which the Nokias all seem to. That's probably the main clinch for staying with them. Short and sweet... the iPhone is not for everybody even though most rave about it.

Lessons learned:

- Stick with what you know. Change isn't always a good thing.
- Popular opinion is only part of the majority. The rest don't really get a chance. Meaning that for those who are opposed are generally pushed out of the loop. If everyone made an opinion, the popular ones would probably be against.
- If ever you get poor service from almost any business which has you locked in a contract, just threaten to take your grievance to the press or a TV current affair program. It's phenomenal how some services improves suddenly, or you get a free of obligation contract severance. Bad publicity is a business killer and nobody wants that.