I’ve been resisting for a long time, but the time has now come. I am the owner of an iPhone, and not any iPhone, but the 6 in gold. What’s happened to me?

This week, my old phone has really annoyed me. Once again, it was crashing and the screen was freezing all the time. When I tried to answer a call and the app was too slow and wasn’t sliding to answer, I thought I was going to lose my mind.

So, I contacted Vodafone. Again.

See, almost as soon as I was up for an upgrade, I started the process to get a new phone and contract. You need to go to the website, check that you’re eligible, then click to request an upgrade, which then takes you to a short email form where you tell them what you want. I did this on the 15th. I received an email telling me I would be contacted within 48 hours, so I carried on with my life as usual. On the 20th, I realised I hadn’t been contacted at all, so since I couldn’t reply to the automated email, I logged on to their website, went to the emails and replied to my initial query with a Guys, any news? sort of email. Once again, I was going to be contacted within 48 hours. On the 22nd, I had enough.

I hate calling people, especially call centres where they transfer you from one department to another, and people with terrible accents try to have a conversation with me and my terrible accent. It frustrates me. In order to avoid this, I decided to chat with them – that way I could keep working on my stuff while I waited for them to reply.

Some dude gets in the chat and asks me the usual questions. I say I want an upgrade. He asks if I want an upgrade. Right, off to a great start… Yes, I want an upgrade. He tells me he needs to check my account to confirm that I can get one, and then transfer me to the upgrades department. He then asks for my full name and telephone number (and didn’t even have to buy me a drink or anything! Ha-ha) and confirms I can upgrade but since my account is in an old system (that’s how long I’ve been with Vodafone, I guess), he needs to transfer me to the dedicated team.

Enter guy #2.

Guy #2 asks me if I want to upgrade my contract (yes) and tells me to wait a moment while he locates my account. Then he says that for security reasons, he needs to ask me some questions and proceeds to ask me about some digits in a PIN. Some numbers I don’t remember from a PIN I’ve never used. I tell him as much, but that’s alright, he can ask me more questions. Eureka! He confirms I am eligible for an upgrade, and thank god for that, as I was not entirely sure anymore. I am feeling hopeful, but then he says the dreaded words: I have verified the account and can now connect you to upgrades for the best deals available. Please allow me 2-3 minutes while I work upon your request. So it seems he was not the guy I was hoping to speak to…

Enters person #3 (I say person because to this day, I don’t know whether it was a he or a she… I think it was a she, but it might have been a he).

She confirms she’s the one I need, and that she won’t have to transfer me again. Also, to make it up for all the trouble, she’s going to make sure I get a good deal, to which I respond I doubt our definition of a good deal match, but she reassures me they will. OK, hopeful, but at this point I’m very frustrated. I tell her the phones I have in mind, and she’s brilliantly friendly. She tells me the phone she owns, and why, and that she also needed bigger storage. I learn she also has a Macbook, and how she managed to transfer photos to the Mac when she used to have a Samsung phone. She also confirms she still struggles with the iPhone. We talk deals and offers, and she asks me if I know anyone in certain industries (to get a better deal, unfortunately, I don’t), and then proceeds to tell me what she can offer.

Long story short, I left the chat conversation feeling in a really good mood and with a new phone, which was to be delivered the next day (yesterday).

I’ve never had an iPhone before, only an iPod Touch, Nano and Shuffle (yup, but in ancient times), so I knew the transition was going to be a bit painful. First of all, I miss the back button a lot. Whenever I want to go just one screen back, I press the bottom right corner and it does nothing, because there’s no button. Some apps have little left-pointing arrows that indicate you can go to the previous page, but others don’t, and those baffle me.

The main homepage is not built as a circle, or infinite. When you scroll all the way to the right, you then have to go all the way to the left to go to the first page (instead of one more scroll to the right). It’s taking me a bit to get used to that. It just doesn’t make sense!

As soon as my phone got wi-fi, one of the first things I did was message Aissa via iMessage (almost the only reason I got an iPhone, ha-ha) and it seems the first app I downloaded was Twitter, don’t know why. I guess it was just there.

I really like the Touch ID functionality, I think it’s brilliant! Funny story: when I was setting up the iPhone, the plastic protector was still on, in case I really hated it or something and had to send it back. I was trying to record my fingertip and the phone kept telling me that I wasn’t covering the totality of the button. This meant I was arguing with myself and the phone, wondering how big my thumb needed to be in order to cover more of the button. Only after a while I realised that because the protective screen was still on, it was probably not reading it right. Dumb!

So far, it’s been clunky (mostly me, not the phone) because I need to get used to it. There’s been a lot of trial and error (a lot of error!) but I’ve managed to sort most of it out. I like this phone so far. It’s slim and light, the screen feels amazing to the touch, and it’s a nice shade of gold.

I’ll let you know how it goes. For now, I’m just enjoying seeing the icons shake with fear whenever I threaten to uninstall them. I feel important. They fear me.

On another note, now I can finally have Zombies, Run! for free. I’ve been wanting that app since before it was launched, and now it’s just there, and I’m not out running. Ugh!

What phone do you use? Do you love it, or are you desperately waiting for an upgrade?