Magic touch
It's the zeitgeist gadget: the mobile phone with 85,000 functions, from checking train times to comparing shop prices. And, oh yes, it'll even play you at Scrabble
Everywhere you go these days you see them: distracted looking people staring into hand-sized oblongs of glass and stabbing at them with their fingers. They are mobile phones - but not the ones we once used merely for calling people. The Apple iPhone does far, far more than just that.
Indeed, thanks to the iPhone's revolutionary ‘Apps' - applications - which users download from the internet for a few dirhams, an iPhone can be converted into 85,000 different devices - some useful, some entertaining, and some downright bizarre. Apart from being a phone, an internet surfing pocket computer, a camera, a video camera, a tape recorder and a device that stores and plays songs, films and TV shows, your iPhone can also be a satellite navigation system for your car; a pocket tenpin bowling alley; a spirit level; a scrabble or chess opponent; and a barcode reader that tells you if you can buy an item cheaper elsewhere. No wonder the iPhone has become a cult unlike any gadget before. Indeed, many experts regard it as the greatest electronic gadget ever made.
More than 50 million iPhones have been bought worldwide. And that number is bound to explode even more. The iPhone has its faults though. Battery life is not fantastic. Your voice can sound tinny when you call on one. And a lot of people find the digital keyboard tricky to type on.
The Apps, however, have made up for such shortcomings. More than two billion have been downloaded worldwide - 500 million in the past three months. But are iPhones and their ubiquitous Apps insidious diversions that are wasting a generation's time? There are plenty of truly moronic Apps - and a lot of game Apps that are worryingly addictive. But the iPhone's sheer usefulness has made it a global sensation whose history is only in its early stages.
BEST APPS FOR…
MUSIC LOVERS… SHAZAM: This can identify any song in only 20 seconds. A central computer matches what it hears with its records and sends you a text within a couple of seconds identifying the track. If you then want to buy the music, it will download it to your iPhone.
TRAVELLERS… LONELY PLANET: Converts your iPhone into an audio phrasebook in Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish or Italian.
PEDESTRIANS… GOOGLE EARTH: Pull up an aerial view of where you are, and go into Google Street View to match the address you're looking for with the streetscape as photographed by the mobile Google camera cars.
EXPATS… WUNDERRADIO: Converts your iPhone into an internet radio. You can now listen to your fave station from back home.
