Although the cynical attempt to make us spend more money on a headphone adapter is annoying, the iPhone has a much bigger flaw that puts us off abandoning our regular phones and music players. We found ourselves charging the battery pretty much every day under moderate use, and when watching movies or listening to music this could drop to a couple of hours. Although this is acceptable for a regular media player, it’s downright annoying when it’s your phone.

No problems though – just pop in another battery, right? Annoyingly, no. The iPhone is a sealed unit, so you won’t be able to keep a back-up battery for those moments when you really need to make a call. There are also other areas that betray the fact this is a first-generation product. Although we liked the threaded messaging – which allows you to view entire conversations – it’s only possible to send a message to one person at a time.

There’s also no support for MMS (Multi Media Messaging) and, if you want to send photos or other files to friends, the only way is by email. Other foibles include a lack of access to contact details stored on SIM cards – making it near-impossible for the average user to transfer their phone book to the iPhone. The integrated Bluetooth adapter is particularly picky over what it will talk to, with no support for phone-to-phone connections. This rules out the ability to share files wirelessly.

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