I’m not going to bother to explain that title, you’re either going to grok it or not.

Long time readers will know that I have treasured the concept of the smartphone, a phone so ultimately capable at connecting to the intertube supernet web, or providing me with my electronic ether missives, that my dream of an ultimately connected life is only realized by the future we live in, today.

I thought that day had come long ago with the advent of many a Windows Mobile phone or Blackberry.  But in the words of Admiral Jarok, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been…”

I began my 2 week long road trip in Seattle with a dead Zune.  I love the small form factor Zune.  I think it’s a great device.  But my Zune 2 ship gift version’s squircle died. You’d think with its primary control interface dead it would race forward, untethered like some out of control freight train, bringing me hitherto unknown levels of music.  Alas it dashed itself to death on the cliffs of insanity instead and just sat there like a dumb shit.

In my rush to leave for my trip I shoved in only 2 cd’s in the cd changer of Rochto’s car.  The new Dave Matthews Band and Jonathan Coulton’s Live CD.

These were, needless to say, worn through to transparency by the time I got to Colorado. Utilizing my Australian GPS’s capabilities, I was instructed to head “Stroight awn two oighty seffin to fawt cawllens, colorawdo” to the closest “Bist Boiy”

Now, I went in intending to get a simple Zune 8 gig since I had a lot of music loaded onto my new netbook and that was roughly what I would be replacing. But my brother Joscoto got the 3G iPhone and was raving about it. Timid, a little unsure, possibly even feeling naughty, I inquired if they had a black iPhone 3g 8 gig.

Nope, sold out since they were only 99$ They either had the white 3g 8 gig, or a black 16 gig iPhone 3gs. 

Gotta have black.

Well, I said, ok let’s get the 3gs.  I guess.  I mean…I hear it’s ok. But I’m only getting it for the music player.

You have to understand that I have had to endure the praises of the iPhone from every single person I knew.  It became so chic that suddenly I didn’t want it solely because the cool kids had it.

Yeah that version of me?  That version of me was a FUCKING IDIOT.

The iPhone is the single most polished and perfected Smartphone experience I have had to date. It’s true, other platforms do 10000 more things. But so far the iPhone does the 10 things I rely on perfectly. You can bitch about being beholden to the Apple app store, but so much of it is available for free that’s a silly objection.  Yes yes Apple has made mistakes in regards to censoring apps but that’s few and far between compared to how many awesome apps there are.

Music playback is perfect, phone reception is the same or better than my previous phones w/ ATT, and best of all I can get my Microsoft Exchange contacts, email, and calendar just like on any Windows Mobile phone. I especially love having the phone in iPod mode jacked into my car’s stereo and it pauses the song automatically to let me know a sms or phone call has come in.

I’m cursing myself for putting up with various iterations of what I thought a Smartphone should be over the years.  Even when I was pleased with the solution I had, a much better one was available via the iPhone.  So far I’ve loaded a killer planetarium application that uses motion tracking such that I can point the 3gs at any spot in the sky and it shows me the stars in that spot, a kindle application that loads all kindle books without my having to buy a much less featured Kindle, mapping and GPS applications that work perfectly, and a real web browser that has finally truly given me a mobile friendly view of the net web tuberhighway.

Am I raving?  YES I AM. Is it perfect?  no of course not.,  The recent SMS vulnerability proves Apple still doesn’t know fuck all about how to engineer security unless it’s through small market share. But I dare any self respecting geek who loves the future that is today of a fully connected world to play with a 3GS for 2 hours and not concede it is, to date, the best portable form factor multifunction device at its price point.

I love it.  I give it 48 stars.