Last night I had a few people around at my flat for a bit of a catch up. Mike, currently visiting from over in the States, who’d recently bought an iPhone fortunately had it with him so we all got a little hands on sneak preview. Strangely he’s had to take the sim card out since they can’t disable global roaming at the moment and would cause his bill to sky rocket.

The iPhone looked a lot smaller than I imagined it would be, approximately the same size as the current standard iPod. The interface is simple, with a single button at the bottom and everything else controlled via either motion or touch sensors. Its interface is, for the most part, very intuitive. For example, unlocking the phone simply requires a finger drag from left to right across the “lock” icon displayed on the screen. Predictive text input is much more advanced, context sensitive if you’re web browsing or texting and autocorrecting based on the letters in the vicinity (and not just the buttons you pushed).

My most favourite bit was definitely when you put the phone into iPod mode. Turning the phone on its side turns it into a visual display of all the albums where you can flip through each and every one that’s currently on your phone. A flick of the finger moves either left or right, and a longer drag results in a much faster way of going through them all. Visually very satisfying!

I can’t say that I’m going to convert any time soon considering I’m pretty happy with my current phone and can’t really justify the premium.