Isabella iPhone

Warning: this is a geekoid post.

!(imgcenter)http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3559/3291625987_6ce729e88f.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/yannie/3291625987/

When August 22 arrived, neither Mr Thick nor I bought the iPhone. Oh, it’s not that we did not want the slick piece of perfection to come into these willing arms. Being StarHub users, we (rather, he) were not keen to let go of our phone-internet-cable TV Hub package and move over to the red camp. To be perfectly honest, I was more than happy to switch operators; afterall, I had deliberately not re-contract with Sparky’s owners just for the iPhone. The other reason was due to the fact that the data plans offered by Singtel were not enticing at all and I was not interested in doubling the cost of my price plans just for that sad 1GB of data.

I was literally dying inside to buy the phone. I grabbed onto Trevor’s Froth every chance I could get, cooing over his Rabbid themes with adoration. Yes, I was that sick. We contemplated buying the phone without a contract but stingy ‘ol me refused to pay $1k for a phone, even though it is the Jesus phone. The answer came to us late last year: his friend, who is a Singtel customer, wanted a HTC phone (??) that was only available on StarHub and was willing to trade. With me! Hurrah! Poor Mr Thick is still under contract so the deal fell onto my all-too-willing lap.

And that’s how Isabella iPhone came into my world last month.

It’s been a wonderful experience and the iPhone is so easy to use that I didn’t have the usual teething problems I had faced when reviewing crap Korean and Finnish phones. Of course, there were some missing functions that I used to get from my trusty Sony Ericsson – 3G video calls, MMS, copy and paste, Bluetooth, message forwarding – but so far, none of these have hindered me greatly. The best thing is, Isabella (she’s in pink!) has become more than a phone to me – I can now write blog posts while on the MRT and email it to myself when I get home, I can watch videos on a larger screen as compared to my StaRPod ver2.0, I can tweet (!) whenever I feel like it, I can take pictures and upload them immediately onto my Flickr account…you get the drift.

Thanks to Popartgirl’s generosity, I was gifted with a US$25 gift card for my birthday and the first purchase of the day was Sally’s Salon, a disgustingly addictive game that kept me up till 3am. With the card, I now have an US account (which is much more comprehensive than the sad local platform offered to us by Apple) and have been buying tunes (Ingrid Michaelson’s live rendition of Creep is pure awesomeness), apps and games with glee. Yums.

Anyway, if you are a girly user like I am, here are the top 12 apps/games that I really like using:

1. Sally’s Salon (US$0.99) – It’s similar to the old Nintendo game that I used to play, where you have to run to each bar aisle and catch the empty beer mugs that patrons discard. Except this time, you are facing a horde of disgruntled customers who want to do their hair, nails and tan and they want it NOW.

2. Saturday Night Fever (free!) – I love the cool graphics and retro music! You tap and glide your fingers according to the beat amid a backdrop featuring a dancing man with a bouffant hairdo that can rival Kim Jong-Il.

3. Polarizer (free!) – Turn the photos that you take into Polaroids. Most of the pictures taken in previous posts have been processed by the Polarizer. I love the effect!

4. NYTimes (free!) – When I am lazy in the morning and refuse to get out of bed, I switch on Isabella’s wifi and read the news with my head on my pillow.

5. Style.com (free!) – Get all the fashion news from Style.com while on the go!

6. Tweetie (US$2.99) – Read everyone’s tweets in a user-friendly format. Posting pictures was a bit of a pain, though, and it took me three tries before it was uploaded successfully.

7. Facebook (free!) – I swear it, I am addicted to Facebook and update my status at least once a day.

8. SG Wireless (free!) – Sign on to the dreadfully temperamental and laggy Wireless@SG with just a tap. That reminds me, I gotta get my password sorted out and stop filching Mr Thick’s account.

9. NetNewsWire (free!) – See NYTimes. I live in my bed.

10. Darkslide (free!) – Take pictures and upload to your Flickr account.

11. Tap Tap Revenge (free!) – Relive your para para days and tap your fingers to the music! The best part is, you can download free tunes to update the playlist.

12. AllRecipes (free!) – I haven’t really tried any of the recipes but I really like the DinnerSpinner feature. The users’ feedback offers different ways of updating and improving the recipes.

(PS: Isabella is named thus because my MacBook, her surrogate mother, is named Ingrid. Go figure.)