For Christmas, one of my best friends got an iPhone.

For a few days, no one could get ahold of him. He wasn’t sure how to set up — let alone check — his voicemail, and he couldn’t find his text messages. At one point, we discovered, the iPhone was somehow set on “silent” mode, and he couldn’t figure out how to make it ring again. So instead of actually talking to him, we would call, wait for him to check his phone for missed calls and then get a call back. Or, we’d just call his house and hope he was home.

Needless to say, we didn’t talk to John a lot in the first few days after Christmas. But once he figured out how the phone part of the iPhone worked, the application frenzy began.

Applications for the iPhone range from the practical (a GPS system) to the mildly entertaining (BubbleWrap, a digital version of the ultimate stress reliever) to the bordering-upon-ridiculous (iFart Mobile, which … well, I’ll let you figure it out).

Arguably the best iPhone application (or “app,” as the cool kids are calling them) is Lightsaber Unleashed, which uses the phone’s accelerometer (the internal device that lets the phone know when it is being tilted) to make Star Wars-style lightsaber noises as the phone is moved. Way cooler than the plastic, pop-out style lightsabers we had to make do with as kids.

But really, is all of this necessary? My phone is definitely not as cool as John’s iPhone. It can make a call, and once in a while (if it’s feeling agreeable) it’ll ring and I can answer. I can send and receive text messages, and I can even check my e-mail or Facebook if I want to pay extra for Internet airtime. I can set an alarm, and I can play a trial version of Tetris if I get bored. But that’s about it. That’s all I need my phone to do, and yet, I have to admit, I’m a little jealous.

People with iPhones are constantly checking their phones, and with good reason. With an iPhone, you almost don’t need a computer — e-mail, Facebook and Google searches are literally right in your pants. And in today’s increasingly web-based society, this can come in handy. If I’m out somewhere and am suddenly struck with a need to know the area, in miles, of the Isle of Man, I am out of luck. John, and everyone else I know with an iPhone, can hop right on the Internet and find out via Wikipedia that the Isle of Man has an area of 221 square miles, and the country’s motto is (in Latin) Quocunque Jeceris Stabit. This translates to “It will stand wherever you throw it,” which I think might be one of the greatest mottos for anything. Ever.

Having an iPhone brings the user into a new realm of 21st century-style cool. Many of us without iPhones secretly wish we had them, and the lucky few with iPhones let it be known how technologically superior they are by constantly checking their e-mail or the weather or to-the-minute game scores. Other phone manufacturers are even trying to tap into the iPhone market by developing similar devices. The T-Mobile G1, for instance, is a web-ready phone that offers a sliding keyboard and an interface designed around the Google corporation’s many services. Verizon Wireless offers the LG Dare, an iPhone-wannabe that offers the touchscreen capabilities of Apple’s brainchild, and even the folks at Blackberry have gotten in on the action and introduced a touchscreen model, the Blackberry Storm.

A quick glance at Apple’s sales reports for the most recent fiscal quarter (which ended on Dec. 27, 2008) shows that the iPhone — and the Apple brand — is more popular than ever. Everybody wants one, and those who can afford it are buying it.

Apple sold 4.4 million iPhones during just this most recent quarter. The iPhone is awesome, and Americans are proving it: 4.4 million iPhones at $300 apiece means more than $1.3 billion went right into Apple’s pocket. Granted, those figures assume that each of these customers bought a 16-gigabyte phone (versus the 8-gigabyte version, which is less expensive,) at the time of their AT&T contract upgrade.

To buy a phone in the middle of a contract adds on additional fees, however, and the buyer then pays more for the phone itself. There’s a monthly fee that’s added to the user’s cell phone bill, too. All together, that’s a lot of money that people are willing to spend … on a phone.

Having an iPhone is kind of the grown-up version of having a Game Boy Color when it first came out. Your old black-and-white Game Boy still works just fine and does what it needs to (keeping you entertained and thereby retaining your parents’ sanity on the endless car ride to Grandma’s). Yet now that there’s a new option, you can’t help but want it, and the only kid in class who was lucky enough to get one for his birthday is suddenly the envy of everyone on the playground. It’s a form of elitism we can’t grow out of: wanting whatever is new and fancy and can do the most tricks.

But really, while I’m a tiny bit jealous of John’s newfound ability to challenge anyone to a lightsaber duel at any time, I’ll settle for knowing how to respond to your text messages.

At press time, Becky unexpectedly and accidentally came into possession of an LG Dare. Read her other Total BS columns to find out how she has responded to the hyper-technology of a semi-smart phone!