The iPhone arriveth
It's here! After watching our American cousins getting their mitts on theirs wonderphones months ago we're happy to say that the iPhone has finally arrived on these shores.
We managed to pick ours up at the tiny Saffron Walden Carphone Warehouse last night. Queues in the small Essex market town were virtually non-existent - at 5:30pm there was nobody queueing. By 5:45pm there were about 10 people waiting. Once we got inside there was a minor problem with credit card authorisations not working (overloaded apparently ...) but within 30 minutes they were starting to work sporadically. Within an hour everyone who had queued had been served. The 3 staff members on duty were pleasant but not particularly knowledgable. One even announced to the queue that only the Apple Bluetooth headset would work with the iPhone, and also that if we did not activate them within 7 days our iPhones would stop working! One lady behind me in the queue who was buying two as gifts for clients (don't get any ideas you lot!) was understandably concerned.
One of the benefits of living in a small town is that we were home in 5 minutes. Perhaps most of the big city punters had longer waits and longer journeys, because although we were prepared for a lengthy ordeal in activating the phone via iTunes the process was actually completely painless and took less than 10 minutes from beginning to end (we went for a completely new phone number which probably helped a little).
In the meantime we will continue to play with our amazing new gadget. Watch this space for future posts about it!
Hmmm, just what we need. A phone with a honkin' great speaker sliding out of the back! Hopefully it won't ever land on these shores, but if it does I'm sure the kids will absolutely love it. 
Damn. We were in Hong Kong a few months back and now this story breaks! The price seems extortionate to us since even the most expensive phones are rarely more than US$1000 in Hong Kong (unlike Europe there is no such thing as a carrier subsidy there). Even so, we expect they will sell out in minutes given that 'keeping up with the Joneses' is almost a national pastime in most of China.
Looks like the rumours of the upgraded capacity Nokia N95 are true - as usual it's the FCC that gives the game away. Will this mean a significant challenge to the iPhone? We don't think so.
We're note sure if we totally believe this one - an "email from a tipster" sounds mighty convenient to us. That still doesn't stop the pics from looking pretty slick!
We are normally fans of HTC's cutting-edge phones even if most of them end up being rebranded by the major networks and offered with a multitude of useless proprietary "add-ons". However in the case of the HTC TOUCH we are sadly disappointed. The superficial imitation of the iPhone interface is far too derivative and appears to be a blatant attempt to cash in on iPhone-fever.
Yes, we know the N95 is a hellishly expensive phone which most of us can't afford (shhh, don't tell Apple), but for someone to go out and create a knock-off version? Without the photos we'd have a hard time believing it ourselves! 
We try not to get too jealous of our friends who get the latest kit before we do, but in this case we'll make an exception. The fine folks over at CoolSmartPhone have got their hands on an HTC Elf, and we want it. A lot. We anxiously await the review!
It's official! The new Sony Ericsson W999i is now at the top of our most-wanted phone list, replacing SE's previous 