When Blackberry had a little “meltdown” a couple of weeks back, jokes were cracked aplenty regarding the superiority of the iPhone V’s the Blackberry.

“iPhone users – replicate the Blackberry experience by activating Airplane Mode in your settings”… Oh how we laughed.

Well, actually, not all of us did. I’m an iPhone user, and I regard the wonders of this particular smartphone in much the same way as I do my car – great when it’s working, but a complete bitch when it’s not.

I am unashamedly addicted to social media. Rarely a half hour will pass when I don’t check my twitter account, and/or post some sort of banal observation about my life (hey, I never claimed  to be a philosopher…). Or I’ll check my emails, or while away a quiet five minutes on angry birds…

Just like my car though, I’m increasingly certain that at some point, soon, somethings going to give up and die on the phone. So I was one of the very few non-laughing iPhone users. Not only was I acutely aware of the inevitable data and app losses when IOS5 for apple was launched, but I just had “a bad feeling”.

Unfortunately, my pessimism was proved correct today when I suddenly noticed that my phone felt very hot. Then, within the space of 20 minutes it dropped 20% of its battery… Now iPhones are notorious for having a crappy battery life, but 20% in 20 minutes is totally Not A Good Thing.

I phoned up the shop where I bought my phone and was advised to go to the Apple Store for advice. Fear gripped me, but I steeled myself, and went in. Those Apple stores are scary. It kinda feels like  cult. Full of smiling  Apple advocates and fans fawning over the latest offering from the mighty Apple Corp… Scary.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that my trip wasn’t totally fruitful (see what I did there? I did a fruit pun)… I got told to make an adjustment to my settings and “give it a few days”. More disturbingly, I was told that if the problem didn’t resolve then I should “book an appointment online” for their “genius bar”…

Genius Bar?! Exccuse me, but basically, isn’t an apple store a place that sells technology gizmo’s? Now, believe me, I have all the respect in the world for the knowledge that has gone into the development of Apple and their thingums, and this post is in no way meant to be disrespectful to the late Steve Jobs.

That said, that whole Genius Bar thing? There aren’t words… I mean sometimes  I want to slap myself across the face and scream at myself “ITS ONLY A PHONE!!! FOR GOD’S SAKE, GET A GRIP!” but then, I remember that without my phone, I might have to go a whole TEN HOURS without sharing something significant* (* for significant, read insignificant) about my life. I mean where would people be without knowing that I cricked my neck today? Or that there’s a bloke in work who like to imagine that he looks like Matthew McConaughey. Where I ask you?

It scares me how much we rely on these little gizmo’s and gadgets. The smartphone, the satnav. God forbid I should actually have  to use a map. Or read a newspaper rather than find out live on twitter about the breaking news.

The worst part of it all? I’d love a new model. With more battery power. One day, I might become a crack head. CrackBerry, obviously. Not that I’m an addict or anything. I can give the handset up anytime I want to..