Soon after witnessing a catastrophic train crash, a group of friends begin to notice strange phenomenon in their small home town. Eager to somehow incorporate the events into their own movie, the group dig deeper into the events surrounding the crash only to discover something a lot more sinister is at hand. J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg invite us to remember how movies used to be.

Let me set a scene for you. In a small, American suburb some time in the early 80′s, a group of friends are living out their childhood. No video games and no Internet mean that these kids have imagination. They go outside. They ride their BMX bikes. They covet their house brick sized Walkmans as the height of technology. Then, an alien visitor is thrown in the mix. At first they aren’t sure if the alien is friendly or hostile but what they do know is that the government and military are hot on its heels and will stop at nothing to capture it and cover up its existence. Against his better judgement, and advice of his peers, one of the group makes a connection with the creature. He realises that the visitor doesn’t mean anyone any harm, he’s simply trying to get home. This boy’s name is Elliott. You know this story. If you’re my age, you grew up on this story.

I experienced a bit of a mixture of anticipation and indifference during the build up to the release of Super 8. As with most of his projects, Abrams gave very little away other than the fact that he would be working closely with Spielberg and that it would be a monster/alien movie. With the success of Cloverfield but the saturation of the genre, you can understand why I couldn’t make my mind up. What I got, however was a very pleasant surprise.

I’ll say right off the bat that Super 8 is simply the best homage to the innocence of the 1980s childhood that modern cinema has ever produced. It doesn’t shout about the decade in which it is set. It’s effortless in such a way that you know that a massive amount of effort went into making it seem that way. It does its job and by extension, proves that Abrams and Spielberg have done theirs.

The plot was familiar but more than original enough to be entertaining. The young cast were superb, particularly Elle Fanning who exhibits all of her older sister’s talent, without the nails-on-chalkboard voice and the special effects were spectacular but not over the top. I can only imagine that Super 8 would look fantastic in IMAX. Scripting, which is an area that can make or break a movie set in a specific period in history, was superb and never once causes your suspension of disbelief to waver.

I did start to wonder, though. There is a chance that I loved this movie so much because it was a wildly successful nostalgia-fest. Without the wonderfully executed homage to the films of my youth, would I have still enjoyed Super 8 as much? You can’t help but think  that a movie which draws so much of its charm from days gone by must inevitably lose some of its punch when viewed by an audience who weren’t around during that time. On the whole, though, I think Abrams and Spielberg handled this potentially sticky accessibility issue with skill. I think rather than making the movie, the homage to better times and better films simply makes a good movie great.

In closing, Super 8 is no E.T. But it proves, in its final not to the Spielberg classic, that even a movie only half as good can still win out over the septic tank of summer blockbusters that pollute our theatres these days.

Verdict:

I first heard of this by way of a trailer on iTunes a few weeks ago and it sort of caught my eye. As rubbish as they usually are, I really love it when movies come out that deal with an established myth or folklore story in a new way (that said, I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Red Riding Hood). Trollhunter is a Blair Witch style mockumentary set in rural Norway. A group of filmmakers on the trail of a bear poacher, instead end up tagging along with a bizarre government employee, the only one in Norway, who’s job it is to track down and kill trolls to protect the public while also working to keep them a secret. Sounds pretty bonkers, but check out the trailer to see why it caught my eye:

Things were never going to be easy for Trollhunter. A lot of people either hated the Blair Witch Project or are now so over the handheld shaky-cam sub-genre that they’d probably rather see the latest Michael Bay eye-fuck. Coupled with the fact that it’s all in Norwegian, the number of willing viewers had got to be dwindling. But, seeing as I’m not put off by shaky camera work or subtitles and I like special effects, I couldn’t get it watched fast enough.

The plot is the usual. Some hard drives were found near the site of an undisclosed incident in rural Norway and the contents have been judged to be genuine video proof of the existence of trolls. Where the story develops differently to Blair Witch, however is in the fact that the filmmakers aren’t originally out looking for trolls. They are originally on the trail of a man who they believe to be illegally shooting bears, something that only a select few certified hunters are allowed to do. When they follow the man back to his trailer they instantly discover that he is no ordinary poacher. After witnessing strange activity at his home, they secretly follow him out into the woods one night where they encounter a troll and one of them is bitten. Faced with the fact that he has been well and truly caught in the act, the trollhunter, Hans offers to allow the team to follow him while he hunts down the troll that attacked them. What transpires opens the filmmakers’ eyes to a widespread government conspiracy that has been going on for many decades, even centuries.

What I really liked about the movie is how it quickly and effectively distances itself from The Blair Witch project, and indeed Cloverfield. The fast paced story and the fact that you actually see the creatures (although not so much as to make a point of showing you) suggests that the director was well aware that his audience weren’t after Blair Witch: Norway while at the same time nothing as showy as Cloverfield. That sort of middle ground is actually very refreshing and just what you would want to see after a string of very hit-and-miss hand-cam genre pictures.

The dialogue was okay. Norwegian is a strange language which makes it hard to judge how well the cast are really acting but judging by their facial expressions and emotions, I’d say they did rather well. Camera work was realistic. A lot of scenes were either very dark or shot with low quality night-vision which goes to back up the story in that these people weren’t equipped to film trolls in the dead of night. They were there to interview people and look at dead bears. That said, it doesn’t leave you frustrated or squinting at the screen for too long without a decent pay off.

The plot was tight and the ending wasn’t forced in the way that a lot of these movies are. The credits roll at a nice logical point, recognising that, in real life, not all loose ends get tied up in an hour and forty-five minutes. That said, it does end comfortably without leaving too much unanswered or giving too much away.

Still, with all of these positives considered, Trollhunter didn’t blow me out of my seat. It was a fun little movie with some great tongue-in-cheek horror moments and a nice take on an old folklore tale but nothing legendary. If you’ve got a couple of hours free, go ahead and check it out, you won’t be disappointed, but don’t fall over yourself trying to get hold of it.

Verdict:

Since owning one myself, I’ve fallen even more in love with it. With the exception of writing code and designing, it’s my main computer. I’m even writing this post on it. I’ve linked my Dropbox to a service called DropDAV that allows me to open and save iWork documents directly to the cloud and then on any other machine I use. My email, calendar and contacts are all synced across my phone and iPad via google. I use the iPad more efficiently than any desktop computer I have ever owned and because of this I find myself more organised. As well as doing the stuff I already did on my PC, the iPad has allowed me to consume news, blogs and RSS feeds in a way that I simply wasn’t able to keep up with on a PC.

All of this is great, but until Apple add a few things and tweak a few others it isn’t a fully viable PC replacement, and no, one of them isn’t the addition of Flash. Let me explain:

1. User accounts.

iOS was originally called iPhone OS. The clue is in the name. It’s an operating system designed for personal devices. You’re the only one who uses your phone and it’s the same with your iPod touch. The iPad, however isn’t necessarily a personal device. You might have one for your household and keep it in the living room for casual browsing for the whole family. If this is the case, things get sticky. When you use the device you want your email accounts in the email client. You want your twitter account in the twitter app and you want your bookmarks and saved passwords in safari. There are a multitude of other preferences that any one user might want to set slightly differently as well; wallpaper, home screen layout and screen brightness for instance. It’s even more important than it is on a desktop PC. This is because on a PC users use the browser more than individual apps (though this is changing) so they can simply log in to their services as they browse to them but unless you want to add and then remove your twitter account from the twitter app each time you use your iPad, we’re gonna need a user account system.

2. Slide to unlock? Really?

This is yet another symptom of the OS being lifted directly from a pocket device. On your phone you need to make sure that the device doesn’t unlock itself in your pocket but on the most part this simply isn’t an issue on a tablet. When people put them in their bags, they tend to use a case which will largely prevent buttons being pressed and the screen being interacted with. I’m not saying it should be removed all together but I’d wager that the vast majority of users don’t need the feature so it could be turned off by default.

3. A native “My Documents” area.

The problem with each app having its own sandboxed document storage area is you can’t access these documents from other apps. This means one of two things; you either have to do things in a backwards way, (such as tell a photo to put itself into an email rather than composing an email and then attaching a photo to it.) or not being able to do the thing you want to do at all. To be fair a lot of apps can access the photos folder, which is okay but what about documents, or notes, or contact cards? You just can’t access these things because they’re all held hostage by the app that created them. Just think how amazing it would be if you could access your Dropbox from whatever app you wanted to. This leads me nicely on to my next point…

4. File uploads from web forms.

I recently changed jobs. When I was looking for a new job I signed up to a few job search websites. You know the ones where you can upload your CV and employers can seek you out. Problem was, although I was able to make a nice looking CV in Pages, I couldn’t use the sites’ web forms to upload it. I had to fall back on to my PC, which was frustrating. If iOS had a central, native My Documents area that the browser and other apps could access this wouldn’t have been an issue. I could have simply uploaded my CV from that folder. At present you can’t even upload from the photos folder in most cases so setting avatars and profile pictures either has to be done on your PC or using the iOS app if there is one. Not ideal.

At the moment these are the only changes I can think of that would improve iOS on the iPad. Cue the Android fans jumping up and down going “God! We’ve been able to do that stuff for ages!” but guess what; I don’t want an Android device. I have yet to find one that offers the level of user experience found in iOS and even early reports of the Motorola Xoom, which some say is the first proper threat to the iPad, suggest it is clunky and sluggish even compared to the first generation Apple tablet. Not to mention that I could only find four things to moan about on the iPad. I might not complain about these four things in Android but I would bet a fair amount that I would find a lot more than four other gripes.

So what do you think? Are there any features that you would like to be changed or tweaked for the iPad?

Those following the development of Tweetbot won’t be unfamiliar with the difficulties that Tapbots had to overcome when making the app, most difficult of which was Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetie, which later became Twitter for iPhone. By doing this, and making the app free, Twitter pretty much shut down the market for iPhone twitter clients overnight. Tapbots, it seemed needed to do something pretty special to get people to switch to a paid client. Guess what… They did it.

If one word summed up the feeling of using Tweetbot, for me it would be “right”. The level of functionality that has been shoehorned into such a sleek, minimal UI is unbelievable. Tweetie brought us the beginning of gesture based control with pull-down-to-refresh and swipe-to-reply/retweet/more but Tapbots have evolved this concept dramatically. Not only are there more gestures, you can set a custom action (triple tap) to do one of a number of things. Swipe left to view related tweets and right to view all tweets in a conversation. It just seems like the way things should be. The best thing though, is that Tweetbot doesn’t feel alien. I’ve used Tweetie/twitter for iPhone for well over a year but picking up Tweetbot was a breeze. Things you would expect are still there and work in much the same way, pull down to refresh, for instance. The new functionality compliments existing UI conventions, it doesn’t defy them.

My only gripe is one that doesn’t even apply to me; Tweetbot doesn’t include any push notification support. Up until recently I used Twitter push notifications and I know a lot of people who still do. The fact that switching client means they would lose that feature might be too jagged a pill to swallow for some people. That said, if Boxcar include it in an update, it could be easy to overcome.

So all in all, this is a very, very good app. Stable operation, exceptional UI all with Tapbots’ trademark design and sound effects makes Tweetbot well worth the £1.19 price tag. Get in there while the offer lasts, you won’t regret it. I now hope that Tapbots put some of the revenue that Tweetbot generates into developing an iPad version. The iPad has been without a half way decent Twitter client for far too long. If anyone can do it, Tapbots can.

You may have heard of this one, maybe not. Rubber follows the story of an abandoned car tyre that comes to life and begins killing off the population of a remote desert community by psychokinetically blowing up their heads. Yeah, you read that right. So anyway, after a stupidly long break from this little old site, allow me to review what is probably the most ridiculous movie I’ve ever heard of.

If I haven’t stressed this enough up to this point, let me say it again; This shit is weird! I mean utterly batshit. From the outset everything about the story, including the way it’s told is strange. We start out with an introduction by a police lieutenant (not the actor playing him, the actual character) Yes, the fourth wall is smashed to dust. The Lieutenant addresses you as though you were one of the group of “spectators” who also break the fourth wall. He explains that the movie which you are about to see is “an homage to ‘no reason’, that most powerful element of style.” before pouring a glass of water onto the ground and getting back into the car boot he climbed out of moments before. The spectators then look on through binoculars as the “film” begins. I don’t want to spoil too much but these spectators play just as much part in the film as the eponymous tyre.

The actual story starts when the abandoned tyre picks itself up out of the dirt and rolls on its way. Early on it discovers it can destroy objects and living things without touching them and proceeds at once to the nearest population centre.

I won’t go into the story any more than that because, despite the negative review that is about to ensue, you’re pretty much going to watch the thing anyway. It’s car crash cinema. Oh, and it’ll make you think twice about that turkey on Christmas day, say no more.

Now, on to the nitty gritty. From the police lieutenant’s introduction onwards the movie does nothing but insist upon itself. It is the cinematic equivalent of Ron Burgundy shouting “Come over here and see how good I look!”. Rather than silently using good technique and style to tell a great story, it uses a pretty weak story to showcase directorial technique. Like a tyre on a car that needs tracking (see what I did there) the story wears very thin, very quickly. Tyre encounters a person –> Tyre starts to shake –> Person’s head explodes –> Tyre moves on –> Repeat. I’m guessing this is why all that breaking-the-fourth-wall crap comes in to it because if it didn’t the movie would be a one-trick pony on its way to the glue factory.

That said, the acting isn’t terrible. Spinella’s police lieutenant is particularly engaging but other performances are also far from garbage. The direction and cinematography are good, too. Clever but cheap-as-chips special effects adequately satisfy and careful camera work goes a long way in suspending disbelief over a living, homicidal tyre. All these things though, no matter how well executed shouldn’t be what the movie is all about. If you want to gush about how much you know about movie making techniques, make a documentary while you shoot a real movie… you know, one with a story and not just sequence after sequence of exploding heads.

So in summary; As a demonstration of directorial skill and technical prowess, Rubber is admirable. As a movie, however, it’s just plain terrible. When you cut through the weirdness there’s simply nothing there. Nothing that you’d want to trade 90 minutes of your life for, anyway.

Verdict:

Synopsis: When seasoned CIA spook Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is named as a Russian double agent she goes on the run to find her husband and clear her name. The only problem is Salt may well be everything that she’s accused of being. As the foretold “Day X”, the proposed start of World War 3, draws nearer the truth about Salt must be uncovered to save the world.

Bourne with boobs? Well, not quite. From the synopsis and, indeed the trailer, you might well get that impression but Salt is a whole different being all together. Firstly it’s a lot more tongue in cheek. The plot gets pretty ridiculous even before Jolie slaps on the facial prosthesis to become the most freakishly effeminate male NATO officer in recorded history. Insane leaps between moving vehicles, weaponised spider venom and super-Hollywood CIA headquarters are the order of the day here. Think more along the lines of the Mission: Impossible series than the all more serious Bourne trilogy.

Ridiculous as it may be this doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. Jolie is clearly at home here as she slides comfortably back into her action boots after her hiatus from acting due to becoming a mother (to one of her own children). And she’s back with a bang. Salt is easily better than the two ill-conceived Tomb Raider movies and with Jolie front and centre she gets enough screen time to expand on the great action set pieces she hinted at in Wanted. Although Salt lacks the subtlety and ironic sub-plot of Mr and Mrs Smith it still ambles along at a decent enough pace to satisfy. There are certainly enough twists and turns to keep most happy for the duration as well. You might guess some of them but I doubt you’ll get them all.

Supporting cast perform admirably and, as is pretty much the law, don’t steal focus from Jolie. Schreiber, in particular, more than pleased as he took up much the same character as he played in The Sum of All Fears, with added suit. That’s all I can say about that.

Noyce did a pretty good job in the directors chair, so long as he wasn’t trying to make anything too taxing… because it wasn’t. Action set pieces played out well and there was enough suspense on the build up to them. A satisfying conclusion to wash down the popcorn leaves us with a well rounded action movie, but not much of a thinker.

Verdict:

Earlier today Andy tweeted:

No train journey is complete without strangers wanting to play with my iPad.

Quickly followed by:

If you don’t know how to use an iPad, you’re probably still figuring out how soup works.

I can only assume that the second tweet came about due to one of the aforementioned strangers having a tough time picking up the UI.

Bearing in mind that the iOS UI is regarded as the finest in the world, it would be reasonable to junp to the conclusion that the nameless stranger was, in fact in the business of eating soup with chopsticks. I mean, it’s simple right? Touch what you want to use and hit the home key to go back. Easy.

Or is it? Let’s not forget that this kind of rich, intuitive touch UI is still very much in its infancy and there are precious few, the likes of Apple and HTC that have come anywhere near getting it right. The market is still flooded with inferior, complicated touch and button based UIs. With this in mind the issue becomes a lot less black and white. Allow me to illustrate. I’ve handed my iPhone to a number of friends and family members who I would never think of as stupid. Some of them are even fairly competent when it comes to technology and more than a few of them have stuttered or struggled in its initial use. Interestingly, the constant with all of these people is that they owned older or inferior mobile phones with complicated button based UIs.

This got me thinking, it’s probably not the people being stupid, more a case of them being conditioned, over time to use mobile devices via complex key combinations and menus within menus within menus. When handed a device where carrying out a task is as simple as touching the icon it is totally understandable that it would appear alien to them. After all we only regard things as intuitive if our past experiences with similar things condition us to have compatible expectations. Not everyone has used a touch enabled phone before. As such, however slight, there is still a learning curve. And let’s not forget; this is just with mobile phones. There are many similarities between an old Nokia and an iPhone (the way you hold it and use your fingers and thumbs to type, for example.) An iPad is a totally new way of computing. No desktop, laptop or Netbook has worked quite like an iPad before and as such no one will have any subconscious expectations.

We need to apply this thinking when crafting UIs for anything from a simple brochure site to a fully featured complex web application. What might seem like second nature to us will be perceived and picked up differently by others depending on their experiences with similar things in the past. We need to be patient and sympathetic towards those who are not as fast to pick up a UI as we are. Moreover we must constantly think of them when we make things. Failure to do so will always come at the cost of the end user.

Unthinkable

Starring: Samuel L Jackson, Michael Sheen, Carrie Anne Moss
Directed by: Gregor Jordan

When an FBI agent Brody (Moss) and a black-ops interrogator, H (Jackson) are brought in to press a terror suspect (Sheen) for the whereabouts of three nuclear bombs, right and wrong no longer exist.

When conventional interrogation methods fail, high level officials authorise H to use his signature torture techniques to extract the information, no matter the cost. Sickened by what she sees, it is up to agent Brody to get the information and find the bombs before H tortures a man to death and the the values of a nation are irreparably tarnished.

It took me a day or two to figure out whether I enjoyed this movie or not, and that I suppose is the whole point. Like Hard Candy, Unthinkable toys with what you think you know about right and wrong and it does this very, very well. Sure the pace is a tad uneven and it can be a bit bull-in-a-china-shop in places but on the whole I really quite enjoyed it. Moss, Sheen and Jackson delivered commendable performances, even if some of the supporting cast left a little to be desired, and the direction was more than competent, acting as a great tension builder.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: Hard Candy, The Siege, The Sum of All Fears

From Paris With Love

Starring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Directed by: Pierre Morel

When handed his first “real” assignment, low-level CIA operative James Reece (who is acting as personal aid to the US ambassador in Paris) couldn’t be more thrilled… until he meets his partner. Trigger-happy, wise-cracking Charlie Wax leads Reece on a white-knuckle trail of destruction through the Parisian underworld and leaves him craving his desk job once again. But when Reece discovers he may be involved in the terrorist plot they are trying to stop, he realises he has no choice but to stick with Wax.

Like a cinematic meat-head, From Paris With Love packs a lot of punch with very little brains. Action, reminiscent of a ham fisted Jon Woo is drawn out by a ridiculous story and dialogue that would make porno script writers cringe. Travolta is too old to be doing this kind of thing and Meyers… well Meyers was okay but, let’s face it, you can’t polish a turd.

While not the best remove-brain-insert-popcorn movie ever made, From Paris WithLove did have its moments. Some of the fight scenes were exciting and some of the big explosion set pieces were pretty good too.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: The 51st State, The Big Hit

The Book of Eli

Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis
Directed by: Albert and Allen Hughes

Eli, a lone traveller makes his way across a post-apocalyptic America with  a book that holds the key to mankind’s salvation or destruction. When he stops at a small trading post for water Eli encounters Carnegie (Oldman) who is intent on obtaining the book to control the town’s population and branch out to other settlements.

Solara (Kunis), one of Carnegie’s captives, decides to help Eli reach his destination and make sure that the book doesn’t fall into Carnegie’s hands. The pair make the last effort to reach the west coast, pursued by Carnegie and his band of mercenaries but can they reach their destination in time?

Remember how Deep Impact and Armageddon were released pretty much at the same time and they were nearly the same movie? Well The Book of Eli was, bizarrely released at the same time as The Road. The only fundamental plot difference between the two movies is that Eli has a specific destination. The protagonists in The Road just had to keep moving. That said, I think I enjoyed The Book of Eli a little bit more. It wasn’t as subtle with its message but the pace was a lot nicer and the ending wasn’t so depressing.

At first I thought the movie was a little too Jesus-tastic but the more I think about it the more I realise The Book of Eli is as much of an indictment of organised religion as it is a case for its existence. Combine this interesting story with some intense action and threat and you actually have a pretty successful movie.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: The Road

A Serious Man

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Directed by: Joel & Ethan Coen

A Serious man follows Larry Gopnik, a Jewish college professor who watches his life suddenly unravel by way of a number of sudden unfortunate events. While looking for meaning in this troubled time, Larry not only finds no answers but stumbles into yet more misfortune.

Seriously odd-ball, A Serious Man is Coen Brothers through and through. This will most certainly not be for everyone but I was pleasantly surprised. While not laugh-out-loud funny you will find yourself identifying with how comically accurate a representation of day to day life it is. Not only this, you’ll find yourself exploring the ideas and undertones of the movie in your own mind for days afterwards and I don’t think I’m the only person who will want to watch it again in the future.

Performances were great all round and despite being a tad self-indulgent on the directors’ part the movie holds together very well.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men, Donnie Darko (trust me, you’ll get why after you watch it)

Dorothy

Starring: Carice Van Houten, Jenn Murray
Directed by: Agnes Merlet

When a court appointed psychiatrist Jane Van Dopp arrives on a remote island to investigate Dorothy, a troubled young girl accused of abusing a baby she was babysitting she soon discovers that not everything is as it seems with Dorothy or the community on the island.

What at first seems like a textbook case of multiple-personality disorder begins to reveal itself to be something all together more supernatural and sinister. Can Jane solve the mystery in time to save herself and Dorothy?

Not at all what I was expecting, Dorothy is a fairly decent concept for a film and offers a nice twist on the usual multiple personality story. Unfortunately a low budget, unrefined direction and underwhelming cast let it down. The strongest cast member was Jenn Murray who played Dorothy and five other personalities throughout the movie but even this was sketchy at best.

The film’s marketing job was a bit of an abortion, if I’m honest. The trailers, packaging and tag lines all set the movie up to be like The Exorcist, Godsend or Birth when in actual fact it has more in common with Raising Cain and Deliverance. The interesting premise makes Dorothy worth a watch… just.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: Raising Cain, Identity

Alice in Wonderland

Starring: Pretty much everyone you’d expect in a Tim Burton movie.
Directed by: Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s long-awaited re-imagining of the classic Alice in Wonderland sees Mia Wasikowska play Alice, a 19 year old girl who falls into a world from her childhood imagination to fulfill her destiny; to end the Red Queen’s reign of terror.

Although typically twisted and bizarre, Alice in Wonderland seemed to be a little too disjointed and removed from the source material. Proof positive that you can only mutate something so much before it becomes something else entirely. Burton did the exact same thing with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Things seemed to just happen that, I’m sure made sense in the mind of Tim Burton but to average Joe, just seem totally misplaced and random.

One saving grace was the level of acting on show. Depp and co. performed admirably and smaller performances from Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry went down a treat.

Unfortunately, this time Burton has gone a bit too far into the surreal and turned out something a bit naff and all over the place. I’d much rather see the likes of his earlier work such as Beetlejuice and Batman. Those were the real gems.

Verdict:

If you enjoyed this, check out: The work of Salvador Dali

Like I said, let me know if you like this format because I’ve got a couple of days off work at the end of the week so chances are I’ll be doing the same again. I already have 44 Inch Chest and Splice ear-marked.

In a bit!

I had to rack my brains and do some serious internet combing to find model numbers and pictures of them all but I think I’ve documented them fairly well. So have a read… if you’re a total nerd like me.

Motorola AM3180 – Vodafone

Everyone remembers the first phone they ever had and I’m no exception. This unwieldy heavy beast made the pocket of my school trousers bulge when I was in year 11 (1999). It was one of the earliest PAYG handsets and typical of its time was very light on features. Alas it did all the jobs it was meant to do (calls and texts) perfectly well.

I was the only one I knew at that time with a Motorola. Cool when you consider that around this time the company was releasing its game-changing Star-Tac line of clam shell phones and the world was going mad for them. And so what if someone didn’t appreciate it. You could throw it at them for a quick hospitalisation.

Pros: Street cred, handy weapon.
Cons: Big, heavy, devoid of features

Sony CMD J6 – Vodafone

I got this sweet baby in my first year of college and kept it for the whole duration of my A Levels (1999-2001). Its sleek, lightweight design and refreshingly different, jog dial based UI made it stand out to me. At a time when the “cool kids” all had blocky, bland old Nokias I felt like a champion of good design.

It was really well built being Sony and was packed with decent features such as the newly emerging WAP and great sounding ring tones. Sadly the talk-time battery life was a bit of a let down, flat-lining around the 3 hour mark. For its time the J6 had a very high resolution display, albeit still monochrome. After pixelated green/black WAP porn sites lost their novelty factor, however the J6 didn’t offer much in the way of fun. Games were limited and a bit pants.

Pros: Compact, sleek, light, good UI, good build quality
Cons: Low talk-time battery life, poor games

Nokia 6510 – O2

This miniscule little phone was my first contract phone and also my first Nokia. Not only that, it was the smallest handset I’ve ever owned. Based loosely on the iconic 8210, the 6510 was geared more towards the executive market with its non-offensive colours and blue back-light instead of the usual green or white. What was also pretty awesome was that the LEDs behind the keypad were stupidly bright so you could pop the cover off and have a pretty sweet flashlight.

The 6510 sported the same great Nokia UI that had become famous with phones like the classic 3210 and games like snake and free cell were all there too. Where it fell short, however was with its lack of modern features such as polyphonic ring tones. These features were just starting to appear on phones released around the same time and would have been more than welcome on the 6510.

Pros: Small, light, executive look, great UI, doubles as flashlight
Cons: A bit light on cool features

Nokia 6600 – O2

Ah, my first “smartphone”. To this day I still love this phone and consider it to be one of my favourite nokia designs of all time. The 6600 was one of Nokias first widely adopted S60 camera phones, mainly because of its compact, stylish design and wealth of clever features such as video recording out of the box.

Although the design was lovely, the build quality left a little to be desired. The fit and finish was a little bit crappy and dirt worked its way into the seams and onto the screen. Not a huge deal but it did start to piss me off. Also, the series 60 OS, still in relative infancy was pretty buggy and the phone seemed to crash more than it should.

Pros: It sure was a looker, camera with video
Cons; Poor build quality, Buggy OS

Nokia 3230 – O2

I traded in my 6600 for something similar in features but smaller and with a better camera. The 3230 had a nice part-aluminium case and a modern screen orientated design. It ran S60 again but featured a supposed faster processor and more memory.

The reality of this phone was a nightmare. It was one of the slowest phones I’ve ever had the misfortune of using and it crashed like every 5 minutes. It took 20-30 seconds to capture a photo and the screen became caked in pocket dust inside 48 hours. No interchangeable covers meant that you had to dismantle the phone to get this crap out. 3-4 times a week.

One cool thing about this phone though, was the games. It came with a rally game and the first augmented reality app I’d ever seen in the form of a space invaders type game that used the camera to make an image for the background.

Pros: Kinda cool games
Cons: Slow, buggy, crappy fit and finish resulting in screen dust

Nokia 6310i – Orange

Now I didn’t actually own this phone, it was given to me as a work phone to use when I was on callout. It was a strictly business, function over fashion handset with no colour screen, no camera and a basic design.

That’s not to say it was a bad phone, far from it. The battery life was bordering on supernatural. I’d regularly exceed 2 weeks of standby time on a single charge. Also, everything about it was super-robust. It was built tough, the OS never crashed and it had one of the most stable Bluetooth implementations I’ve ever seen.

Pros: Massive batter life, good build quality, stable software
Cons: Only very basic features

Nokia N80 – Orange

After suffering the horrible 3230 for a year I looked for a phone that actually delivered on its promises. One of the original lineup of Nokia’s N Series, the N80 boasted 3G, 2 cameras including an unheard of 3 megapixel beast in the back and a beautiful high res screen.

Aside from a few minor crashes and a slightly cheap feel to the slide action this phone was a belter. The OS was stable, the UI was really nice and the camera took surprisingly crisp photos. The battery life was not the best but I’d regularly get 3-4 days out of a charge which is all I could really ever need. I liked this phone so much that I kept it for longer than my minimum contract.

The only thing that pissed me off was the fact that a beautiful all black version was released a few months after I got my silver one.

Pros: Cutting edge features (for the time), high res screen, fast and stable OS
Cons: Cheap feel to the slide action, underwhelming battery life

Nokia 6500 Slide – Orange

I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t choose this phone because of its features. The main reason I got this phone was because Orange gave me an iPod touch for free. On paper the phone was an upgrade… it had similar features to my N80 but they were all slightly improved. The camera shot the same resolution but Carl Zeiss optics made the images way clearer. The phone was built better, was smaller and the slide action felt reassuringly solid. So solid in fact that the phone was actually notably heavier than the N80.

It was a looker, too. Gloss black and brushed stainless steel made it look and feel really nice.

The downside to this phone was the UI. It lacked the intuitive simplicity that the N80 had and certain parts looked jagged and unfinished. Using the phone just wasn’t as pleasurable as it had been with the N80. I don’t regret having it though; the iPod touch made my mind up about what the next phone I bought would be.

Pros: Solid build, good camera
Cons: Nasty UI, heavy

Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB – O2

This brings us up to date. The phone I currently have is the iPhone 3GS. I gave the previous two versions of the iPhone a miss because, although they were good phones, they lacked some pretty fundamental features such as 3G and video capture. When the 3GS was launched with video, improvd camera with tap-to-focus and improved GPS with the added compass I only had a few months left on my 6500 contract so come December I got myself one.

Quite simply the best phone I’ve ever owned, the iPhone takes smartphone power and makes it easier to use than any other device on the market. Tens of thousands of apps mean that each phone is unique to the requirements of the user but the cutting edge UI means that the ease-of-use never suffers. And with each hardware and software release, the iphone just keeps getting better.

Pros: Best UI on earth, unparalleled app market, shaped the landscape for future mobile devices
Cons: Hard to name any but the battery life is pretty bad and the lack of flash *can* be annoying.

The timeline.

So there you have it. It’s not many phones by any means but I think it tells a story. What are your favourite/least favourite phones. What have you got now?