Exciting Stuff...

Well, my iPhone finally arrived... but only after I had made several phonecalls to the courier, and given them a piece of my mind (politely, but I think I made my point!)

The package was supposed to be delivered on Monday. I had my neighbours on standby all day, but the courier didn't show up. Parcel tracking via the internet showed that it had arrived safely in Dartford at 7am on Monday morning, and I live only 20 minutes away... it was a case of the package ending up in the wrong bag, and nearly being sent back to O2, but disaster was averted, and the branch manager delivered it personally this evening.

The box was a bit of a shock: it was smaller than the one my camera had arrived in! And then there was an even smaller box inside the outer box... and then the iphone was just in the top of the box, with a plug, data cable and earphones... and a couple of bits of paper explaining how to use the phone, and warning me not to let it get wet.

It was just as well that I examine all packages carefully, as otherwise I might have missed the little paperclip thingy which is supposed to release the doobrey-whatsit for the SIM card. When I checked the online help, it said that the end of an ordinary paperclip could be used instead, which is just as well, as, in two years' time, I am not sure I'll still have the original clip. The charger is also a little weird: just a plug... into which you have to insert the data cable. This is a pain, because I will want the phone to re-charge near my bed (overnight) but I don't want to have to keep getting the data cable in order to sync with my PC in the sitting room. I might get myself an extra data cable.

I had to download iTunes onto my PC before I could activate my phone, and that took quite a bit of time because it was trying to organise the music I've copied from my CDs. I also backed up my calendar and tried to sync my old mobile with Outlook... I am very disappointed that Calendarscope doesn't sync with iPhone at all - I don't like Outlook, but it might be a case of making do: having the calendar on the phone is just too useful.

I did like the fact that the phone appeared to have been charged. That saved a fair amount of time. The camera is 3.0 MP, the same as my current Xda Orbit 2, but it doesn't appear, at first glance, to allow any settings to be changed on the phone itself... and it doesn't have a flash. That is better than having a flash I can't turn off, though, and, as I mentioned before, I have a dedicated digital camera now, so the phone camera isn't such an issue.

I was a little surprised by how big the iPhone appeared compared to my current phone - it's much slimmer, but is both longer and wider... and there's not much difference in weight. It feels much more "touchable" than my old phone, and I am impressed by the oil-resistant finish on the front of the phone (a shame it doesn't have it on the back as well!)

I'm not ready to download any apps just yet - I need to wait for payday - but I have already spotted that Apple have a set of apps categorised under "Catholic", including iPieta which comes highly recommended.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure if I've done the right thing in moving over to the iPhone: the Xda Orbit is more like a hand-held PC as it had a stylus for handwriting recognition and I could create Word documents, and read Excel and PowerPoint files... as well as it supporting my preferred calendar format. I have two weeks in which to decide...