When my old phone packed up I decided to join the iphone craze that everyone seems to have given in to.

I got the iphone 3 8GB. It looks very sleek although fragile and the first thing I done was to purchase a protective case and screen film to stop scratches and breakages. These vary in price over the web and in local phone shops.

The iphone is fully touch screen apart from the main round button that accesses the main screen.

Through the itunes store there are an unlimited amount of applications to make life easier, a little bit fun or games to keep the kids entertained on a long journey. There are a lot of websites which review all the apps and there are many free ones as well as some that require a small fee. Most of them I have seen have cost between £1-£2.

There are some custom ideas that can be applied to the iphone although it takes someone who knows what thery are doing to install certain programs and understand how it works although if you're a tech whizz then you could make a pretty groovy phone!

The front screen can be customised by a photograph of your choice. The camera takes decent pictures although sometimes it takes a while for the shutter to go off which is a bit off putting. There s no flash on the original camera neither is there zoom although there is an app that can be installed with theses features.

The safari internet can be temperamental, sometimes it will let you on certain sites and other times it won't but on the whole it's a decent speed and does what you want it too.

It is not possible as it is to get a custom ringtone, again it takes someone who knows what they are doing to install certain programmes and move files around etc, it would be much better if you could just use your own file.

The ipod is quite good and saves you carrying around both the iphone and ipod, it has a good volume although to fully switch off the ipod function the full phone must be restarted which is a little time consuming but not the end of the world.

Overall the iphone is a good phone although it could be better and hopefully the release of the others since this one means these problems are overcome.