[Touch HD General] leoni1980:
Before I vent my spleen let us look at two devices:

The iPhone

And the HTC TyTn 2

Now which handset is now considered fairly redundant and out of date, and which anticipates future updates and future-proof support?

Clue?

It's not the TyTn 2. The TyTn 2 was released THREE MONTHS AFTER the iPhone.

For all their restrictive SDKs and perculiar missing features you cannot fault Apple's product support.

Before jumping ship and buying my iPhone 3g I read reports of its signal strength problems and was concerned I'd have no signal AT ALL whilst at work, as all my previous phones had suffered poor reception owing to thick Walls and a great deal of electrical equipment.

Now I'm not going to say that the iPhone 3g has the BEST signal strength I've ever seen but for all practical needs it is as good as my N95, TyTn 2, Athena, E90 and Touch Diamond were.

Sometimes my signal strength meter is very low where it shouldn't be, but this doesn't seem to affect 3g performance, and I wonder if the software itself is perhaps a little conservative in its estimate of the quality of a given signal....

Now as for software?

For those who wish to tether their iPhone's 3G connection just download PDAnet. It's free and works great. With my EEE 901 and iPhone I downloaded a 200+ mb iPhone update file yesterday in a cafe via adhoc wifi in less than twenty minutes...with one signal strength bar.

VLC has been adapted for iPhone, meaning that the playback of non-converted movie files is here - right now - free and straight to iPhone via the Cydia installer.

I believe it supports wmv, divx and xvid already but correct me if I'm wrong as I haven't had time to test it yet.

Just to set the record straight, you DO NOT have to use Itunes to transfer files to the iPhone - there is a free solution called Iphonebrowser which basically allows you to copy any files to and from the iPhone.

The iPhone does NOT have flash, however it DOES play Youtube and Googlevideo. A quick search for 'itransmogrifier' might be of interest to people too.

There is seemingly no solution for multiple simultaneous YouTube downloads for Windows Mobile - a feature I use extensively on my iPhone. Also given its much touted syncing capabilities there is seemingly NO WAY for me to sync my Googlemail contacts over the air to the HTC Advantage I've just purchased. There are AT LEAST two such solutions for iPhone.

There is only one (rather bland-looking) Facebook application for windows mobile; plenty for iPhone including an official one supporting facebook chat.

There is even software to sync your Facebook friends' photos with your phone contacts' photos - OVER THE AIR

Podcasting seems limited on Windows Mobile - at the moment I'm still searching for a free podcatcher for Windows Mobile that allows me to download and update multiple podcasts over the air through the application itself rather than a browser...as Podcaster and Mobilecast for iPhone do.

Multitasking is not there out if the box on iPhone but a free application called Backgrounder allows you to keep applications alive simply by pressing and holding the menu button from within that application.

As for copying and pasting? The free copierCIN application allows cutting, copying and pasting from Safari, Notes, Email and SMS. This is fine for me, and certainly faciliitates the forwarding of numbers and texts. For those who demand greater flexibility with their texts pay for IrealSMS for the ability to forward messages, a landscape keyboard option and loads more.

The iPhone affords me the possibilty of advanced photo editing the likes of which you won't find on a Windows Mobile device, thanks to its multitouch screen and vibrant colours - and for those who can't get along without a stylus they CAN be purchased for iPhone.

Email is much better on the Iphone - Windows Mobile has the ugliest and most awkward Html email I have ever seen, and yoou have the nice option of just hitting an 'OFF' switch to temporarily disable a given email account.

Sorry if my points are a little dislocated but it's more a stream of consciousness than anything: I hold in my hand an Advantage i purchased for next to nothing, which arrived today and I have every intention of flashing and modding it to make it behave how I want it to...the problem I fear it just won't live up to my expectations, despite the excellent work of the developers on these forums.

I am shocked by the amount of people who have left Windows Mobile for the iPhone OS as it was only a few months ago that people lamented the amount of missing features on the Apple device. It seems now that times have changed.

Perhaps fewer people care about editing Word documents on tiny screens and prefer to purchase cheap Eee pcs to perform these tasks cheaply and better. Perhaps people don't need Bluetooth as much as they thought because with the iPhone they have perfectly good email at their disposal, or airsharing if they want to send things to their laptops.

I will still persevere with my new HTC Advantage as I can't help but love the feel of it, but I won't be getting rid of my iPhone anytime soon. The fact that I can get everything I need without a web browser or a pc in site is one of the most appealing things to me. I can go on the app store (or the jailbroken Cydia installer) and will be notified of new updates to my software which can be seemlessly completed...somehow windows mobile seems so sluggish and long-winded in comparison - like an old fart of an O.S.

I feel like if I gave up my iPhone something new and exciting would hit the software market and I'd feel like I was missing out; i've been away from the Windows Mobile scene for many months now and things don't seem to have progressed :-(

I wonder if there will be as much excitement for the Touch HD 18 months down the line as there is still for the iPhone.

I hope someone understands my ramblings, and it's nice to see some old faces on here again.....

Sent from my iphone!