You have a point foilpact, but a mk1 N95 (which is cheaper) can do all that anyway, you just need a big enough mem card in there for the storage, it doesn't come with the top gear preloaded tho.

True, Is this for contract or PnG tho?

Im on PnG, but i dunno what the OP's plans are, as you can get new top of the line handsets for a very good price on contract depending on wheather you want a contract phone or not, 3 seem to offer the best packages for the price IMO.

Or go crazy with the Nokia N900 with Linux and force feedback touchscreen lol...

PnG with Tesco Mobile FTW. My N95 has MSN, YouTube and all that built in. You can run Windows on a N95 with DOSBox, just make sure you have enough memory. I have Windows 3.1 set up, but I haven't enough memory free to use it yet.

Nice one, wiN95 then!

Windows 95 will work too, just I haven't found a release yet.

Buy an iPhone 3GS. It's just awesome!

I wouldn't buy an Apple product, for the fact of the build quality / reliability.

That leaves more for me. I don't particularly like Apple products (I never wanted a Mac or an iPod after playing with friends' and family's items), but the iPhone is great! I'm sure it'll be surpassed (if it isn't already, but I've not seen anything that tickles my fancy yet) as it's a competitive sector.

And, yes, it isn't perfect. But it does everything I need of it, and hasn't broken or fallen to bits yet! Seems pretty indestructable to me, after the punishment I've given it.

i think the main thing keeping the iphone popular is the ammount of apps there is for it. i can't even get a simple remote app for my viewtyII.

I'm a bit late joining this discussion, but I have to say that I absolutely love my iPhone (I was late joining that bandwagon too). The massive range of apps is one of the main reasons for this, and a major reason for why I wanted it, but why not? Anything that adds to the range of functions a product has can't be bad.

But the quality of the sound you get on phone calls is fantastic and network coverage (for O2 at least) is brilliant. The only places I've managed to cause it problems are deep in the Cotswolds and miles away from anywhere in the Highlands - even then the signal was simply unreliable and never went for long. And now there's even a choice of operators so you can probably find one to suit any location.

I've dropped it a handful of times (from about 5 feet off the ground due to not being used to the shape or getting used to the case I have) and nothing's gone wrong yet. I've jailbroken it both successfully and unsuccessfully, and iTunes never fails to restore factory settings without a hitch.

So er, yeah, that went a little long. But you get the jist. I've not used that many other smartphones, but I've tried a couple of Blackberrys and some new Nokia and Samsung things and while they offer a lot of the same functions it comes down to the selection of apps to make the deciding factor. Everyone in my band got an iPhone after trying somebody else's

Wouldn't the Nokia N97 32GB be better? I'm not suggesting it to TiJay (price!) but surely it would beat the iPhone 3GS?

Does the IPhone have Satnav or Wifi built in?... Also do they really only come with a 3MP camera?.. I thought 3MP was the standard in about 2004?....

Quote from Foilpact :

Does the IPhone have Satnav or Wifi built in?... Also do they really only come with a 3MP camera?.. I thought 3MP was the standard in about 2004?....

MP means nothing, WiFi yes, SatNav you have to pay for - however I've yet to see ANY SatNav software on a phone thats remotely decent.

The N95 has some decent GPS software - TomTom.

The N95 also has a much much smaller screen than I could comfortably use while driving

No, the iPhone camera isn't that great. But it's a camera on a phone. If I want decent quality I'll buy a decent camera. Besides, the lens is more important than the MP count (MP count is used to sell cameras to morons that they don't actually need - 3MP is easily enough for printing and viewing day to day).

Having said that, the iPhone camera lens isn't all that great either. So don't buy one if you like taking poor quality photos of celebrities or 'nice cars' on your travels (that is, I believe, what 99% of photos taken on phones are of?)

The N95 camera says on the back - Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar 2.8/5.6 Autofocus 5 Megapixel.

either way with a focal length of less than half a cm youre gonna get horrible looking pictures no matter what phone you buy

Quote from Shotglass :

either way with a focal length of less than half a cm youre gonna get horrible looking pictures no matter what phone you buy

Exactly. But it's a sales gimmick, and people fall for it.

Quote from Dajmin :

Everyone in my band got an iPhone after trying somebody else's

To the OP, that there is the key to solving your dilemma. Go try em, before you buy em !

I recently switched from using a smartphone to an iPhone, and to be honest, i don't think i'll be changing back anytime soon. Granted there's nothing an iPhone can do that smartphones haven't been able to do for the last few years, but, it's the way the iPhone does it that sets it apart. If a lump of plastic crammed full of electronics and witchcraft can ever be called "moreish" then the iPhone has to be at the top of the tree. It's so silky smooth in its operation and so so easy to use, any idiot can pick it up and master it within minutes (me for instance), yet, with over 100,000 apps you will never ever get board. I can't put mine down, i'm smitten.

I got the smartphone originally because it had all the MS office bits and pieces included, but, when it came to actually using them, it was a complete pain in the arse, infact these things are next to useless. Try writing a document with the stylus on that stupid little WinMo pop-up keypad, or even worse, try doing it with the pull-out keyboard that's specifically designed to be utterly impossible for anyone with adult sized thumbs to use. So all you end up using it for is to store documents/spreadsheets etc, and any phone can do that. If you really want to use it as a mobile office, buy a laptop.

And if you want to take decent quality photos ? as other have said, buy a real camera.

At the end of the day, we all have different needs from a phone, and we'll all use it for different purposes, so, as i said above, go try as many as you can before buying one. Chances are you'll never use or never need 80% of the stuff that comes packaged with a smartphone. That probably applies to the iPhone too (although that figure is probably a lot less, well, for me anyway)

Quote from Jakg :

MP means nothing, WiFi yes, SatNav you have to pay for - however I've yet to see ANY SatNav software on a phone thats remotely decent.

I've yet to see any standalone dedicated satnav pna (?) that you could call decent either. Fact is, there's no such thing as a perfect satnav device. I've used pna's from Tom Tom and Garmin, smartphone software from Tom Tom and Navigon (7) and CoPilot on the iPhone, and all of them are flawed in one way or another. Some are unbelievably stupid, some are infuriatingly complicated to set up, some are infuriatingly incomplete, and others are downright dangerous. Thing is, a satnav should only ever be used as a navigational aid to get you to where you wanna go, never a , set-in-stone, she-who-must-be-obeyed matron type, navigation dominatrix.

Aparently there's an ongoing study at the moment looking into how blindly following satnav instructions effect drivers concentration and awareness, and also how many accidents and cases of bad/dangerous driving is caused by late/faulty or inaccurite directions. Should make very very interesting reading.

Then again, any electronic satnav is at least 10,000% better than the wife. No word of a lie this, but, a few years back i drove from Newcastle to Shropshire (a journey of about 5hr). The missus sat in the passenger seat with the map book (no satnav in those days) on her lap for the entire journey. Not only was it upside down thoughout, but it was permanently opened on the page that only showed Newcastle and the surrounding area. Don't think she never looked at it either. On several occasions i would ask "which way babe", she'd look at the map and say "uhmm, i think it's left here" by which time i'd found a roadsign and just guessed. Even when we reached Shrewsbury (our destination) she was still looking at an upside down map of Newcastle and giving directions. Mind you, she does have a far far sexier voice than any satnav woman has (really), much nicer arse too

Anyway, that turned out to be a much much longer post than i had originally planned, and it's getting late, so i'm gonna go sit in a darkened corner somewhere and get very very drunk. Happy New Year everyone (not that i really give a shit about any of you, but, i guess it's the seasons greetings, so, ermm, accept it)

Just compared them, and the N95 has a lense which is nearly as big as my Hitachi HDC-761E 7MP digital camera.

I can put a giant bit of glass in front of my G1's camera - doesn't mean it's good.

"Carl Zeiss" lens for phones are made under license anyway, so aren't really made by them at all.

i understand what you'reb talking about Jakg but just like a monitor, a cameras resolution (megapixels) determins the sharpness of your overall pic. to say that 3mp is more than enough is like saying you do not need a monitor bigger than 20"
we all know that the hight the res, the sharper the pic. this means more megapixels. my phone has 8megapixels.
again, i can see the difference.
to show the difference, take a pic with a low(ish)res, say 3mp. then take the same pic with a higher mp, reduce that pic to match the res of the lower pic and you will see the difference.
i'm 23 tins of beer in so this might not make much sense, if so, let me know and i will bust my bow-lax to try to make it more understandable.