It's better in many ways than the desktop version, the way it integrates with your contact's addresses and uses iphone's location services, and also the ability to use multi-gesture to pinch and twist the screen and to tilt the phone (all at once if you like). It's the software like this and the interface which allows for it which makes the iPhone years ahead of the lumbering competition. Of course there will be those who see it has no floppy drive and has lame bluetooth and think that's more important to them, and that's their right.

The iPhone interface sounds impressive in so many ways, but I wonder, do you honestly feel that reverse-pinching is easier than having zoom buttons or a slider control on one side of the screen?

This is witchcraft!

What a brilliant user interface. Totally usable, the tilt is just amazing.

And what's Microsoft's best interface? A coffee table!

Looking up contacts in google maps on the JesusPhone often doesn't work for me. Entries which don't explicitly say "united kingdom" in the country field don't work, because the keep trying to look up the address in the US. Do all americans type "United States of America" for every entry in their phone books? Well guess what, we don't put our country in either. Internationalisation... they've heard of it... not!

And why would you want to put your iphone in your pants? surely a more hygienic location would be... well, your trouser pockets?

I'm actually pretty impressed - particularly as it's in Google's interest to hope that the iPhone fades into obscurity. I'm guessing that this is one of the fun projects that Google programmers have dedicated their 'free' time to. Kudos to Google for allowing it to go public. (that would also explain why it's free).

Mind you, maybe Google have a kick-ass Android version of Google Earth that will show up the iPhone for the lumbering beast it is...

"Years ahead of the lumbering competition."

Right, right. You're totally correct, of course. I never had a similar thing on my WinMobile phone about 4 years ago. And it sure as hell wasn't hooked into my contacts. And I certainly don't use it with GPS tracking on my current phone. No sir. None of the above has ever happened, and Apple are quite patently miles ahead of the game with their outdated hardware.

Idiot.

Yes, once you get used to it the pinch/reverse-pinch for zooming really is easy to use, and you don't lose part of the screen to host the additional controls. Actually it's like a lot of functions on the Jebus-phone which seem to make no sense at first and gradually grown on you.

I must admit that I swore I would never get one of these devices, particularly the original one mainly due to the cost. But with the 3G it came into the same kind of price I paid for my N95 and I was won over by the interface.

*hangs head in shame*

C'mon El Reg, ethanol fuels supplies running low?

"He's got the whole world..."

There goes the battery life [again].

Anyway, never mind this, where's my Flash plugin?!

But what would you rather have? Battery sapping sexy apps on a phone to show off before you rush off to the nearest recharge socket, or something you can actually make phone calls on when you're out in the sticks?

It's nice, and I'm often tempted by the thing especially when apps like this come along, but then I feel buying an iPhone is little more than putting arty books on my coffee table in my minimalist living room, purely to impress visitors (of course the Macbook Air would also be on the coffee table).