[Touch HD General] vvv333vvv:
As background: I've started with Palms and switched to WinMo in 2003. I've been HD owner since Nov'08.

Just recently bought Ipod Touch. Based on my understanding in everything except phone-related capabilities they are the same, so I think it gives me base for comparison.

To the pro's of Iplatform

It is definitely more up to date, the UI is more user friendly, thoughtout and sorry to say (this is really very hard to admit) more responsive. The particular example: scrolling in Safari is very smooth, the text really flows and you can actually read it while you scroll, I tweaked Opera into smooth scrolling and still could not do the same.

Appstore is a good concept too: granted - it's full of iNonsence, but the concept is pretty nice in have a quick access, on-the-fly install and purchase. Handango is far from it.

Safari is to my experience (I don't put it as a fact, but my personal observation) is more stable than Opera on HD. On HD with WisBar Adv any application closing results in Opera closing as well. Safari also does render a little quicker for text only pages and much quicker in multimedia-heavy pages.

But here the story of "pros" come to an end. The cons are numerous:

- Safari cannot open another tab on request (only if page requests it), this is getting even worse when there is no caching, so "Back" function needs to fully reload the prev. page. Also lack of any copy from the page is not good, I'm saving some quotes/facts to notes all the time.

- Istuff can sync to one and only one computer and only with itunes; saying that this is a hassle I say nothing; itunes is really tying the device to computer (you can't do a lot of things on the device, including adding more files/music/video/anything, creating playlists; I believe on iphone this list gets even bigger). HD is much more desktop-independent, I almost don't sync it at all.

- The connector is also proprietary while HD's mini-USB can be literally found anywhere lying around, so no charging and connecting issues.

- Technically HD is more advanced: the screen is both bigger and higher resolution resulting in web being much easier to read/follow on HD (once it's loaded, which takes HD longer); battery is replaceable, which will be an issue in 1-year's time; HD has GPS (to my knowledge Iphone does not, and Ipod does not for sure); Ipod with metal back is harder to hold (slips in the hand) while it's thinner (which is surely a plus);

- On mulimedia side I think HD is slightly in disadvantage due to HTC missing out big time on full Q chipset acceleration support (in general the hardware in WinMo is seriously underperforming due to WinMo being played on some many diff. manufacturers' devices, if it were made to one manufacturer, not to metion one device, I would expect at least 50% performance improvement just from that)

Overall I'm very puzzled with the applications situation. Even the companies that code both for WinMo and Iplatform, create better and slicker applications for Iplatform and WinMo still looks like crap (an example is SplashData, just compare the same application look between the platforms). Also applications are cheaper and appear much quicker for Iplatform. For example, I was looking for a good tasks-list application without syncing to web, I found none for WinMo (that suits me), while there are 3-4 for Ipod.