This is a post that takes a slight time out.

It’s also a post that confirms why Boing Boing is a daily read for me, as something interesting always turns up. Such is the case with Joel Johnson’s review of the Android-powered G1.

Gadget reviews - especially of the iPhone - of are easy to come by (incidentally, there are a ton over at Test Freaks). But, what could have been just an ordinary hardware and feature run-through, is instead a meditation on the relationship we have with our personal technology. Here comes a quote:

When it comes to owning, using, or reviewing a gadget, there are really only two states: love increasing or love receding.

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When I’m preparing articles for this site, I’m wary about the level of griping that I do - by which I mean talking about all the things that are missing from the iPhone. However you feel about the success of the device, it’s clear that there is a lot of functionality not present compared to even many low-end phones.

So there are valid concerns that users would like to be addressed. In this vein, Steve has just asked Who cares about Copy/Paste? Well it turns out that - as of the writing of this article - exactly 1389 people care about copy and paste.

That’s according to Please Fix the iPhone. It’s a website from Fullsix that:

…gives a collective voice to those that want to smash their iPhone into a wall when it is impossible to do simple and intuitive tasks that we have all been doing for years on other phones.

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Another gratuitous link of interest over to All About Symbian, one of my other stomping grounds, in which (I love advocacy and comparison pieces) I’ve been seeing if S60 phones can match some of the Apple iPhone’s ‘party tricks’.

Hopefully you’ll find it an interesting little read, although the main thing to take out of it from the iPhone’s point of view is that in several cases I found it necessary to have third party software on the Nokia N95 in order to get close to the iPhone. And, in the case, of the AppStore bit at the end, S60 phones simply had no answer.

An even more interesting list would be ‘What’s needed to bring the iPhone up to S60 phone-like specifications?’. Apple’s got a great set of built-in apps and a superb UI, but I’d argue that, to achieve real mainstream must-have status, top priorities should be:

• A decent camera. 2 megapixels with no flash just doesn’t cut it when Nokia has been making 5 megapixel, auto-focus camera phones for over two years, some with Xenon flash, and with most phone makers having also now introduced 8 megapixel cameras. Yes, people don’t really need 8mp, but 5mp is a definite ’sweet spot’.
• Doing a deal to get real time navigation on the iPhone. Google Maps is great, but it doesn’t go the extra mile when you’re using it to navigate while driving.
• As previously mentioned, add Copy/Paste and a common file store to the iPhone’s OS. This is an utter show stopper for many professionals.

A quick heads up: the latest Carnival has been published at London Calling. Some excellent posts as ever, especially some technical notes on mobile video call quality. And the Post of the Week? Look no further than All About iPhone’s thoughts on the Nokia 5800 Many thanks Andrew.

I had not heard of the Tower Defence game genre until I came across Fieldrunners by Subatomic Studios. In short, the aim of any TD game is to stop wave after wave of advancing enemy troops by placing defensive towers across the play area.

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Nokia recently announced their first S60 5th edition touchscreen phone - the 5800 XpressMusic, Frankly, it looks superb. I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow comparison – ShinyShiny already has that covered – but the entrance of the world’s dominant phone manufacturer into the space carved out by Apple demands a closer look. What will be the knock on effect for the iPhone?
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Thanks to Daring Fireball for the heads up on the iPhone Application Graveyard, which lists all the apps that Apple has removed or not approved. It’s not quite comprehensive - there are a few more mentioned over at iPhonefootprint.

Looking through the apps that didn’t make it, I saw one I hadn’t heard of before - Freedom Time by Juggleware. This app counted down the last days of George W. Bush in the Oval Office. But it never made it to the store.

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Right from the very start (July 2007), the voices clamouring for Copy and Paste functionality on the Apple iPhone have been growing stronger and stronger. Is this really big deal? Why have Apple not already implemented this in the operating system? How could they include it without complicating the UI too much? What other implications might this have? And is it likely to happen? What about workarounds in the meantime?

Yes, Copy and Paste IS a big deal. Ask anyone who’s tried doing actual work on an iPhone and they’ll tell you. Better still, try it yourself. Admittedly, the lack of a basic Office suite restricts the scope of Copy and Paste slightly, but the flexibility of being able to selectively lift bits out of an email or text for inclusion in another communication is significant. And I’m one of several million iPhone users who are rather keen to see it in place.

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Two interesting announcements have come my way today - one concerning BBC iPlayer, and the other concerning Youtube. What’s interesting about them is the way in which they treat the video that they offer, and what that means for watching TV on your iPhone.

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The sheer usefulness of finding ’stuff around you’ has meant the emergence of several pretenders, despite the ubiquitous presence of Google Maps itself. AroundMe (at first commercial, but now free) and Vicinity (always free) are also well established now, but in the interests of keeping things simple (and reducing the clutter slightly on your application screens), the question remains ‘Is it worth looking things up in these ‘extra’ solutions?’

With this in mind, I put all three to the same tests. Read on.

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