I retract my desire to move to Android just yet. Despite the superlative professional reviews, on looking at the handset longingly on Amazon, I read this review by a former iPhone user. It points to some of the limitations – battery life, non-native music decompression (leading to a hot handset and short battery life), issues with multi-tasking  etc. Those are the main killers for me – my iPhone is my principle music devices and I don’t want to have to re-charge in the middle of the day – it’s frustrating (but rare) to have to do that with the iPhone and it would grate to have to do it daily.

For me, that’s a huge validation for consumer reviews and I’m grateful to the Amazon shopper who provided this insight for me. Tom loves his S2 but doesn’t use it as a music device so probably hasn’t suffered the worst of this. If you’re an iPhone user considering an S2 (or any Android device) go read this guy’s review. Very insightful indeed.

There’s something to be said for the benefits of long-term testing these devices! Pre-iPhone, I had at least two phones which I bought on the basis of cool features and good reviews that I grew to really, really dislike (the Ericsson T29 and the Motorola MPX 200)… given the year-long contract on those, it was frustrating indeed to be lumbered with them.