Great products and services should delight you the first time you use them. No matter what you’re doing — unboxing your new smart phone, say, or signing up for a Tumblr account — it should be memorable.

That first experience has to be good, because it sets the tone for your ongoing enjoyment of whatever it is you’ve just started using. If it’s bad, you might never use that product or service again.

But if there’s one thing I love more than a great first-use experience, it’s when a product surprises me long after becoming part of my life.

Take my iPhone. My constant companion for three years, I’ve used it for thousands of calls, text messages, emails and tweets.

I thought I knew everything there is to know about that handset. But yesterday, I was tapping out a text message about the recently-revealed Glastonbury line-up.

The bands announced include Motörhead, a bunch of British rockers who added an umlaut to their name ‘to look mean’.

As I spelt out their name on my iPhone, the autocorrect function added the umlaut automatically.

I would never expect my smart phone to know how to spell ‘Motörhead’. So when it changed my spelling (I have no idea where to find an umlaut on Apple’s keyboard), the attention to detail made me smile.

It was unexpected. It stopped me in my tracks for a moment, while I realised what it had done. And it made me chuckle.

I don’t think there are many gadgets that would keep surprising me, even after three years. That’s a sign that real care and attention has been put into the user experience.