[Off-topic] angelis:
I encourage everyone to go play with an iphone and try all it's features. Try the touchscreen, try the keyboard, etc.

It's a major downer that it doesn't have 3g and is the main reason I'm holding off. It's also unfortuante that you can't load up your own apps (assuming there were some) and that there is not an SDK. But...

With all that said, Apple just kicked the entire PocketPC world's ass. That phone is everything that pocketpc's should have been 2 or 3 years ago except for the total lack of leadership from Microsoft and the PPC makers.

The interface is innovative and intuitive. The screen is purely awesome and the UI, colors, etc are really slick.

The touchscreen is beyond anything I've ever used. When you press a number on the phone pad it actually registers the number. I've had a jornada, an Ipaq, a PDA2k, an 8125 and an 8525 and all of them pale in comparison.

The device is thin compared to most PPCs and it didn't seem much larger than my 8525 really. It's very comparable to the PDA2k i used to have or a video iPod, except I think a bit thinner. If I'm right, it seemed a bit smaller than my buddies Blackjack.

PocketPCs have been able to play mp3s and movies for a long time, but try finding a device with 4gb or 8gb. And the sync/downloading from a PC is the most painful thing I've ever done. I have a 2gb card in my 8525 and loading up 200 megs of tunes takes hours.

The web browser is really nice. It's something 3rd parties have tried doing for PPCs and something MS is toying with. It's something we've all wanted for a while, but MS just doesn't deliver. I hit youtube and was instantly presented with a menu of movies. I wish I could hit youtube on my 8525...I mean i've got 3g speed, so I should be able to watch some movies right? ha. I went to my bank and logged into my account with no trouble. wachovia btw. My 8525 won't login there for some reason. I went to cnn.com it loaded up the homepage nicely and I zoomed into the stories are they were easily readable.

The iphone in general is also just plain easy to use. Everything I tried was easy to do and very intuitive. I was in the store and the web browsing seemed really fast, then I noticed that the Apple Store has them all set to use an 802.11g wireless. Nice trick...make them seem really fast...But, once I noticed I wanted to see the EDGE speed. In about 20 seconds I figured out how to turn off the wireless. The device automatically switched to EDGE and I continued my web browsing at slow edge speeds. I went back and turn on the wireless. In about 5 seconds it presented me with a menu of access points and asked me which one to connect to. I selected the Apple Store access point and it switched to it. I have used my 8525 every day for the past 6 months and I have a harder time doing that type of connection switching than I did with a device I've only had my hands on for like 5 minutes. Hell, I still can't get my device to switch sometimes or stop it from trying to connect to 3g when I'm connected to an access point.

I configured my email on the device in about 10 minutes total. 3 accounts. 1 gmail, 1 exchange server, and 1 pop3 server (which incidently doesn't work on my 8525 with any rom but the original cingular 8525 rom). They all worked, no problem.

Is the iphone perfect? no. But it shows how truly lazy the PocketPC makers and Microsoft have been.

Microsoft, HTC, and all the pocketPC makers need to wake up. If they don't they can just quit making the crappy devices they have been, because no one will buy one. Apple's going to have sold like 3 million of these by the end of next week. They have 5 million prepping for Europe release around the fall of the year and the rumor is that Europe might get the 3g model.

And you can bet that all the flaws people have found so far, will be addressed. Steve Jobs has already indicated that they will have several addressed in the next update. Wow, imagine that, the maker is updating the software...I don't have depend on the charitable work of strangers to cook up ROMS and risk bricking my device to get an update.

I want a thin pocketpc with a fast processor. 8gb memory minimum with perhaps as much as 64gb as an option. It needs a large multi-touch awesome color screen that when i touch something on the display it actually registers it. It needs a real web browser, not some piece of crap that barely supports modern web standards (or doesn't even support). And MS needs to support them all, not individual carriers and makers...

end rant...