The tech furore has subsided, and we’re left with Apple’s tablet – the iPad. Whether you’re of the opinion that it’s just an oversized iPod touch or something more, it has certainly had a massive impact.

All About iPhone contributor Andy Cook has already given his opinion.

I also asked Steve Litchfield if he was considering getting an iPad. His response:

The iPad itself is not for me, I type in too much text! But I can see it being perfect for other family members, each of whom the has “the full Internet” (minus Flash, of course!) in a single A4 device that doesn’t have trailing wires or get hot or need a pointing device. So yes, put me down for a place in the queue, shortly before the drive to my parents house to get it “installed”.

So it’s not for Steve. But he, like me, can see the appeal for those who want a rich Internet and media experience, without having to worry about all those viruses, software updates, and general management overhead that’s associated with a computer.

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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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LAST UPDATED: December 28th 2009

Tesco has been selling the iPhone in-store from December 14th. I already have articles describing the cheapest way to get an iPhone on O2, and a similar article for Orange. Both of these operator’s tariffs are quite similar. But if you’re looking for a budget or an unlimited option, then Tesco Mobile may be able to grab you on price alone.

Read on for a guide comparing the best deals for both Pay As You Go and Pay Monthly iPhones on Tesco Mobile.

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LAST UPDATED: November 18th 2009

November 10th has come and gone, and O2 is no longer the sole iPhone provider in the UK. I already have an article describing the cheapest way to get an iPhone on O2, and to be honest, the pricing from Orange is quite similar – there’s no price war at the moment. But there are a few differences that could make it worthwhile choosing Orange as your iPhone network, if you’re basing your decision on price alone.

So, read on for a quick guide highlighting the total cost of ownership for a pay monthly iPhone on Orange (the Pay As You Go article will be along shortly…)

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Apple have announced the iPhone 3G S, and O2 have released their pricing for the phone, which will be available from June 19th.

If you’re thinking about getting an iPhone deal with O2, there is a page on Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert site that looks at the monthly tariffs. But it’s well out-of-date now, so I’ve put together a quick guide highlighting the total cost of ownership for the new iPhone.

So whether you’re looking for Pay Monthly or Pay As You Go, read on for the cheapest way to get your hands on Apple’s shiny mobile, short of nicking it!

UPDATE: There are also articles covering iPhone deals with Orange and Tesco Mobile This article was last updated on January 7th, 2010.

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RAM – i.e. Random Access Memory, is all important. It’s the workspace which your phone’s OS runs in. And a critical parameter, in terms of what you can do with your smartphone, is how much RAM it has free. Free for you to do stuff. Like run a web browser, play a game, and so on.

Over and over again, in reviewing iPhone games for IPAL, I come across user reviews saying ‘Game is buggy, just crashes every time’. Now, no developer worth their salt would release a game that kept crashing. What’s happening is that the iPhone is physically running out of RAM. Starting with perhaps 40MB free, some of the fabulous 3D games need just about all of this and when the RAM runs out, the OS panics and shuts the game down. Result: one unhappy user. On my iPod Touch, with 60MB free most of the time (again, after the OS has loaded its bits and pieces up), I never, repeat never, hit RAM limits, incidentally.

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A note of interest to committed readers to All About iPhone: I didn’t actually own a Mac until about four months ago. Not that owning a Mac is a prerequisite to owning an iPhone, but the two do go rather well together.

The thing I wanted to talk about here though was my enormous appreciation of Apple’s hardware. Until one owns a Mac or Macbook or iMac or iPhone, you can’t really understand the apparent fanaticism of Apple fans. Yet, once bought – at roughly twice the price of the equivalent spec PC (in the Mac’s case), the difference is obvious. It was like scales falling from my eyes when I handled my first (loaner) Macbook last spring. And then bought my own Mac Mini. And iPod Touch. Apple’s hardware is (more or less) uniformly excellent. With a capital ‘E’.

Mac Mini

Not that their software is shoddy. Oh no, Mac OS X is quite an achievement. As is iPhone OS ( a cut down OS X) in its own quirky little way. But, during compilation of my last Phones Show, it became apparent that, in my eyes at least, there’s something of a disconnect between the flagship excellence of Apple’s hardware and the flagship-wannabe patchiness of their software. But before branding me as a ‘heretic’, read on… Read the full story

I love the statistics behind an industry, watching trends, and so on. And yesterday saw AppleInsider publish a table from Gartner’s new stats on worldwide smartphone sales in Q1, 2008. It’s only a summary of the top 5 manufacturers, but it makes interesting reading. Nokia are top, of course, with their Symbian-based S60 smartphones selling 14.6 million units in Q1, with a fast-moving RIM in second place on 4.3 million units. And, the point of Apple Insider’s article, Apple are a relatively new entry at number 3, having overtaken all other established smartphone makers to achieve worldwide sales of 1.7 million in the quarter. So that’s HTC, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all beaten comfortably by the new contender from Cupertino.

What’s especially notable from the statistics is that Nokia and Apple don’t market their ’smartphones’ as such. Read the full story