$200 for the 8GB 3G? Ok, maybe I will have to suck it up and blow of this Windows Mobile crap. Now it’s a real tossup between that and the Touch Pro. Guess I’ll have until July to figure it all out.

Now if they could only figure out a way to get it off AT&T as well.  T-Mobile might blow goat but I’ve been with them so long that I can’t stand the thought of losing my $35/mo 1000 minute plan.

But all this, and the fact that I just handed in my grad school Statement of Purpose, got me to thinking about the whole socializing aspect.  But fortunately I don’t have to bother writing it, because someone else did…

[from Stuart Henshall's blog post The Mobile Social World of Presence]

I’ve been thinking recently about my connectivity and mobility and one of the reasons I keep coming back to it is the dissonance I have when looking at the two mobiles I use most often. There’s now been many comparisons made between the Nokia N95 and the iPhone. Both best in class so to speak. However, I’ve struggled to completely understand why the iPhone beats the N95 (for me and I’m also really betting for many others). The N95 ostensible has it all. Better camera, streaming bluetooth, video, decent headphone jack, better speakers and general sound etc. It has messaging and mail etc. I could go on and the comparisons which have been made before.

However, the real reason in my mind that the iPhone wins is it’s ability to “stay in social touch”. The email, the SMS, the browsing experience has enabled much of the behavior that social networkers have mastered already on the laptop or desktop. It’s not about the technology, it is about how the device helps you socialize.

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By contrast and perhaps as luck will have it… the iPhone is a social device. It fills the gaps in calls with keeping in touch. It is helping us keep in touch with the peripheral vision whether facebook updates, twitter streams, IM or other apps or browsing one may do. It’s also very easy to forward content (web pages etc from the iphone.

So the iPhone wins because it both keeps us in the flow and keeps us loosely connected. Perhaps a little like adding a “lurking” factor…. iPhone in hand I have a better sense of what my friends and colleagues are doing.. I am more connected without actually thinking about it or working at it. As someone who’s never used a Blackberry and yet observed the “connected” behavior that creates around email (like IM) it’s been a revelation.

[read the rest here]