[Touch HD General] welki1979:
Has to be said that I own both a Blackstone and an iPhone 3G.

The iPhone was a recent 'cash converters' bargain (£89!!!!) and works without a glitch....I've updated it to the newest firmware...installed LOADS of games with are amazingly playable and addictive (even the free ones like papertoss) but after 2 weeks of owning it I've gone back to my blackstone as my main device.

There are numerous reasons for the switch back......but I'll try to keep it brief by listing the best and worst of both devices (in my opinion anyway)...or people will just get bored of me moaning about stuff.

1) The iPhone has a nice 'novelty' value with it's slick responsiveness and easy to use 'multi-touch' functionality but has a very dated (almost becomming IT-Retro) and inflexible user interface, whilst I enjoy the ability to run different UI's and customise most aspects of my phone under 'Windows Phone' (as they're calling it now apparently!) even using stock ROMs.

2) The iPhone FEELS much quicker in it's functions than the Blackstone. ..BUT I don't believe it is. It was just designed with a nice functional finger-friendly user interface, whilst most of us were forced to replace ours (at least until the appearence of TouchFlo) with one running over the top of WinMo - taking resources from the OS itself. Whilst the UI used throughout the iPhone IS the OS.

3) The iPhone was designed as an iPod (the touch) and had a phone slammed into the design at a later date (or thats how it seems due to the way the phone functions are not integrated into most apps) which is why it feels right listening to music on it and playing games. From reading a few iPhone coding forums...just to see what was going on over there...it appears that a lot of people like the functions the iPhone provides but HATE the fact that they are forced to use built in function calls in their programs (i.e: a lack of system database access to things like SMS, email and contact databases). For example, there seems to be a lot of talk about the fact that iPhone SMS apps (on appstore and 3rd party) do not have the ability to send/recieve TRUE SMS texts - they are mostly sent via an email->SMS gateway and users have to manually input their contacts rather than selecting them from the phone's database.

4) Despite it's funny glitches, and bits MS 'forgot' to put in, Windows Mobile appears far more flexible and stable (judging from the amount of lockups I get on the iPhone). I have not yet found a community as dedicated to the iPhone and it's development as the one we have going here for everything that falls under the 'Windows Mobile' umbrella. Even MS themselves originally pointed me in the direction of XDA-DEVs when they couldn't find an answer for a question I had, whilst Apple seem to almost deny people answers and the ability to customise their device. With each new firmware there is a fix for the previous jailbreak method and you have to re-break your iPhone to install 3rd party apps........surley MS know about the mass distribution of sdkcerts.cab for WinMo! Apple should really follow their lead and turn a blind eye. This is the main reason for my switch back to WinMo.

5) I like my apps and the ability to tweak stuff...I like games too, but I have a powerful PC for that. So why would I want to waste any more of my already hectic day messing with fancy looking games and shaking my phone around like a mad man?! Historically hand-held games consoles have a short life product life cycle....the iPhone is in danger of going the way of the Nokia NGage.

6) I can do everything I can do on my PC from WinMo (aside from playing games) and enjoy having the ability to alter system files and folders to customise my device. Despite the underlying UI looking a little dated (I'm speaking about the non-finger-friendly content in the OS such as Pocket Outlook). WinMo has much more support and adaptability from it's wide community of users, it's just a shame that a lot of the fixes found here are not used by MS or the major device manufacturers in the initial ROMs.

For me Windows Mobile wins hands down!..and I'm a user of Manila 2.1 (from Miri's v29 WinMo 6.5 build) which IMO is far superior to the icon blocks encountered on the iPhone.

P.S: I've posted this from my Blackstone to prove another point....the keyboard is crap on the iPhone.