[Touch Diamond, MDA Compact IV General] falc410:
Well I'm still undecided if I should go for the Iphone 3G or the Diamond.

I have had a WM 2003 SE device in the past and it was horrible! I mean yet the features were great on paper but in reality the device was very slow, out of battery power way too fast and the software crashed very often, I don't know how often I had to do a reset and to top it all, if I ran out of power and could not load it for a day everything I had saved on it was gone!

Even with tweaks, which took me countless of hours it was barely useable. Navigation software just crashing during car drive and so on.

Now my friend already got an old Iphone and I have to say I'm impressed. Of course it lacks a bit software and flexibility, but everything the Iphone comes with just works! I don't need to configure anything and I like the size very much because I used to watch a lot of movies on my old WM device. And the battery seems very good to me on the Iphone.

The size of the display is also good for typing, even though it took me a bit of time until I could type fast with two fingers at once but I fear that even with one finger the letters will be too small on the Diamond.

The Iphone could do anything I could think off and the usability is great, it feels intuitive. It could even open word document or excel documents attached to an email. The browser worked good but on the old Iphone it's very slow - was not really fun to surf.

On the other hand, I'm really looking forward to all the apps I can run on my Diamond. But I need a phone that just works and that's realiable and so far, judging from this forum, the Diamond is far from that.

Even if they bring out a bigger battery it's useless as 90% of the docking stations or car holders won't work anymore - had the same with my other WM device.

Iphone 3G Pro:

- just works!

- good battery life

- big screen (good for movies and typing)

Iphone 3G Con:

- can't use the 8GB other then for stuff added with Itunes (but Itunes comes with a built in converters which converts and copies all your xvid / divx movies to the Iphone!) :(

- no real Navigation available, just google maps but juding from the old Iphone it should do the trick for starters

- Itunes needed - I don't like having extra software for trivial thing

- not yet much software available - on the other it comes with a good mix of software

Iphone 3G overall cost (germany):

= 840 Euro (for 2 year contract + phone / 50 minutes per month and 500 MB internet traffic - contract with t-mobile and 8GB Iphone)

Diamond Pro:

- many applications available

- support for more technical stuff then the Iphone (xvid, flash)

- Active Sync with all my Windows PC / Laptop (+ Sideshow!)

Diamond Con:

- short battery life (extra battery expensive and might not be compatible with docking stations / car holders)

- slow responseness

- needs a lot of tweaking to be useable (aka spend countless of hours surfing the net for solutions)

- just unrealiable (data loss due to hard reset?)

Diamond overall cost (Germany)

= 810 Euro (calculated with Eplus for example since it's not branded, 10 Euro per Month but no free minutes or sms, 250 MB internet traffic for 10 Euro extra and phone 330 Euro)

So bottomline is, I would have to pay about the same for both phones, the Diamond is prolly a little cheaper since I can get a students rebate and I don't really need the 250 MB internet traffic each month, but I still end up at least at somewhere around 700 Euro per month.

So far I only had my hands on a dummy of the Diamond and to me it felt very small, maybe too small for my feeling. I really have to try typing with my fingers on a real one first before I'm going to decide, but both phones are good in some way.

I like to compare them to computers. The Iphone is more of a console, you have your limited software but you just plug it in and it does its job, the Diamond is more like a PC, you can do very much with it, but you have to spend much time on it to get the best out of it - now it's not a PC just a phone and I want it to work because I have to work / to business with it.