Ricky Martin’s Blog

Well it’s true I finally got an official Apple iPhone. I had been looking into these for a while, but couldn’t bear to dish out that much cash for one and have to sign up for a long term contract. Since we are living in the UK I was looking into them as we have been using pay as you go SIM cards since we have been here given that we don’t use the phones that much, and the fact I have a mobile phone (as they say on this side of the pond) or cell phone (as they say in most of North America) from work. So I really don’t use a personal phone all that much except for after hours and the weekends mostly.

With that being said I had picked up a couple of Blackberry pearls on e-bay for myself and the wife. they worked with the pay as you go SIMS, with one major exception, can’t do e-mail on them, and can’t use internet or data without paying for it up front or switching to a monthly plan. So there was the dilemma I wanted to use the full capabilities of the blackberry but would have to switch to a monthly plan in the area of 30GBP/Month. now I don’t really like that idea as we both don’t talk on the phone that much to warrant that kind of plan, even if we get the data included still high.

So I started to do some looking into the iPhone, that and the fact I wanted to explore further into developing something with the iPhone I started looking at them on e-bay and checking out how much they were going for. you could pick up an older generation iPhone for about 250 GBP. which is not bad considering what you get, but when you start looking into it you can get the new 8GB 3G version on pay as you go for about 340GBP all things considered. And the same ones on e-bay are going anywhere from 280-800+GBP. which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So I actually got one for my birthday from my wife (she rocks!) and she loves gadgets just as much as I do. So we got them with O2 who is the only provider selling them here in the UK, the beauty of it is the plans they have are actually pretty good for pay as you go and the real selling factor I found is you get as a new customer with the iPhone 12 months of free internet access and Wi-Fi unlimited in the UK. So with that said you can get e-mail and everything on your iPhone no special plans, no extra monthly costs.

Now it has only been a couple of days but already I am loving the iPhone. I have to say it is very easy to use and set up. I got my e-mail working on it rather quickly. only problems I had was needed to put in the password on the phone as it imports all the info from my computer through iTunes when you sync it up. my only disappointment with it is that I use Thunderbird for my e-mail and it only seems to see outlook as an option for mail syncing. But that is not such a big issue as I use IMAP so there is nothing really in outlook for it to sync up with other than the settings.

One of the other things we realized is with the iPhone you can do so much it eliminates the need for several other devices. as we had recently purchased MP3 players for use at the gym mainly. but since the iPhone has that functionality we don’t need to carry around another device, also it has GPS functionality, hence we can now get rid of our GPS for the car. and don’t need to bring along a laptop really with us when we travel as most of what we do on the laptop can be done on the iPhone.

As such if your interested in any of these items you can check out my latest stuff for sale posted on E-bay by clicking the link.

As I learn more about the iPhone I will list updates. If you have any suggestions please share them with me?