Before the announcement, my mental picture of what Apple’s iPad would be was a big iPod Touch. This did make me wonder why the iPad would be preferable to my Touch. Sure, the bigger screen would be better for viewing videos and playing games but does that alone justify a new product? That said, I assumed Apple would be doing more to the iPad than simply super-sizing an iPod Touch and I looked forward to being surprised.

So, come 6pm (UK time) on the 27th January, I was to be found hunched over my laptop, tea in hand and phone off the hook waiting for the gadget sites to reveal the news live, one line at a time. Never has it been such agony waiting for web pages to auto refresh. The day after, the first thing I did was to watch the video of the whole event which, it has to be said, gave me a rather different impression of the audiences reaction to the one I had from reading the live blogs.

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Back in August of 2009 under the title, ‘Presenting Apple’s new iBook!’ I proposed that Apple’s rumoured tablet computer wasn’t just going to be an oversized iPhone but rather a replacement for paper and ink. Six months on and I’m even more convinced.

The invitation tagline, ‘Come See Our Latest Creation’, the rumour that Steve Jobs believes this to be the most important moment of his life, Tim Cook’s recent admission that their new creation will bring ‘joy and surprise’, all point towards a product that has the potential to change industries.

What can we expect on the 27th?

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One of the most useful functions for a portable device such as the iPhone and Touch is as a way to view or edit office documents while on the move. If there’s a reliable way to do that, many people will feel able to leave their laptops at home when travelling.

It’s surprising then, how few apps cover this function. Microsoft has spent decades and tens of millions designing, developing and testing their office applications and they work on high powered desktop computers. So, any developer wanting to make the equivalent for the iPhone has their work cut out.

Byte Squared has taken up the challenge and has an app allowing you to view, create and edit Word documents called Doc² and another that does the same for Excel files called Sheet². Will they allow you to leave your laptop at the office when out on business?
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All About iPhone contributor and all-around gadget fiend James Burland has his own blog at Nokia Creative. Recently he’s been taking a look at the Nokia N900 – considered by many to be the current uber-smartphone of choice for the connected geek.

His main phone is still Apple’s iPhone 3GS. But could this change?
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This is the inevitable Apple Tablet post. Barring any last-minute explosion in Silicon Valley caused by the white-heat of tech journalist speculation, Apple should reveal their hitherto mythical Tablet device next week.

All the rumours seem to point to it running some form of iPhone operating system, and that iPhone OS 4.0 will be revealed (there’s a really good Gizmodo UI speculation article on this). But what’s really interesting me is how could a Tablet fit into Apple’s existing home setup, where iTunes is the media hub? And what this could mean for the iPhone?

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For someone who spent the formative years of his youth reading maps in the Scouts, I have an unnerving ability to get lost. But so far – and this is especially inscrutable for a gadget freak – I have resisted the lure of satellite navigation. I just didn’t want to have to manage *yet another device* when a map and my innate sense of direction seemed generally adequate.

But a combination of my iPhone, an affordable satnav app called CoPilot Live, and a demand from the Significant Other to end unintended diversions – and I have an opportunity to see what this GPS driving business is all about.

So having ditched the maps for CoPilot Live, did my iPhone get me from A to B?

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I’ve already written articles about getting the cheapest iPhone on O2, Orange and Tesco Mobile. But all these operators sell their iPhones locked to their individual networks. What if you want more freedom than that? What if you want to use two different SIMs, or simply want to switch to local network when you’re abroad?

You could pay an eye-watering amount buying an officially unlocked one imported on the grey market from Play.com. The 16GB iPhone 3GS will cost you £715.99 (with free delivery!). Or, you could take your chances and buy an iPhone from eBay. I just watched an auction end for an unlocked iPhone; a 16GB 3GS went for £470 plus £6.99 postage – saving £239 on Play.com’s price. Not bad. However, the seller said he had “opened the box to unlock”, indicating that it’s probably unofficially unlocked using the iPhone Dev Team‘s fine work on their ultrasn0w unlocking software. So that means you’ll have to update your iPhone using a jailbreak tool and custom firmware everytime – or to put that jargon-free – no easy software updates from iTunes.

So here’s an easier and cheaper option to buy an officially unlocked iPhone in the UK.

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I received an email from a former colleague of mine today (who knows I’m a thorough iPhone geek!), with a question from a friend of his about getting an iPhone on Vodafone. One of the big appeals of Vodafone for his mate is that they supply phones on Pay Monthly unlocked as standard – no need to go faffing about with unlock codes and the like. Just buy your phone, and get on with using it however you want.

It’s not long to go until Vodafone launch their iPhone offering in the UK on January 14th, and my friend’s mate really wants an iPhone 3GS. So his simple question was: “It’ll be supplied unlocked right?”

Nope.

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Vodafone are due to launch their iPhone offering in the UK on January 14th. I’ve been looking at the Vodafone iPhone web pages, and thought it odd that Visual Voicemail wasn’t mentioned.

Yesterday, I came across a conversation between James Robinson and Vodafone on Twitter, and the carrier has confirmed that they won’t be offering Visual Voicemail in the UK at launch.

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It’s almost the end of the 2009. This year has seen the release of the iPhone 3GS, tons of new features thanks to iPhone OS 3.0 , and has seen the iPhone’s smartphone market share rise considerably.

But it’s still all about the apps. So to end the year, I asked the All About iPhone contributors to send me their choice of favourite application.

I simply asked, “Which one app has made the most impact on you in 2009?”

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