This time of year, for the last three years, has me checking the various Apple rumours websites, anxiously awaiting the launch of the new iPhone. I didn’t get the original, because frankly it was unfinished hardware.

The day Carphone Warehouse told me there was an iPhone 3G available for me, I sprinted half a mile to the store to claim it, had what i think may have been a heart attack that afternoon, then sat besotted for weeks afterwards.

On Launch Day for the 3GS, I was in the queue for seven thirty, and I was seventh in the queue. There were five 32GB iPhones available, the man at the front wanted a 16GB, the man just in front of me failed his credit check. I was pretty stoked.

I lounged in the McDonalds McCafe until my office opened, buggering about with a compass and feeling elated but underwhelmed in the way only Apple products can achieve. It’s the same phone I have in my hands now, slightly cracked, a little shabby, but still pretty damned good.

Some day in the next two months I expect to be in the same boat, so to speak. And I slightly hate myself for it. After all, it’s just a phone with a load of whistles and bangs, isn’t it?

The fact is, my desire to get one of the new phones when they’re released is a guilty, unpleasant little secret, an aspect of my personality I despise. I hate the fact that unboxing the thing will make me a little giddy. I can’t approve of the way I’m looking forward to whipping it out on the train journey home, and I am disappointed in the way I know I will begin to judge others with lesser phones as lesser people.

But that’s life, frankly. I’m an iPhone fanboy, even if I prefer my Windows 7 PC to my MacBook Pro. And when the new brushed metal (apparently) iPhone appears later this summer, I’ll have it, and I will make secret, self-harming fun of you.