Wait for the iPhone?

I’ve not been bothered by all this iPhone rumour nonsense but am starting to get the spark of desire.

As you might have already read I’m currently toying with the idea of a new mobile. My contract is almost up and Jersey now has two mobile companies so I have a choice of operators trying to give me everything for nothing.

So I can get a new phone for nearly nothing but is it worth waiting for the iPhone. I’m currently salivating over the new Sony Ericsson W950i with it’s pretty screen and 4gb memory.

I played with it in the Sure Mobile shop and it’s very user friendly, pretty and packed with features. Plus I’m a big fan of Sony Ericsson phones.

It has all sorts of features including video, mp3 playback, RSS feeds, music recognition, e-mail, a touchscreen, full screen internet, handwriting recognition and a load of ‘extra’ applications you can buy to make it even more fully rounded.

The extras include GPRS, an Audible app, translation software, and more besides.

Apple’s iPhone is going to have to do a LOT to better the ever increasingly brilliant and feature packed phones currently on the market.

You know what? I honestly think it WILL. You know why? Because Apple will simplify it, they will still give us the same great feature set but they will make it easy to use, simple to access and very user friendly.

But it all depends on what it looks like and how much of an mp3 player it turns out to be. Although I love the fact that the Sony Ericsson is a Walkman phone, I prefer the fact that it’s still a great communication device first.

I don’t want a phone for making calls – I rarely ever do that on it – I want it as an internet access system, a way to communicate anywhere, easily – and that is what I think the iPhone will do.

I’m guessing it will WiFi support and probably feature iChat as well. It will have a nice big, clear screen for accessing the internet AND will let you play iPod games – why else do you think they were introduced

I’m also guessing that when the iPhone comes out we will see iChat for the PC released.

So what will it look like? I have no bloody idea but it WILL be pretty and will probably come in white and black. A lot of people have been guessing though – some good, some bad, some pretty, some really ugly.

You can see them all if you do an image search on google for Apple iPhone. It includes clamshells, nano slideouts, strange flappy things and a wide variety of variations on those themes.

I’m going to wait until January or February before getting a new phone – if only because I don’t want to get the Sony and then find that Apple really have managed to pull a corker.

However, the problem is I doubt we will actually see the iPhone in the UK in January – in fact I doubt we will see it until next Christmas in the UK.

From the blogosphere: one digital life, James Barbour, mobile14, Mike Stopforth and techlime.

Oh and yes, I know Kevin Rose (Diggman) mentioned it on the latest Digg, thats one of the reasons I’m actually writing this – but it’s been mentioned right across the blogosphere (see above) so I didn’t see the point in going into it myself.

But seen as I have already – if he’s right the iPhone will come in a 4 and 8gb model, have a seperate battery for the MP3 player and phone, will work on all US carriers, will cost around $250 – $450 and will be out in January.