A few weeks ago I realised that it was time to renew my mobile phone contract. I say I realised, because O2 didn’t bother to let me know my time was up. But why would they, they had a sweet deal. I give them money evey month and they give me very little in return. So, off to the online upgrade centre I went.
First of all, it was obvious that not only had O2 upgraded the upgrade site since I had last used it, but they had in my own opinion, made it functionally worse. No longer was it easy for me to see all the upgrade options, no. Now I was forced to look at available phones by manufacturer with no view all option. Still, the choice was obvious: Nokia. I’ve used Nokia’s since I first started using mobile phones back in 2000. With the exception of one year when I got a Samsung – that was a mistake. Imagine my surprise when looking on the available upgrade options that there were no Nokia phones better then the one I was already using, a phone I’d had for 18 months. To make matters worse, none of the phones appeared to be any better from any manufacturer from the phone I was already using, an N95 8GB. None that is, except for Apple.
Now, O2 currently has en exclusive deal with Apple meaning only O2 can sell iPhones in the UK, at least until November that is. My iPhone options were limited – the only model in stock was a White 32GB 3GS. To make things worse, the phone was expensive. I’ve never paid money for a phone before, instead allowing the contract to provide me with a free phone. Selecting the most expensive contract still did not make the iPhone free. I was stuck.
The next day I went on again, determined to get a new phone. After looking at my options again, I went for the iPhone. It cost me £274 to upgrade to it. Ouch. However, I take solace in the fact that I now have a cheaper contract (£30 a month instead of £35) and I should get £150 for the old N95 8GB meaning overall, after the 18 month contract the iPhone will actually have cost me £34. Which isn’t actually too bad. Now I know what you’re thinking – such a cheap contract can’t give me many free minutes or texts and you’d be right – it barely gives me anything at all aside from the convenience of not having to top up. What it does do however, is give me access to the internet and importantly my email where ever I am (as long as O2′s moderate network coverage covers me that is)! As a web developer, I find this an invaluable addition to my life.
So, several days later the iPhone arrives. The first thing you notice is the box. It’s small. Very small. Much smaller than any other mobile phone box I’ve seen in the past. But don’t be fooled by this size – the box is made to a ridiculously high quality. Opening the box reveals more exciting goodies – and a very well arranged content. From the top there’s the iPhone, then a little pinch pull which reveals the lower compartment and contains the quick start guide. The lower compartment contains an iPhone connector USB cable, USB socketed power plug (beautifully designed) and the less exciting iPod headphones. The box doesn’t contain a manual – just a quick start guide. Although, the phones use is almost self explanatory.
Turning on the phone reveals its high value. Beautiful design, magnificent finger response on the touch screen – it really is a marvel of human ingenuity and progress. The oleophobic coating of the 3GS is an interesting addition. It certainly makes removing finger prints quite easy and if you have dry enough skin like I do, you don’t actually leave any finger prints at all (this makes you less willing to let other people have a play, as they’ll more often than not return it covered in their finger grease). One thing I did notice is that this coating has not been applied to the main press button – which is a shame.
Changing the settings of the phone is quite simple – just press the settings option and everything you need is right in front of you. The default selection of installed software is more than you’ve ever had on a phone before – maps with GPS being my favourite. And of course safari – browsing the web with a real web browser finally! It’s quite hard to fault the phone at all; the user interface is inspired, it’s very fast – at least compared to my old phone, apps. Apps. The app store – who’d have thought how good it was! Remember all those years ago at the back of magazines there were adverts for mobile phone game downloads, wallpapers, ringtones etc? Well, I never bought any. Ever. One week with the appstore and I’d already spent £20 – and most of that on 59p and free apps. Genius.
There’s an app for everything. Really. Have a look at all the apps I have installed at the moment – yes, they’ve even managed to put SimCity on the thing. And not the original PC version, no. It’s pretty much the latest SimCity 4. Amazing stuff. Gowalla is another game, based on world locations. Simply visiting a spot and checking in. All powered through the Global Positioning System. It’s all quite exciting! We can’t forget Peggle of course, that fantastic flash based web game – converted for iPhone (as the iPhone can’t use flash).
So there we go. The iPhone is amazing. Get one if you haven’t already.
But, I can’t let it end there. No sir. When I walked into work with the thing, people were set a gasp. But why? There are plenty of people with iPhones. Of course, they all Mac lovers and fanboys. So what’s so special with me? Well, I don’t really get on with OSX – it’s not my cup of tea. I much prefer Windows. Which, apparently means I shouldn’t like the iPhone in some peoples eyes. But you can’t deny the sheer quality and usability of the iPhone – they’ve taken years upon years of Nokia development and somehow just made it even better. So I don’t have to like Macs – the phone doesn’t suffer from the things I don’t like on macs – small window buttons, menus all over the place and a dodgy ‘finder’.
Are there any problems with it? Well yes. The biggest one being the battery. Now, it’s a powerful phone. Very powerful. I have more stuff going on than I ever did on the Nokia, and in a cleaner, crisper, faster more powerful way. So it’s obvious the battery will drain faster isn’t it. Yes, of course, so why complain? Well because of the slight oversight of the battery. The battery in the iPhone is of the same capacity as my old N95 – a phone with half as much processing power, less memory and less reason to use it constantly. Two or three times the capacity would have been much better even if it did add an extra 1mm to the thickness of the phone.
The camera could be seen as a problem, being only 3 megapixels. But then, I have a real camera for that so for me it’s not an issue. iTunes, as functional as it is, is a butt ugly grey square on my otherwise shiny, glossy Windows 7 desktop. It would have been nice if the iTunes developers had used the actual operating system windowing elements rather than forcing them to all look so ugly. Shame on you. And 9 minutes for snooze with no way to alter it? Boo!
That’s pretty much my round up – you can see from the pictures I have partially solved the battery problem though. An additional slot on battery pack called the MiLi which increases the overall battery capacity to 300%.
The full image set I took for this article can be seen on flickr.
Our story begins in Derby train station at 6:40am, where we boarded the “West Highland Statesman” weekend excursion train. We were sitting in a very posh premier dining carriage, made by Pullman in the 1970′s and named Apollo. This train would be our home for the next 13 hours until our arrival in Fort William.
Some time afterwards, breakfast was delivered to our table with a glass of bucks fizz. Sausage, eggs, bacon, potato, mushroom etc, it all made for a very happy eating occasion. We were offered some toast later on too, but I think the fry-up was probably enough to start with!
With breakfast gone and the light beginning to appear I began to turn my camera towards the great outdoors and photograph the landscape, rather than food and Ben! Sometime later it was announced to us that one of the carriages had developed a severe wheel flat (a flat tyre if you wheel), and so we’d be travelling a little slower than we were scheduled for and would have to swap the affected carriage out. A flat wheel isn’t as odd as it may seem – one side of the metal wheel becomes worn to a point where it stops rolling properly, and either drags along the rail or makes a bit of a thumping noise.
In Manchester we were joined by Ben’s parents and a couple of his old teachers. It was 11am by this point, and we were glad we’d opted for breakfast just after 8am! Breakfast was eventually served to the newcomers, followed by the dumping of the Buttermere carriage at Carnforth. With the wheel flat out of our way, we were free to chug on to Scotland.
As civilisation disappeared out of the window, food entered our bellies via canapés, several courses of food and Petit Fours. Not to mention the wine and champagne!
Because of the wheel flat earlier in the day, our train was delayed several times successively for sprinter trains to pass as we’d missed our station slots and charter trains are considered a lower priority on the rail network, regardless of delays. At one point, we would only have caused a delay of a few minutes to one train but because of the current system we were delayed by over half an hour instead. Thanks network rail! An extended leg stretch in Rannoch because of the delays meant that we eventually got our coaches from Spean Bridge to the hotel, rather than from Fort William.
On arrival at our hotel, The Ballachulish, we went straight in for dinner and some sleep!
One of the highlights of this trip is Glenfinnan, where we made a stop. The station has a little museum and shop, and we were treated to some bagpipe music on the platform by one of the train’s stewards! Glenfinnan is also home to the Glenfinnan Viaduct, a massive stonework bridge spanning a wide valley. If you’ve ever seen a Harry Potter film you’ll have seen this viaduct – it’s the impressive one the Hogwart’s Express travels over. I didn’t manage to get any photos of it, but I did get an HD video whilst we were going slowly over it on our return.
Now, as it turns out, riding on a train is quite tiring and poor Ben kept falling asleep. Luckily, I was there to capture the moments with my trusty camera.
My purchases from Mallaig consisted of a fridge magnet and a furry haggis. Now, a haggis is just a type of food – not an animal, but earlier that morning Ben’s parents had told me a funny story about Ben! Needless to say, the furry haggis purchase was apt and amusing.
The next day was another early start, with breakfast, coach trip to Fort William and then catching our nice Pullman train home. It was a much better day on the way back, and parts that were dark on the way up were now clear, providing some spectacular views.
Continuing our journey home, brought more food, wine and gluttony. Not to mention games. 70′s peg based mastermind and Othello come to mind. I’m quite good at Othello, having played Reversi (the American version) many a lunch time at school, on Windows 3.1 (It’s up in Nebraska!) Needless to say, I won the game against Ben’s music teacher although I did a sloppy job – leaving two of her pieces on the board!
Seeing an easy win, Ben decided to play Othello against his music teacher too, only to be followed once again by defeat. Bad luck old chap!
One of the things the new iPhone 3GS has is an internal geographic compass. This is achieved with a device known as a magnetometer – something which can give you a 3-dimensional X, Y, Z co-ordinate to the magnetic north pole. The great (and sometimes frustrating thing) about these devices is, that they’re influenced by nearby metallic object, albeit, not by much. Still, this ‘negative’ effect is one we wanted to exploit, and turn into the first visual metal detector app for the new iPhone.
During tests I noticed that metals which tend to be more influenced by magnets were also the items most easily detected – Iron was found easily, but Aluminium barely registered. One of the other things I discovered was the influence of magnets on the 3GS – the stronger the magnetic flux, the higher the influence on the 3D geometrics. After this discovery, and our current lack of icon for the project I had an epiphany and said “Flux. This thing measures Magnetic flux too. How about a flux capacitor?”. Anyone who loves Back to the Future will know what that is! This remains my most significant contribution to the project.
After we’d finished producing the app and start of the site, we went to record the video in my dining room, with my Panasonic Lumix (The resolution on that thing isn’t too bad for a video). The final cut of this video features me swearing (sorry about that) and the sound of the doorbell, as a nice man delivers our Indian curry. Mmm.