[Off-topic] jellycow:
I totally agree with the fact that WM6.1 devices have far more functionality. It's an OS that's been around longer in various vertical markets to mature with lot more development time. I doubt that iPhone's OS can touch that just yet.

But I do disagree with your view about Diamond and X1 having lot newer technologies and therefore they can charge more. If HTC and SonyEricsson viewed the competition that way, they would already have lost and there is no turning back. I seriously hope this is not the case.

Without a doubt, X1/Diamond has a great screen that's lot higher in resolution than the iPhone. They have better cameras...well...X1 probably will. Not sure about Diamond....my 8925 takes some crap pictures. X1/Diamond has faster CPU. Hardware keyboard is great (I have a hard time living without it...) These things on the surface are great. But when it comes to user experiences, it's a different story. Do you honestly think the non-fan-boys will care which technology is newer? How do you even define newer? Newer = better functionality, no? If that's the case, for lot of the users, X1/Diamond != newer. Some might argue that they are actually older...simply a evolutionary improvement on design that's years old.

iPhones have a big multi-touch screen that just looks great even at its lower resolution. It has a new generation OS that's based on a very old established OS (BSD)...so it's fast. If you put them side by side, nobody will believe you when you say that iPhone is 25% slower than X1/Diamond...because the iPhone OS is more responsive so it pretty much cancels that advantage. It only has a 2mpxl camera but man, it looks helluva lot better than pictures from my 8925 for some reason. It supports the same 4 GSM band / 3 HSDPA-UPA band that others do. It has support for wifi, bluetooth, etc. It has a great development environment that people are churning out software fast. It has a tilt sensor good enough to make games out of. Did you see the keynote with the apps from eBay and the Monkeyball game? Not too shabby. It comes with full exchange support and remote delete. It has OpenGL support. It comes with 8GB/16GB!!!

So if you present consumers with those choices, would anybody consider the iPhone 3G old technology? I doubt it. On the face value, for most of the consumers, all the advantage that you speak of that X1 and Diamond has...gets simply erased. iPhone's OS can be updated as it goes along since Apple seems lot more inclined to update/patch their software than MS as well. But I still don't get the no-MMS, no-video-recording on the iPhone. Just dumb.

I've been a big fan of X1. Until I saw the price for iPhone 3g. I sincerely hope Sony takes on the challenge and compete head on. But I will write X1/Diamond off if they come out at price point above $3-400 subsidized (in the US...not sure about pricing situation anywhere else). Better luck next round maybe?

Does HTC/Sony/Microsoft have the PR and marketing know-how to fight this and educate the consumer with the "no...our technology is newer" ? No they do not. Can they do anything to educate consumers with good solid pros and cons of their devices? (like the fact that iPhone only has 128MB of RAM and it will crash by simply closing the current app you are in if you run out of memory, etc?) I doubt it. But for now, maybe they can compete on price...and that's good for me.

On the plus side, don't you think HTC/Sony/Microsoft has something in the pipeline for the next generation that needs to leapfrog the iPhone? Maybe next X1 will have more than 512MB of storage space? ha ha ha.

Either way, as a consumer, iPhone 3G with exchange support breaks the status quo...and I'll have fun watching the industry take another step forward. I'm still praying for $200/300 Diamond/X1...well...I can dream, eh?