All the extra features are great.

The actual phone was designed by someone that had never used a phone, mobile or landline, before. If you use it in conjunction with a bluetooth car kit then it gets worse.

If you use your phone mainly as a phone, don't get one. Great gadget, though.

I don't know about iphones, but I can say I'm very happy with my HTC Desire Z android phone. It functions well as a phone, which is clearly a plus, and it's got all the whistles and bells of a smartphone. And it's about £20 a month for unlimited internet, 500 minutes of talk time and some ridiculous number of texts. And the phone itself cost nothing.

network provider last week and they gave me an iPhone 4. So far it's been fine, no dropped calls and works well with my bluetooth in the car. I previously had a HTC Desire, and that was a great phone as well. Although neither of them have the battery life of my old Nokia 6310i, or are able to withstand being dropped onto the pavement a lot!

I signed up for mine last year and it's been a constant companion ever since. The stuff further up the thread about its use as an actual phone is spot on, but to be honest I do most of my communicating via text, email and Twitter so the speech side isn't really an issue. The camera is excellent, (there are some truly astonishing photography apps available) and the HD video is superb too, (great if you have kids, and even if you don't). It's also a beautifully milled piece of kit, heavier and more durable than the Nokia and HTC handsets IMHO. And if it ever packs up, just take it to an Apple store and the lovely Moonies there will swap it for a brand new one, (none of that 'we'll have to send it away for 3 months' malarkey). And of course it's an iPod. And.. And.., etc..

Got one last September, and like Prestonia, it's always by my side. Incredibly useful - phone, email, web, camera, music, video, games. Quite possibly the most useful and versatile bit of kit I've ever bought.

But ultimately, as Fraser says above, it depends what you need it for. For me, the idea of it effectively being a 'laptop in my pocket' was the big draw. Some of the things I use it for regularly:

- Calls, texts, email, obviously.
- Camera. I hardly ever take my digital camera out now, the iPhone one is extremely good for a phone camera / video camera.
- Facebook and Twitter (and it's very handy being able to import pics directly from the device)
- Radio and iPlayer listening via the TuneIn Radio app.
- General web browsing.
- iBooks for reading documents on the go. Haven't tried it for a full length book yet, though.
- Sky+ app for recording things if I've forgotten whilst I'm out
- Amazon app for price checking against the high street and shopping on the go.
- Plus assorted games which pass the time here and there.

One thing I'd recommend - get a good, sturdy case. Ideally one with some kind of screen cover.

I'm obsessed with it to the extent that the FPO and I actually had a bit of a row about it last night, because apparently it's never out of my hand!

I'd endorse all the comments above about it being basically not a brilliant phone, but it does all the other stuff AMAZINGLY well. The phone part doesn't worry me, because actual calls account for a tiny percentage of how I use it.

But the apps? Amazing. Being able to shoot 720p video and actually edit on the phone in a cut-down version of iMovie is AMAZING, and as for the photography apps: it's incredible, just for those.

I love it. My iP4 is my third iPhone, and something would have to go drastically, drastically wrong with future models to make me go elsewhere.

Incidentally - the reason Blackberrys are more seen among the Yoof is because there are more "budget" BBs: iPhones only exist at highish price points and are less accessible to Ver Kids.

and my wife has an iphone 4. And I have a Blackberry for work. All have there merits. My wife has the iPhone because I love her dearly. I have the HTC Desire HD because it was half the price of the iPhone over 2 years and as good a phone in my opinion. The apps choice on the iPhone is better and slicker but the HTC integration with Gmail, calender and docs is fantastic and really easy to set up and use (even with my Mac). And the screen is bigger.

Comes down to cost really. But battery life is not great if you leave either type on and polling for data and wifi and gps all the time. Leaving them on just as a phone and then turning the data on the check emails and off again afterwards means that battery life is pretty good on the whole.

Has an android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S. She went for this option as she already has a 160gb iPod classic for music.
I have an iphone4 32 gb and no iPod. All my music is synced to playlists which go on the phone. I subscribe to spotify for a tenner a month which let's me sync almost any album I like for offline playing or streaming over wifi. I use it for Internet browsing, texting, emails all the time. I constantly use apps to remind me to do things. The BBC news app is superb as is racing post and sky sports news. Video is surprisingly high quality. Photos not bad either. I read several books on it using the stanza app whilst on holiday. I used it to watch whole series of programmes whilst on public transport or on the treadmill. Games are as simple or as complex as you want them.

My wife's catchphrase whenever we're out is "can I borrow your iPhone for a minute?"

Case closed, although if I were you I'd hold out for the iPhone 5.

She's just been told to switch it to 2G beacuse the service on 3G was so poor. Calls don't get dropped. The fecking thing doesn't even ring. Texts turn up days after they were sent. And it's not a network problem as we have other phones in the house which work just fine.

My employer provides me with a Blackberry Torch. Far less exciting apps. But it's never yet failed me as a phone.

Any time anyone asks me what computer they should buy (and that's what a smart phone is!) I ask them what they want to do with it. That's the question you should be asking yourself. Once you've worked that out, you need to match your needs with the hardware.
Also, all the phones only do so much, "out of the box" if you're niot prepared to put in a bit of effort configuring stuff then you're not going to get your moneys worth.

You've all got an up from me!

Currently I don't own a video camera, a good simple camera or an ipod - back in a minute, I've got to paint my cave.
Email and internet on the move are going to be really useful and I'm a sucker for toys (which I assume a lot of apps are at heart).

I think I'm going to blooming well go for it. Huzzah!

My only comment is that I bought my iPhone about 18 months ago and was evangelical about it. I work in computers and was amazed at what an extraordinarily well rounded piece of kit it was. However, as per all Apple products, it is now horribly overpriced in comparison with the Andriod phones. 18 months ago, Android simply didn't have enough app coverage but that is levelling out now. On current evidence, there is nothing to justify the price differential between the likes of the HTC desire and the iPhone.

Apple will have to come up with something stellar with the iPhone 5.0 to tempt me to stick with it. As with all technology, as the function converges, price becomes the key selling point and Apple never compromise on price. A better camera just isn't going to cut it.

There is an appreciable difference in most 'premium' brands. There will always be a market for high end goods and fair play to Apple, I don't know a designer who does not use apple but it is a niche market. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone but I'm not sure I love it enough to pay twice the price of a HTC. Cachet alone doesn't do it for me.

For a couple of years there Apple had it all, the iPhone had the style, the desireabality and the substance - it was functionally light years ahead of the others. That has now been eroded on all fronts. People will always pay for innovation and novelty so it'll be interesting to see what they have up their sleeves for the iPhone 5.0 but the rumours don't suggest any groundbreaking new features.

I was pretty much talking about the physical phone. By the by, I did hear a rumour that IOS 5 was not going to be available for 3 and 3G phones. Any truth?

Here are some of the mooted 5.0 phone changes, none of which had me terribly excited....

http://www.tradetechsports.com/iphone-5-rumors-wishlist/

As a long-standing Palm fan I currently use a Palm Pre. Fab phone, s*** battery. The WebOS which is now owned by HP knocks seven shades of *** out of iOS and Android.

I am looking forward to the new HP branded WebOS phones and have my eye on a Pre3. There will also be a mini-smartphone called the Veer which does it all but smaller and an iPad rival TouchPad.

Once that's over I will dance away. It's a great gadget, the iPhone, but it's an utterly shit phone. Terrible for battery life, coverage, speed... it's just awful that in 2011 it's seen as being a contender.

I'm out of there. My partner has an HTC and I will be with her soon. Can't wait.

which I've read with great interest, is the very model of Andrew Harrison's "First World Problems" ...

Meanwhile, for those who own an iPhone and a Blackberry, you can now charge them both at once ...