I received a call yesterday from my mobile service provider offering me an early upgrade on my phone, allowing me to replace a Blackberry Bold 9700 with the much lauded iPhone 4. I couldn’t resist it, they were so keen for my ongoing business that they reduced my monthly tariff from £35.00 to £30.00, how could I possibly refuse? Jesus, it was only a couple of years back that I was paying over a hundred pounds a month for a mobile and it was not long before that when my bill was racking up to several hundred pounds, at one point my mobile costs were my biggest company overhead after salaries. The only downside to this deal is that I don’t really know what an iPhone does, I have heard they are great if you have a brain that operates at the pace of technology, but when they are associated with words such as synchronise and bluetooth I feel a nervous energy building up that will ultimately involve the use of the foulest language known to man as I try to make the equipment operational.

The iPhone 4: What a beauty

Bluetooth hates me, it always has, and always will, though I have to say that the feeling is pretty much mutual, it is a text book love hate relationship. I have never actually had Bluetooth operating on two devices at once, though sometimes my phone alleges that it knows my computer then denies it, then my computer does the same back, it is like they are having a secret affair that they don’t want me to know about, I know something is going on, but I don’t know what. I don’t even want to begin to go in to detail about the sickening ordeal I went through trying to connect my phone to a Bluetooth hands free device a while back, it was a hideous occasion featuring my own voice talking back to me at the same time as the unsuspecting person at the other end, it was like those confused satellite conversations you used to see on the news.

“Hello Stewart, it’s Bob”

“How you doi...Hello Stewart, it’s Bob”

“Sorry mate, there is an echo on the phone”

“I wondered what tha..Sorry mate, there is an echo on the phone”

“I’m sorry Stew, I can’t here a fucking thing”

“What crap hand free hav……“I’m sorry Stew, I can’t here a fucking thing”

£120.00 to have a conversation that went nowhere,  I just pull over now, or stick it on loud speak on the passenger seat, it is the only thing that works for me, though I suspect that the fault lies just as much in my brain as it does the equipment, this is because I always drift off in to another little world on or around the third sentence of an instruction manual, such is the tedium associated with it. My biggest concern lies within Microsoft Outlook 2007, my whole livelihood is synchronised  between Outlook and my Blackberry via a USB cable. Setting all that up had me on the verge of a nervous breakdown with tears of rage staining my cheeks, but perversely, when I eventually got it working I was so hyped up with joy I ran around in my empty house punching the air before devouring a box of Jaffa cakes as some sort of adrenalin fuelled personal reward.

So why am I going to put myself through this pain again?  The system I have somehow bodged for myself by taking the anti-manual route works for me, so why am I risking everything just so I can see what the weather is like in Kuala Lumpar? I don’t need to know cinema listings or places to eat, I already have an 8 megapixel camera and an iPod and I have absolutely no desire to make video phone calls, as for APPS, what are they? What am I doing?  Well, the answer is pretty simple really, it’s because it is free, because everyone else has one, and the sorry fact that I just can’t resist the sensation of the misery I know it will put me through at the synchronization stage, knowing that it will be followed by the satisfaction of actually getting it to work eight hours after the average time it would have taken a ten year old with learning difficulties. There is something bordering on erotic about losing all your contacts for several hours before finding a miracle cure that reinstates them, albeit with the surname and Christian names of the contacts reversed and the bizarre re-emergence of people with names like Smith/J/Mob2 who had been deleted several years ago.

Of course, I have a get out of jail card in the shape of two teenage sons who could deal with all this in a slick manner, but it just wouldn’t seem the same, I would feel like a cheat.  In any case, it was meant to be delivered between 12 and 4pm (it is now 5pm) by a company called UKMail who have yet to turn up and I’m not sure if they ever will, they don’t want to pick the phone up at the moment, they just leave a message saying they are busy then they hang up, you can’t even go on hold, which I think is first rate customer service. All paths are leading to it turning up at 6.55 pm, by which time I will be tired and hungry, exactly the right combination required for childish outbursts, sulks, foul language and general bad behaviour fit for half an hour perched on the naughty stair. But it will all be worth it at 1.00am when I have finally got it all working and I am ramming a packet of chocolate digestives down my throat.

Wish me luck!