Shocking behaviour. You’re well within your rights to navigate away now.

I could have probably wangled a new iPhone if I’d waited a short while longer, but I decided against it.

I love my iPod Touch and use it as much, if not more than my mobile phone. Usually within a wireless network, I enjoy its music, news, sport, games and social apps. I don’t much care that it’s not a phone and it doesn’t do messaging. In fact, it’s nice that it doesn’t.

Well into upgrade territory, the HTC Desire was tempting, as was the Nexus One – but I’m not an uber techie and frankly can’t be bothered updating firmware every few months in the way many Android fanboys seem to.

And then there was the iPhone4. If Apple released a new model of the iPod Touch with iPhone4-like peripherals – front and rear cameras, a microphone, that sharp new screen – I’d definitely be in the market. However, such a release may compromise their relationships with the carriers, enabling a non-phone device with features which could essentially make it a phone through VoIP applications.

When getting a new phone I want it first and foremost to be a phone. In the same way I wouldn’t buy a car for its thunderous stereo, I wouldn’t buy a phone for its high def cameras, Facetime video calling or the quality in which you can stream iPlayer. Much as I do love apps, I need and want a good phone which works well as a phone, doesn’t drop calls and is a sturdy portable device.

If it has the obligatory few bells and whistles that mobile phones come with today, that’s great. I’ll probably use them. But if I only get those at the cost of shaky call quality, keep them. I’m not willing to forfeit that.

I didn’t, and still don’t trust that the iPhone is a great phone for making voice calls on any mobile network, and the subsequent signal problems after iPhone4’s release last week made me unspeakably smug.

Eventually I tired of mobile phone shops, feisty sales assistants and my own dithering, and plumped for the latest BlackBerry Bold – albeit not with massive conviction. I was swung by it being a widely trusted business device and that it can also do apps – if not to the range and richness of the iPhone. (An Angry Birds type gaming experience would be almost impossible to translate on a screen half the size).

BlackBerry devices appear to command enormous customer loyalty which has always intrigued, they almost enjoy a cult status which HTC could be attempting to emulate in their Quietly Brilliant marketing campaigns. There had to be a reason for the BlackBerry fanaticism which isn’t just based around its ‘Tween’-popular BBM instant messenger device.

As in most new relationships, the early days are rarely plain sailing. I’ve struggled to come to grips with all dimensions of the device and dart jealous glances at an established BlackBerry fanboy friend whose thumbs dance across the keyboard at a quite ridiculous speed.

‘You’ll get there,’ he assured me.

It’s an ok device and it hasn’t dropped a call yet. But the screen is unavoidably half the size of an iPhone/Pod (I know it’s the first thing you should notice, but I’m still noticing it).  I have to press hard buttons and have accidentally called a few people, that central trackpad is ok and an improvement on the roller balls; the browser seems slow but that could be the 3G (from brief demos, this is where the Nexus One stands head and shoulders above its competitors) the interface is smooth enough, although..

“Just give it time,” he said. “You will love it.”

So I’m giving it time. During which I might quietly covet the iPhone4.