iLove iHate iPhone

Okay so I got an iPhone. Yeah, it’s a long story how I got one, but here it is and here I am – about a week into owning one and having a love-hate relationship with it. Don’t get me wrong. It is still the sexiest little thing you could hold in your hand. (Well, okay, so maybe that's debatable.)

Let’s start with the love part. I love how you can literally scroll through your messages and phone book. And the way pictures tilt to landscape view when you turn the phone to its side. I love zooming into pictures and webpages by just “expanding” it with two fingers on the screen, and pinching the screen to make it smaller. And I love how text messages appear as cartoon cloud conversations so you know who said what last.

But here are the top 5 things that I hate:

5. I hate it that for a phone that is also an iPod, you can’t just use your songs as ringtones - unless you hack the phone.

4. I hate it that I can’t customize my message alerts - unless you hack the phone.

3. I hate it that there’s no way to forward text messages! What would Apple do if those chain messages are true and something bad happens because I didn’t forward one to 8 other people!

2. I hate it that I cannot send business cards! So all of you who plan to ask if I have the number of so and so, pray that I have the patience to write the number down by hand and type it all in a text message to you – because it’s so NOT going to happen often.

And what's number 1? I hate it that for some friggin’ reason, some calls only appear as numbers… not names. Then I figure out that it’s because I saved the numbers with the country code +63, but the calls are local calls so they just start with 0. Hello! Even my first-ever, brick-weighing Nokia cellphone can detect this and recognize that it’s the same number! It’s sooo annoying! So now I have to go and rejig all my numbers sans country code -- and just figure out what to do when I go out of the country and have to call them on an international call!

Frustrating huh? Add to that the usual Apple birth pains of having to buy this or that cable and this or that case or this or that protective thing – each of which costs the equivalent of my phone bill.

But then, 1 week later and I’m still using it. It’s like that Pulp song about a bad relationship: “like a car crash that I see but I just can’t avoid / like a plane I’ve been told I never should board / like a film that’s so bad but I have to stay 'til the end…” Because despite all its rather MAJOR flaws, at the end of the day when you board a crowded elevator, nothing beats the gasps you hear when you take it out of your pocket and start casually scrolling through your phonebook.