iPhone

No, don't panic. I haven't got one.

In London today and had a bit of time to kill so wandered into a Carphone Warehouse on Oxford St to play with an iPhone. I've never seen one close up before, and certainly never played with one.

I have to say I was jolly impressed. It felt a bit big and uncomfortable in the hand after the Centro, but that might have been compounded by the fact it was locked to the bench with a huge lump of plastic at the end of a long wire, and I'm sure you'd get used to it once the shackles were off.

Navigating it was a dream, the screen was bright and clear and through the wifi connection you could see how quickly and neatly stuff like mapping worked.

I was particualrly interested to test out the on-screen keyboard. Clearly in this type (sic) of situation I couldn't get close to being comfortable with it, and made loads of errros, but again, I think that would pass with time. My fingers aren't too big, so that would help. Not entirely sure about the lack of tactile feedback though - iPhone users may like to let me know how they fare. Most of my text entry is short emails and SMS messages.

Safari was great - makes you realise BIG time what you haven't got on the Palm.

I think the thing that made the most impression with me was just the overall clarity about the various screens, and the extra real estate over any device I've previously owes also plays a part here, but it was the clarity rather than the size that hit me.

I'm very impressed.

Inevitably fairly soon a bored looked chap cam up and asked me if I needed any help. I said "Not unless you can get me extra minutes on the basic tariff", and he just shrugged and walked away...well not quite, but he didn't even try to "sell" it to me. And he did walk away.

Oh well. Either I'll come into some money and go for the £35pm package, cause I think 75 mins for the £30pm one is pants, or I'll just lust from afar.

I also crossed the road into the T-Mobile shop to look at a G1. Sadly, neither of the models (a white one and a black one) seemed to be working. Still not keen on the form factor. I don't like the "chin", and I've decided as far as keyboards go it's got to be front facing or on-screen - none of this slide out rubbish.

I also though the white one looked like it was made of very cheap plastic (let's face it, most phone are made of cheap plastic, but some just looks cheaper than others). The black unit looked much better on the eye, but I appreciate that's a wholly subjective view. Either way, it didn't look like it could hold a candle to the iPhone, though without seeing it working that's also a subjective statement. And the salesperson was even less interested in me than the Carphone Warehouse one had been when I told them I already had a monthly T-Mob contract.