Apple has produced some weird and wonderful devices over the years. Some have died quietly (remember the Newton???) whilst some have taken the world by storm – such as the iPod and the latest Macs. The iPhone has surpassed everything else to date in terms of mass take-up and is now considered the “must-have” cool gadget that everyone wants.

What can it do that makes it so great?

Let’s start with the basics. The iPhone is a quad-band GSM mobile phone with EDGE support, multimedia and Internet capabilities. You can call your Mom on it and text your best friend. So?

Well, the Internet capabilities include full web browsing, comprehensive email and Visual Voicemail. It can also connect via Wi-Fi, so it’s not continually using your precious 3G bandwidth.

It’s also a complete iPod, in that it can store music, video, TV programs, podcasts etc, and display them via an awesome screen.

Did I mention that the screen is touch sensitive? Not only that, but the latest version is also both gesture and breath sensitive, and has in-built accelerometers so that it can detect movement!

You also get built-in GPS and even a compass, so you’ll never got lost as long as you have your trusty iPhone with you!

iPhone Camera

The camera in the iPhone not only takes great still photos, it also shoots pretty good video. OK, so it won’t be worrying anyone in Hollywood, but it’s certainly good enough to shoot a holiday video or to produce something for YouTube. As with any camera, the results are good if you apply good camera technique.

I particularly love the user interface for manipulating your images which makes great use of the cool gesture interface for resizing, rotating etc.

All in all, I would thoroughly recommend that every gadget lover in the world gets hold of an iPhone as soon as humanly possible!