Bye bye battery

"It's like the early days of 3G. Back then, the new network was criticised for hammering handset batteries. Chipset and handset technology has solved that problem"

Really? I must have missed that one - if I need more than a day of battery life for some reason, I ditch 3G and drop back to 2G only and *that* solves the problem.

Or is a battery that gets me through til a teatime topup considered good enough these days?

Cheeky Vodafone

"The regulator has shown a careless disregard for the best interests of consumers" says Vodafone.

As an ex-customer, I'm fairly confident Vodafone couldn't give a rat's testicle for the best interests of consumers, so it's hard to give much of a toss what they think.

The more I read about Steve Jobs...

...the more I believe the bloke was a 24-carat world-class arsehole. And this article does nothing to change that.

Will it blend?

Can't believe you didn't include the obvious option.

A victory for backwards compatibility

Vista able to run a 13 year old application with no known errors. It's not often you hear that about a Microsoft OS!

"May no longer be able to hide" ?

As you mention elsewhere in the article, it's dependent on privacy settings - you can adjust these to completely hide your profile from search results even for registered and logged-in users. Hiding is a doddle.

Firewire, maybe?

USB isn't the only way of plugging external devices into a computer, after all...

"But will it run Linux"

This man is my new hero. I give it a week before someone starts whinging about how it's too hard to run Linux on an iPhone.

Vodafone seem to hate them

I called Vodafone twice a couple of weeks ago, asking about an upgrade, and both reps I spoke to had nothing nice to say about the N95. Battery life in particular seems to be a major complaint (the Nokia 9000i I had almost a decade ago sported similar battery life, ffs) as does the uber-buggy OS/app suite.

Not taking Voda's word for it, I asked around, and of the acquaintances I could find who'd one them already, all had sent them back after a week or so as unfit for purpose.

Not quite the near-glowing recommendation this review suggests.

If I wanted to carry a calculator...

...I'd carry one. And probably buy a pocket protector too. But I don't, and my phone has a calculator built in anyway.

My employer already foists a second phone, two smart cards and two RSA tokens on me, none of which I particularly want to carry, but I do because it's part of the job. If a supplier (which is all a bank really is) wants me to carry more crap around, they can stick it.

Hardly convenient

Half the appeal of online banking using a web browser is that I can access it from any machine I choose, wherever I happen to be. If banks start to make physical devices mandatory for access, that convenience evaporates in a moment.

Two-factor authentication is fine and dandy, but to be workable it needs to be a) portable, and b) require some common token for multiple services. If I have to start carrying separate tokens around for my job, my bank account and anything else using a similar mechanism, my pockets are going to bulge in no time.

Maybe the answer is a man-bag...

Spoilers, anyone?

Oh great. A review that gives away the ending. Thanks a bunch.