iPhone, it's just a phone...

What is it about the iPhone that drives consumers and mobile operators into the 4th dimension where normal behaviour no longer holds true?

Does this technically-deficient handset do something new and wonderful, will it change the way consumers use wireless networks, is the touchscreen interface the Holy Grail of all UIs that a computer company in the U.S. has stumbled upon…?

Call me cynical after too many years listening to 'breakthrough' product announcements that will galvanise the mobile user, but the iPhone is just a handset, albeit with some interesting features--supported by little more than a cunning plan involving huge marketing budgets and PR expenditure.

If nothing else it might educate users to the possible benefits of the mobile Internet, and could provoke the likes of Nokia, Samsung and LG to overhaul this new entrant. Just who does Apple think they are? After all, the only good handsets are made in Europe or Asia….or will this U.S.-based upstart cause some other dimensional thinking in Finland and Korea? -Paul