I got an iPhone for Christmas!

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So what’d you get for Christmas? I got an iPhone 4. And though I’d been hinting heavily to Lisa about getting one, I honestly didn’t expect to receive one!

What was really funny was that Lisa gave me a decoy present first – a Bluray player. The box was clearly too big to be an iPhone. I flirted with the idea that it might be…gasp…an iPad, but the parcel was too heavy.

When I discovered it was a Bluray player, I was initially crestfallen. This is a present for everybody! Then I looked at it a bit closer – not only was it backward compatible with all our DVDs, but it can connect to our home network and it can play media from USB drives. This is fantastic, because I have a ton of videos in AVI format on a 500Gb hard disk that I can now just hook straight into the Bluray and play! Previously, I had to hook my laptop up to the TV, then play the media through the laptop, so this was amazing.

So engrossed was I in the features of this gadget, that I didn’t even notice Lisa throwing another smaller box at me…I barely took my eyes away from the Bluray player.

At this point, I genuinely had no idea that there was another big present. When I opened the package and saw what it was I was actually overwhelmed for a moment. These were twoamazing, expensive presents. And I’d dreamed of getting an iPhone for ages – I suspected it briefly when Lisa sold my old Sony Erickson phone a while back.

Now, my father-in-law has a wonderful turn of phrase for things he doesn’t like or understand:Shite. Looking at the iPhone over Christmas dinner, he issued his usual judgement. “It’s shite. What does it even do?” Well, what doesn’t it do?

It’s got great social media apps – I can update Twitter and Facebook from wherever I am. It’s got maps, calendar, music, stacks of features built in. I’ve downloaded Monopoly, Scrabble and Sudoku for my iPhone. What else? High quality camera for still pictures and video. Amazing for capturing little fun moments with the family. The built-in voice recorder is amazing quality. The multimedia capabilities of the iPhone are astounding – all in that tiny little box.

On New Year’s Eve, we used the Skype app to chat face to face with our friend in America – for free. I’ve used Facetime to chat to Lisa – it’s fantastic, but a bit frivolous. I’ve discovered the joys of FourSquare – a fun app that checks you in wherever you are and tells you what’s going on around you.

I’ve probably only touched the tip of the iceberg – like today I bought an app that allows you to have SSH access to web servers. Being a web administrator, it’s handy to be able to check server status and restart services remotely from wherever I am.

It’s so much more than a phone, and I’m so grateful to Lisa for being a real darling and buying me the best toy ever for Christmas!

So, over to you – did you get any cool stuff for Christmas?