Since the display doesn’t change when you are looking down at it, you can lift it vertically, rotate it then put it back down. Whatever orientation the screen was when vertical is retained when horizontal. This was a majorly hyped feature that I think is actually less easy to use than the Windows Mobile technique of tapping the once on the bottom corner of the screen.

Question is, can the view be changed manually or is it all automatic? If it’s only automatic, then that’s not just useless, it’s a major bug.

To be really honest, and not facetious, I really want an ipod touch or iphone less since I played with one on Regent’s street.

I believe they do, actually. I read some blurb by whichever organisation it is that does these tests once, and they have a number of different tests: time to connect, percentage of calls that get disconnected mid-call, etc. I think the phenomenon you describe is caused by a couple of factors: one is network overload, and one is that the signal-strength indicator on the phone is based on the last time your phone checked for cells, so, when you’re moving, it can tell you what the signal strength was where you were a minute ago rather than where you are now. I think. Anyway, in my experience, all the networks except T-Mobile have those problems (T-Mobile may have them too, but I’ve never tried them).

> Basically, the UK is not California.

Exactly, yes. It’ll be interesting to see whether British consumers buy the phone on the strength of rave reviews from the US, where it works properly, or don’t because of the network/hardware compatibility issues.

Have they tried actually making calls when they test or just drive around looking at signal strength? When I was on o2 (within the last 2 years) it usually always had a strong signal pretty much everywhere. Until you pressed the call button when the signal would disappear. This happened regurlarly on several different phones.

Sorry, I should have said data coverage. My phone does EDGE, but round here it’s all GPRS. 30% coverage *of the population* is the big cities and that’s it. Same goes for the Cloud hotspots. Good luck finding one in nothern ireland…

Basically, the UK is not California.

> And Job’s claims about 3G battery life were proved by AnandTech.

I think you’ve misjudged the criticism here. No-one’s saying that 3G doesn’t drain batteries more than 2G. What we’re saying is that making battery life a greater priority than 3G is a bad idea in the European market. It’s not Jobs’s claim about the length of battery life that’s being questioned; it’s his judgment that 3G would make the battery life so short that it would outweigh any benefit that came from having 3G.

Nobody’s forcing anyone to buy any bit of Apple’s kit or anyone else’s.

Well, yeah, which is why I don’t use Windows Mobile. Symbian, on the other hand, is lovely. The Nokia 9500 is so preposterously nice to use that it turned me into a lifelong Communicator user within days. That would be a fairer comparison, especially since it’s become the de facto standard in a way that Windows hasn’t.

> Nobody’s forcing anyone to buy iPhone or any other bit of Apple kit, which is completely different from Microsoft’s Windows tax and other adventures in monopoly.

The Windows “tax”? You mean the way you pay for Windows when you buy a new PC that has Windows on it? But surely one of the main reasons that happens is that MS let anyone make PCs that will run their OS, which makes it a particularly bizarre example to use when comparing them unfavourably with Apple in terms of monopolistic behaviour.

> why the obsession with Apple’s business tactics and decisions?

I wouldn’t say I were obsessed, but, for better or worse, the iPhone is big news. I’m interested in it the same way I’m interested in other bits of news, and it makes as much sense to point out Apple’s maneouvring and occasional lying as it does Nokia’s (which I did when they screwed up VoIP at the start).

> a terrible network provider whose contracts are too long and too expensive, and whose coverage is terrible.

To be fair to O2, their coverage is so good it keeps winning awards. Their coverage only appears bad when it’s combined with the iPhone, a device designed to use a different type of network.

> Because in many cases the business decisions affect the product.

Exactly, yes. A good example is Safari. Not only is it still buggy as hell, but the decision to make it caused MS to withdraw Explorer for Mac, probably the best browser around at the time. Until Firefox came along, Macs were slightly lower quality machines simply because of its absence.

Nobody’s forcing anyone to buy iPhone or any other bit of Apple kit

No, but in the UK Apple is forcing iPhone buyers to sign up with a terrible network provider whose contracts are too long and too expensive, and whose coverage is terrible. How does that fit with Apple’s “do things better” approach?

Same thing with docking stations needing chips. The iPod is pretty much the only game in town now, and switching to another player is a big hassle because there’s an entire Apple ecosystem – my car has an iPod adapter (not an MP3 player adapter), I’ve got speaker docks, etc. If a new generation iPod expects that stuff to have a particular chip, it’ll refuse to work with the stuff I already have. How exactly does that benefit me? According to the boston herald, the fat nano’s refusal to output video via non-approved – but “made for iPod” – docks is to protect me from “potentially iPod damaging accessories”. To which the only sensible response is “oh, fuck off”.

Also, if you make a distinction between Apple’s products and Apple as a company, why the obsession with Apple’s business tactics and decisions?

Because in many cases the business decisions affect the product. The o2 network is a key part of the iPhone experience; the decision to disable video output in fat nanos affects how the product works. Etc.

“…to say “well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do” is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it’s got a kitchen too, and a bathroom.”