I have twice almost bought an iPhone. I have never almost bought any other smart­phone. In fact, I haven’t bought a new phone since 2006, as I explained in an earlier post.

It is not simply a desire not to do the same as every­one else. I can def­in­itely under­stand the attrac­tion of hav­ing such a ver­sat­ile port­able com­puter, cam­era, music player and phone in one’s pocket at all times.

My gen­eral philo­sophy (if it deserves such a grand title) is to care­fully eval­u­ate any non-essential pur­chase with a long term view. I’ve gradu­ally come to the real­isa­tion that everything is a com­prom­ise, and that is true of mobile phones as much as any technology.

The advant­ages of own­ing a smart­phone for me are fairly obvi­ous to any­one who sees the col­lec­tion of equip­ment that one could replace. I will write in terms of the iPhone here because that is the product which I have spent the most time con­sid­er­ing. When I vis­ited York last week­end, I had a MiFi sup­ply­ing fast wire­less Inter­net for my iPod Touch and iPad. I also car­ried my cur­rent mobile phone, which con­tinu­ally frus­trates me with its slow reac­tion times, small memory and lack of Inter­net, apps and so forth. Whilst I am a keen pho­to­grapher, I did not bring my cam­era as it is simply not prac­tical for me to carry. Hav­ing an iPhone I would be able to do away with the iPod touch, ter­rible phone and would not miss a cam­era. I would not spend so much time look­ing up mobile num­bers on the iPod and typ­ing them in to the sync-less phone. I would be able to share Inter­net with the iPad and not need the MiFi. I would gain GPS nav­ig­a­tion and never again miss the abil­ity to tweet or take an oppor­tun­ist photo.

Whilst these advant­ages are attract­ive, do they jus­tify the cost? It is worth con­sid­er­ing altern­at­ive devices when cost is of import­ance. Unfor­tu­nately the gap in pri­cing between Apple’s latest model and the rival Android devices is not that great. I don’t find the lar­ger screens neces­sary, if they are accom­pan­ied by an inferior soft­ware exper­i­ence (hope­fully someone will even­tu­ally prove to me that there are high qual­ity equi­val­ents to my most used iOS apps). No smart­phone cam­era is as good as my cur­rent cam­era except in port­ab­il­ity. This is the mat­ter on which I feel most likely to be swayed in the future. Inev­it­ably I desire to take pho­tos when I don’t have a cam­era avail­able and this frus­trates me, but I would get far more enjoy­ment and use from a cam­era cost­ing sig­ni­fic­antly less than a smart phone.

What annoys me about the iPhone 4S is that I would fairly swiftly run out of space and regret not spend­ing more on a lar­ger capa­city model. Here is one point I con­cede to the myriad of Android and other non-iPhones with their expand­able memory. This helped jus­tify not buy­ing the iPhone when I was tee­ter­ing a few weeks ago. I could buy a per­fectly good iPod Touch with 32GB stor­age for less than half the cost of the 32GB iPhone, and while it doesn’t do as much it does enough to sat­isfy my needs.

Here is my real reason for not buy­ing any smart­phone yet: I don’t want to be per­man­ently attached to the Inter­net. I don’t want to be always avail­able, ready to respond to any email, con­stantly up to date with news. I find life more inter­est­ing when I have my head up, observing. I get more time to think when I am not absorbed by a little touch screen. I can actu­ally have a con­ver­sa­tion with someone next to me, and not waste time play­ing a silly little game. If I want to take pho­to­graphs, I can plan ahead and bring the real deal. I still have my iPod touch to play music and apps when I feel the need.

This free­dom from digital com­mu­nic­a­tion is becom­ing rarer, and it’s some­thing I want to cher­ish. I am never more than a few hours from the web, so I don’t see the need to be 10 seconds from my inbox. When I even­tu­ally earn enough that an iPhone would cost me a rel­at­ively small amount, I will prob­ably own one and enjoy it. But for now, a device that I can­not afford to replace and the costs of replen­ish­ing mobile Inter­net band­width every month, are not some­thing I feel are worth the fin­an­cial bur­den. I am about to begin a mas­ters degree fun­ded by my own sav­ings, and for now I’d rather have great exper­i­ences and nice food than be able to check my email wherever I am.