[HD2 General] eaglesteve:
Interesting thread. I've been doing my own quite evaluation comparing them for a long long time too. Here are my thoughts:

HD2 wins hands down in screen resolution and size

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bumskee was almost right to say that the screen resolution is really the only area where iPhone 3GS really lose out as compared to HD2.

I'd say iPhone's smaller screen size is also a factor but that depends on personal preference, as some would argue that HD2 is too big for one hand usage. I personally prefer HD2's screen size and would not mind the extra dimension. Having said that, web browsing, viewing excel document are just about the only applications that really exploit this size advantage IMO.

Anyway, if your definition of best phone is to have large screen size, then you could even look at the newer 5 inch Android phones from Dell.

GPS - HD2 has better hardware. IPhone has far better software

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The-uki, you mentioned that iPhone has one of the worst GPS functions among phones; and Freyberry said that the GPS of iPhone is weaker. I agree with both of you, although we may not agree on just how bad it is.

Inherently, the API on GPS from Apple is suitable only for walking and showing you where you're on the googlemap. Once you try to program it for TomTom and the like, you will have certain challenges. According toTomTom, "The API doesn't allow access to the raw NMEA feed of the inbuilt GPS receiver, and this is why you don't see any 'signal strength' bars in GPS apps on the iPhone (and if the app does, its not using satellite information to derive signal strength). Information such as satellites in view, or number of satellites used in solution, etc is simply not available from the internal GPS." That's why application developers have to do more work to complement the weakness of the standard API to display information such as signal strength.

Despite this, it IS possible to get accurate GPS fixes indoor very quickly provided your phone has not been jailbroken. Some iPhone users might not agree with me, but my own finding is that jailbreaking does affect the quality of the GPS signal. See my dairy of test here. However, this can be fixed using a program called "Push Fix", as explained in the above link.

I find the quality of the GPS signal strength not poorer to my winmo devices'. The only downside on iPhone is that there is a need to reset location warning and reboot every now and then to maintain the GPS signal health.

However, once I start using the TomTom car kit for iPhone, then the signal strength is far better than that on my winmo devices.

As for GPS software iPhone users have a lot more choices: TomTom, Sygic, iGo, Navigon, Copilot, NDrive, etc. Whether you only believe in TeleAtlas or in Navteq map, you have choices. I loved TomTom on my winmo devices, but there is no map for it when I travel to countries like Malaysia. On iPhone, you're likely to find that your favourite GPS software has the map for many more countries than their winmo counterpart has to offer.

As to running iGO and TomTom at the same time, this is also possible with iPhone. See image below where I'm running TomTom, Sygic, Copilot, and Navigon at the same time:

Websites with flash

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@H2D2, it's good to hear that you actually got flash other than youtube to work on your Opera. How's the performance? Can you play this video ?

Applications and OS

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Myself11's point about the lack of good applications as compared to iPhone and Android is an important point to take note of.

Yes, the 130,000 applications in App Store may have many applications of the same kind, but that offers competition and choices for users. I won't complain to see 20 more GPS software there. The good thing is just about every aspect of what could be programmed has been programmed. Yes, many of them are rubbish, but also many of them are very useful and not found on winmo platform. Even if you find them, the design of some of them simply isn't as finger friendly, functionally up-to-date, and fun to use.

If you're buying it in anticipation of WM7, you might be disappointed, as it will be unavailable before February 2011 the earliest. As borgqueenx has implied correctly, by then, HD2 is no longer have the best hardware that you so much want to have. Most of the people on the HD2 would have already given up on their HD2 and moved onto another device by then.

@freyberry,

A lot of things must have changed since the last time you jailbroke your iPhone. Just some updates to the few issues you raised:

iPhone as a USB storage device

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You can use iPhone as a USB storage device. There are many methods available. Here is one of those methods.

Alternatives to iTune Sync

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You actually DO have alternatives other than iTune to sync your media with multiple PC. The choices are simply astounding to say the least. Here are not one, not two but ten ways to sync your media without using iTune.

Multitasking.

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In terms of being able to control which applications you want to run in the background, iPhone actually have an edge over winmo. You can either make it always run in the background, or you can say the default is not to run in the background unless you long press the home key to make it multitask.

In terms of being able to see all running tasks with a hardware button, iPhone has a clear advantage over winmo. Hardware button as a way to bring up all running task is important especially when running full screen applications such as the browser. You can use Kirikae, proswitcher, Multifl0w, or quickdo. There is lots of flexibility and customization available to multitask the way you want it to look and feel.

Customization and tweaks

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You can customize a jailbroken iPhone to your heart's content. Instead of just showing rows of rows of dumb icons, you can make your home screen a launcher that you can invoke from any applications to let you choose which category of applications you want (you may use the first screen for GPS, second for productivity, third for games,etc) using Overboard. Or you might want to try using PogoPlank to completely hide the rows and rows of dumb icons. The amount of themes to change the iPhone's look into a palm pre, winmo device, or Android is quite astounding too. Bottom line: iPhone is much more customizable than most people give it credit for. We probably get at least 10 new themes every single day, and you can browse through some of them here. Do you know that you can even tweak your iphone to let you watch the entire music video free(not just the preview) on iTune?

Not all Capacitive touch screens are made equal.

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the-uki, you also find the touch-screen in the iPhone is far superior and natural, picks up every move and swipe without error and smoothly, which you cannot claim with the HD2. I know there will be many other users who would argue that HD2 is just as good if not better than iPhone. So who do we believe? I have not personally played with HD2 (I'm waiting till 19th to try out in JB HiFI), but you might want to look at this test comparing iPhone's touch screen with the others'. Note that you must draw the line VERY SLOWLY for your test to be valid.

That's one of the reasons why iPhone's keyboard is so much more accurate. The other reason is that it has a far better algorithm for error correction.

eMail and SMS

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It would be a matter of personal preference again, but I prefer iPhone over my winmo in this regards because I just love to use the iPhone keyboard. I also do lots of group mailing, and was not able to do that with winmo mails before (not sure if winmo has a way of doing it now). I like the way graphic riche and HTML mails are rendered on iPhone a lot more.

To manually type in an email address, I normally just have to press the first character of the name and pick up the matching email address from the proposed list of email addresses. Same for SMS and MMS.

I use 7 email accounts from gmail, yahoo, hotmails, to bigpond without any complain.

Threaded SMS and MMS work perfectly. No, it will not be stuck and failing to be sent out.

Support community

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Hypertune, XDA is a great site for winmo support provided you only buy from HTC, and offers lots of fun to people enjoying flashing new cooked ROMs. It's also a good place to discuss problems and fixes. The problem is when one jumps into the conclusion that once you start using iPhone you lose such support. I get just as good, if not better support with my iPhone (see my signature for some of the sites that I use). There're people who are eager to help, in all areas such as syncing to more than one microsoft exchanges, syncing your task list to Outlook, customizing and creating theme, or jailbreaking your phone. You get good community support here too if you buy HTC's Android phone. There are also many other sites offering support for non-HTC Android phones. Just have to look far enough for them.

Other factors which you might want to consider

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- HD2's removable battery is a clear plus to me. You can carry one or two spare battaries before you board the plane to read your eBook for 28 hours. iPhone's battery pack is more clumpsy in my opinion.

- iPhone has a fantastic GPU.

- iPhone has better ecosystem of accesories.

- First rate vendor support. Defective iPhone are usually exchanged on the spot when you go and see the Genius. Some people even get newer models for the defective old model about to run out of warranty.

- Storage capacity. You have the maximum of 32GB now. There is no 32GB MicroSDHC card in the market yet. You can install a lot more programs without having to tweak. I can put almost my entire music collection into my iPhone, whereas it was never possible on my winmo devices. The only device that lets me do it was my Athena, where I installed all my program on the microdrive, and use multiple miniSDHC cards to hold unlimited storage. With HD2, such strategy might not work because the changing of card would disable the running of programs where the cache has been shifted there.

- Camera. 3GS has lower resolution, but other than that, it is a better camera. You will not get pinkish color in the centre. Camera will not freeze. You will be able to do quite a lot of picture as well as video editing on the phone itself.

- Price of software, ease of transferring, updating, and sharing applications. If you buy TomTom, one purchase can be shared between myself, my wife, my two childrens, and another friends. Think about how cheap the applications are when you use iPhone. Example: My golfing software on my winmo device called MobileGolfScorer cost Eur90 or about AUD140, and can only be used on one device. I get a far better, functionally richer, more flexible, more user friend software called GolfCard for AUD 10 which can be shared by 5 people so it works out to be AUD2 for a far better software. Why so cheap? Because when developers sells a software for iPhone, it is cheaper to develop, plus you have many more potential buyers. So it's not such a bad thing to be following the crowd here.

Wise to look ahead just a few more months

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Lastly, don't forget that the 4th generation iPhone is just around the corner. Rumors is that it might be released earlier this year as early as April or May due to the Nexus challenge, and that it would double its screen resolution, go to 64GB storage, have multitouch casing like magic mouse, uses Cortex A9 with the potential of going up to 2GHz clock speed and using dual processor, SGX545 GPU, 5MP camera, etc. How much of these will turn out to be true is anybody's guess at the moment. However, it is a fact that many developers have been asked to update their applications to work on improved screen resolution.

What's easier to improve is the hardware. OS and software? Not as easy. Just look at how microsoft struggle to come up with WM7.

It's your choice

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Ultimately personal preference plays a large role, but Wacky.Banana's,Dr Sid's and Kenkiller's advices are sound ones.

If you understand what it means to use a winmo device, do not mind spending time fixing stuffs and flashing cooked ROMs, and are willing to let go of the smooth, stable, application rich iPhone, then HD2 is what I think the best winmo device ever invented. If you have lots of cash to spare, try it out. You can alway go back to iPhone later on if you don't like it. Nothing to lose. Even the founder of Apple tried out the Nexus, Droid, and Blackberry, so there's no reason to be closed minded.

I have no intention of entering into heated debate with anyone because it only stress us out unnecessarily. If I offend and fail to show respect to anyone in my post, I apologize.

Cheers.