[HD2 General] ASCIIker:
i wanna chime in also! :D

i've been a Tytn2 (kaiser) user for 2 years and just recently got my hd2 (last week). i've also tried out some of my friends' iphones, admittedly not as an "owner" but just as someone trying it out.

with that out of the way, i'm gonna say that i'm a geek...so tweaking and customization is an addiction for me.

the challenge is that the question asked aims to compare two products. the iphone probably does "just work" while a winmo phone has to be often tweaked to get the most out of it. the hd2 in my opinion is the kind of hardware that winmo SHOULD have had from the start. winmo 6.5 and its finger friendliness should have been launched roughly the same time as the first iphone appeared. if events had unfolded in such a manner, winmo might have still been the best with the most market share even without an app store.

keep in mind that the apple app store is an attractive option NOW because of the momentum it gained due to the flurry of developers that apple was able to market to and attract during the iphone's "baby" phases. i would like to remind everyone that the iphone in its "baby" phases provided a less than ideal platform and API. copy/paste was added as an afterthought and multitasking is lacking even now; granted updates are coming.

so yeah, apple has a product (i won't say its a ground breaking product in terms of technical advancement and innovation and flexibility and freedom) and they have marketed it like biatches! so in my opinion, apple has GREAT marketing and general fluff as products (i know its a harsh generalization...but read on). and it has been microsoft's lapse in vision and marketing that has allowed things to end up this way. so once again, the iphone4 WILL be a success, no matter how much you or i disagree.

and that brings me to a point outside the scope of this thread. but this point is dear to my geeky heart and always takes a backseat to the immediate needs of the layman consumer. that point has to do with "philosophy". as a geek, i like systems/platforms that are developed to be flexible and nonrestrictive. when i think about computing, mobile or otherwise, i desire "general purpose" computing, centered around the concept of "files and folders and apps" from the days of command line unix and DOS. winmo has always followed this philosophy (the abandonment of this philosophy in winpho7 is sacrilege)...and that is what i've loved about winmo from day 1. as much as i hate apple, i was hoping they would open up their platforms just a little bit with the ipad or the iphone4. but who am i kidding? when has apple EVER been anything but closed and proprietary? :D no add-on storage capability to the iphone/ipad...no bluetooth file transfers...lacking usb-host functionality on the ipad. how is that a general purpose platform? you say it isn't a general purpose platform because apple didn't intend it to be? there in lies the difference of philosophy i speak about...they SHOULD have made it general purpose to give me, the consumer, the best bang for the buck. after all, i have to pay close to $1000 for unlocked iphones/ipads.

long story short, it is no longer the needs of the geeks that are driving the mobile platform but sadly the needs of the relatively uninformed less demanding users who just want things to work and to work with the least possible use-cases.

my qualms about the iphone4?

- 3.5 inch screen, higher res...but still 3.5 inch: my brother used my hd2 today for the first time. he has big hands. he was so far thinking about getting an iphone or a nexus one. once i noticed how his fingers were occasionally messing up on the hd2 while typing, i pointed out to him that he would have even more trouble on the iphone or nexus one's smaller screens. it made him go "hmmmmmm"...size does matter!

- front camera finally! but WTF??? only works iphone4 to iphone4 and only over wifi? i find it surprising that the iphone3g was the ONLY mainstream 3G capable smartphone without a front camera for video call. now they put it in the iphone4 finally...but WTF? its locked down! (might change in the future though)

- i would go more into the platform and what it lacks compared to android or winmo but that is a moot point now because the average end user doesn't care what the platform offers as long as he/she can find a set of apps that get "some" job done. the developers are happy to put up with the **** that is programming in "objective C" just because the app store lets them make money. again, microsoft's lack of strategy here...had they pushed and marketed .net and the like properly with a market place launched in the same time frame as apple's, things would have been more competitive and winmo would have gotten lots of lovin'.

all in all, i would gladly buy another winmo phone if HTC and microsoft bothered to give this amazing platform some more lovin'! ain't gonna happen though, so i'll probably be using an android device as my next device. sure won't be apple until i find a change in their philosophy because THAT is what is more important to ME. it is like my own personal little protest about everything that is wrong with computing and its advancement in our times. :D