I’ve spent two days with the new iPhone 3GS now, and besides looking for my cellphone every 5 minutes (“cellphone” being the Nokia E51) I’ve had plenty time to play with it.

Of course there isn’t THAT much new about having an iPhone when you’ve had an iPod touch for a while, but there’s still some fundamental differences that still confuse me.

Having wireless Internet on the device is by far the most exciting part of the switch to an iPhone. Sure the E51 had 3G as well, and I could even share that connection with the touch, but both limited amount of data and limited use (E51)/annoyance to get it connected (E51 connection sharing with touch) meant it wasn’t anywhere near as easy to do. Today at work I got several emails and Twitter direct messages which I replied to on the spot, checked some stuff online etc. Having it there at an instance is really a step up from having to find WiFi.

Not having to carry two devices has also been confusing as I’ve looked for my cellphone many times before remembering the “iPod” is my cellphone now. It also feels weird in my pocket when there’s so (relatively speaking) little in there, but it’s a nice thing after all to not have to carry more than two things (iPhone and camera) while walking Kismo.

One of the aspects of the new device I hadn’t even considered but has turned out to be one of my favorite new things about this purchase is the remote control cable that i moded with Sennheiser IEMs yesterday. I’ve used ti all day both for calls and controlling music and it works perfectly! I’ve also used it with the voice control feature that the new iPhone has, where you can tell it to do things like “play music” or “call Bob”. It’s fairly accurate when you say something it can actually do, but if you give it a command it doesn’t understand it tends to do some random thing instead of just saying it doesn’t understand. One example was me trying to call a colleague and it tried to call an old classmate I haven’t spoken to in 4 years. Turns out the colleagues number wasn’t in my contacts since the contacts I transferred came from a slightly old Outlook sync. Still, how it can get “call Carl Erik” to mean “call Hanne Mette” is beyond me.

After getting this thing (and also while having the touch) some people have asked why a previous Apple-hater like myself would get an iPod/iPhone. After all, a couple of years ago I swore I’d never get one. Well, a lot has changed in those years. The iPhone went from being a fancy phone with limited features to the most versatile phone out there due to the myriad of apps available for it. The architecture that Apple has built with iTunes and the app store is something that no-one else had done before and that so far no-one has really been able to duplicate. Apps is the future, and Apple has the apps. An iPhone without apps wouldn’t be much of anything.

Bottom line I’m really happy with my purchase and I can’t wait to see what is on the horizon for the iPhone both with new apps coming but also accessories that can be accessed by apps, such as TV remote add-ons, maybe cameras etc. The iPhone has a user base that makes it very profitable to make pretty much any weird accessory for the thing, and that’s what I love to see.