The two most reoccurring discussions people start with me are about my living in Meppel and the fact that I don’t have an iPhone. In fact, in my opinion two rather boring subjects to talk about. A bit more on that iPhone matter, although it will also lightly touch the Meppel matter.

Up to now, I have no need for an iPhone, although I’m involved in a couple of iPhone related projects. And this is why. I live in Meppel. What means that I travel a lot to meet people. Because of that, I’m always over half a day away from my studio. And although I know a lot of happy iPhone people, the one thing that makes it not so attractive for me is its battery life. Next to that, I mostly travel by train. And then I can use my MacBook Pro for screen-based activities. In 90% of the cases, I know where I have to go to. And in the other 10% I look up my destination beforehand. And I listen to the music on my iPod Classic 160GB, which also serves as an integral backup of all of my files where I work on. Also interesting, when I started working for myself again in September 2008 I increased the amount of minutes on my cellphone subscription. But since September, my phone calls dropped immensely. Most of my communication takes place via email, Twitter, Facebook, Skype or in person. I even turned of my voicemail. If I don’t pick up the phone, I’m busy, in meetings, or simply not able to pick it up. Like in the old days, when phones still had wires. Not only by principle to unstress since voicemail is a stupid interface to begin with, but people simply send me a message through any of the other available channels, try again later or simply decide that it wasn’t important at all to begin with, and don’t try again. Which makes my Nokia E51 perfect for me.

The E51 is sleek, simple and does everything it needs to do. Even has internet. But most importantly, I can use it all day without a recharge. Or several days. I even considered the version without camera, like the image above. But that version was not available. I think that’s fine, since I happened to use the camera quite a lot. Wouldn’t I want to have an iPhone at all? Sure. Eventually. If it solves something for me and doesn’t add additional clutter.