It’s been about nine months since I purchased the 16GB iPod Touch. It was always intended to be a stopgap solution until the iPhone made its appearance in Australia. That time came on July 11th when the iPhone 3G was officially released here. But I said I wasn’t going to buy one straight away. Maybe on the next major update, but not yet.

“The iPod Touch is an awesome device,” I told everyone who asked if I was getting the iPhone. “It would be nice, but I don’t need one.”

It took less than 24 hours after its release to change my mind.

Don’t get me wrong. The iPod Touch is an awesome device, and it almost does everything the iPhone does. But for a few different reasons I felt a bit limited when the App Store was released and the 2.0 software was available, even though I had bought and installed it on the iPod Touch.

For instance, entering a person’s contact information on the iPod Touch feels perfectly natural, intuitive and easy. Having to enter the same information into my Motorola Maxx V6 phone is clumsy and frustrating in comparison. But entering a set of details twice, one in each device, is inevitable.

The iPod Touch doesn’t have a camera, microphone or speakers, which many useful apps in the App Store utilise. Granted, the camera on the iPhone is far from great, but at least having it included gives you options; quickly snapping a pic to send over Twitter in real time is a prime example. Using the microphone to record a quick voice note or to determine what song is playing using Shazam is also very handy. On the iPod Touch, I felt like I was missing out.

And apart from the little things, there was also the big reason why I felt limited with the iPod Touch; lack of mobile internet, something I had never before experienced. It never appealed to me prior to the iPhone’s release since I had to use the clumsy interfaces of existing phones on the market to browse the web and check my mail. But this ‘always on’ digital life is starting to spread, and I wanted to be a part of it.

So, the morning after the July 11th launch, I did much phoning around to see which Optus stores had the 16GB iPhone left, to which I found that zero of them did. What a surprise. So off I went to raincheck my iPhone and enter the waiting game. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long. Four days later, I had a shiny new 16GB black iPhone 3G in my hot little hands, completely functional and extremely awesome.

The first thing I noticed was how comfortable the iPhone felt in my hand compared to the iPod Touch. Obviously, you sacrifice the thinness of the iPod Touch to get the ergonomic comfort of the iPhone, but it’s well worth it.

The second thing I noticed was how smudgy and full of fingerprints the black plastic casing on the back of the iPhone gets. It looks like you’ve eaten KFC and wiped your greasy mitts all over it! Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but it’s definitely visible in most lighting. Do I regret getting the black and wish I’d bought the white version? Not at all! A quick wipe on your jeans and it looks good as new. Plus, black is such a classic look, has better resale value, and I’ll probably be shoving a case on it anyway at some point.

So how about functionality, then? In the real world, carrying the iPhone with me has been much more useful than the iPod Touch. The GPS is very handy and also very fun to just mess around with. Phone calls and text messages are a beautiful thing on the iPhone. The entire user experience has been everything I thought it would be. It’s definitely more than “just a phone” (famous last words, by the way, for anyone who ever says that to me!)

Downsides? Battery life, for one. I’ve gotten used to carrying two separate devices around with me, phone and iPod, and now that they’re both in the same device I’m going to have to learn some power management. As per others’ reports, 3G sucks down battery life like a thirsty camel, so it stays set to ‘off’ unless I really need the speed. GPRS is decent enough for me for simple text stuff like email and Twitter.  When I’m at home, it’s always using WiFi.

Another downside is the speed it takes to switch between different network services, ie: from 3G to GPRS. I can see this being a small problem when out and about where the 3G signal is low, but I’ll just have to remember where these areas are, and turn 3G on or off accordingly.

The camera is a lot more clunky and slow than I thought it would be, being an Apple product and all. But then, camera phones are never great, and I didn’t buy the iPhone for the camera anyway. It’s just a nice little bonus for those times when I’m not lugging around my DSLR camera with me.

Do I miss my iPod Touch? Yeah, I do, a little bit. I’d grown quite attached to it. I still feel that no matter how popular the iPhone becomes, the iPod Touch will always have a market. But I’m satisfied with the decision I made, and overall I’m very happy with my new iPhone (and didn’t even have to queue up in the wee hours of the morning to get it). No doubt Apple will release a new version of the iPhone 3G in a year or so, and minor updates to the existing iPhone 3G along the way. But what’s the point in waiting? During that time, the internet will be in my pocket everywhere I go. It’s a geek’s life!