So I finally got my iPhone. After a few days of fruitless visits to Manhattan’s three Apple Stores, and AT&T ‘sales’ staff being downright rude, I figured a bit of ‘When in Rome’ was in order.

So I put an ad in Craigslist.

Quite a surprising response over the ensuing 12 hours. Most of them fell into two categories:

“Yeah, I got an iPhone, meet me in such-and-such a dark alley in Harlem and me and my buddies will relieve you of your wallet”

or

I have an iPhone, no box, no charger, no accessories just the phone, and I need to shift it in the next half-hour, it’s not stolen though, honest.

Amongst these, though, I found my shiny silver-and-black toy thanks to a very nice young lady called Katie. A few hours and a less-than-retail fistful of dollars later, and I had my ‘phone – swiftly unlocked thanks to ZiPhone. And you know what? I love it. The screen, the OS, the functionality – consider me converted. But I’m not quite ready to throw my N95 in the bin yet.

Why? I guess because, in its current form, the iPhone just isn’t quite there yet. My Nokia N95 shoots video, has GPS and a much better camera; the iPhone has a bigger screen, Google maps, various other frills but, more to the point, it has that interface which makes everything so much more useable – and makes the N95 feel so dated and clunky.

My timing’s lousy, of course (probably as lousy as the iPhone’s camera). The 8gb iPhone has, we think, been end-of-lined. The iphone rumour mill, in its many forms, talks of 3G, GPS, 32gb and all sorts of other possibilities as early as next week. There’s no 3G here, so that doesn’t really bother me. But GPS and a better camera would very probably tip the scales.

For now, though, I’m pretty chuffed with my new purchase – even as last week’s ‘phone, it’s still a pretty smart piece of kit.