This for tenderhooligan…

As seen in Halstead’s Red Cross shop. Oddly the Hospice shop had the same error on its sign…

After four years of being a Sony Ericsson evangelist and owning a T610 (still my favourite design), K700, K750, W810 & W880 I’ve got an LG. It’s as big a moment in my consumerist life as when I bought my first pair of Puma trainers after years of only wearing Adidas. How shallow it all seems!

My contract was up, Orange asked me what ‘phone I wanted, and so I looked at what was available. Helen has the K850i and it’s a good ‘phone – it just didn’t do it for me, and it’s been a little unreliable. I don’t do Nokia, and Motorola (the only other make I’ve ever owned) didn’t have a good enough camera in any of their ‘phones. So it was Samsung or LG. The LG Viewty is special, so I went for it.

Three days in and I’m impressed. There are areas of its functionality which I’ll never like as much as my Sony Ericssons (having to press the back button three or four times when a long hold should do it – not going back to the homescreen when you’ve finished a call, meaning you have to do all that pressing – the way that the T9 predictive text seems to switch itself on and off at will or stay on or off in all applications when you always want it on for texting and nearly always off for website addresses…to name just a few…) but it’s just such a lovely thing to use. The big screen is clear and well lit in the way that Nokias never seem to be, and whilst it’s not as responsive a touch-screen as on the iPhone (see below) it’s still far, far better than I expected and getting easier to use each time I operate it. The pictures I’ve taken seem good quality but I’ve yet to print one out yet to see how good it really is. My particular bit of gadget related joy is the way that the ‘phone vibrates very gently when you press a key on the touch-screen. Nice. I’m enjoying LG life.
It’s not a perfect ‘phone but I know I’m happier with it than I would have been with what Sony Ericsson currently has on offer. And after four years using variations on the same basic operating system it’s nice to explore something new.

So why didn’t I get an iPhone then? I’m an Apple user. I have a MacBook and an iPod. I’m typing this on an Apple keyboard plugged into a PC because I’ve yet to find a PC keyboard which types as nicely… Getting an iPhone seems an obvious thing for me to do. I had a play on one last week and it was such a fantastic device. The touch-screen was beyond what I thought was possible (especially when scrolling) and it was so well thought out in the way that only Apples seem to be – it puts the Viewty to shame in both areas.

But.

1. I get my broadband free with Orange. O2 don’t do broadband in this area. The iPhone is only on O2 so I’d have to move networks and end up paying an extra £15-£20 a month on broadband.
2. My Viewty is still a lovely bit of kit despite its little foibles and I got it thrown into my mobile contract for free. An iPhone would have cost me £269. It’s good, but it’s not £269 better than a Viewty.
3. The iPhone currently only holds 8GB of music, video and files. So if I want to be able to carry around all my music with me, which I do, I’m still going to need my £160 iPod Classic.

In short even with free internet browsing (which is almost offset by a higher minimum monthly tariff on the iPhone with O2 and the cheap data deal I get with Orange) the iPhone would cost me an extra £450+ over the length of my eighteen month contract. And I’d still have to carry my iPod around. I was happy paying a little bit extra for my MacBook because I was getting a much better product, but the gap between an iPhone and a Viewty, Nokia N95 etc. isn’t that great.

Maybe I’ll get a second generation iPhone when Apple stop taking the piss about the price. In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy my Viewty…

I’m a great fan of PM with Eddie Mair. I don’t get to hear it every day as it’s on Radio 4 for an hour from 5pm, which doesn’t always coincide with my journey home, but when I do catch it their is invariably some part that makes an impression.

Eddie Mair is superb and his interview today with Hilda Gibson, an ex-Land Girl who will eligible for one of the Government’s new badges of recognition, shows one of the reasons why. His cutting wit and knack of grilling slippery characters with the questions I’d love to be able to ask were put to one side in favour of his other facets as a broadcaster – warmth, soft humour and a generosity of spirit sadly lacking in much of modern radio. He also gave over nearly ten minutes of a one hour show to Hilda Gibson, which in an age where interviewers wheel their guests in, interrupt them mid-flow and then wheel them off is wonderful. It reminded me of the best of John Peel on Home Truths, which is no bad thing.

I encourage you to follow this link to the PM Blog and listen to the interview. It’s how radio should be.

Finally, a word must go to Hilda Gibson (and her poetry). What a wonderful woman. And she hates “basically” too!