The Top Ten 3G iPhone beaters Sick to the teeth of 3G iPhone this and 3G iPhone that? Then express your anti-Apple anger by selecting one our list of the top ten feature-packed alternatives. Counting down, in reverse order, we kick of with the... Motorola Z10 Click here for the full review motorola_z10_side_on The Z10 is a step up from the original …
... when (if ever) it hits our shelves?
I can't help but think that SE have missed a trick by keeping this phone under wraps for so long - from everything i've heard about it, it will be the ultimate iPhone killer.
Paris - coz she's the trend-setter and probably has 4 iPhones.
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I have to add tytn 2 to the list, but then again this is to compare iphone killers, which means glorified and pretty mp3 players.
The tytn 2 is a small office with more forms of connection than you can shake a stick at added to the mp3 player and so without trying it makes a little puddle over the entire list before we even start.
Reg should do a "tytn2 wannabe list"
The N95 is a good phone though.
Eurgh. I'm so bored of the N95 and more generally, of Nokia owners who lazily trot out the same old cliché about how their handsets are the best/easiest/most reliable in the world. These people have clearly never used a modern Sony Ericsson, the UI of which is the most comfortable and intuitive I've ever seen on a phone.
I'm really looking forward to the Xperia X1, the only true iPhone alternative, in my view.
Opposite this review there is a pane which says:
"MOST WANTED SMARTPHONES" (data provided by Expansys)
MWg Atom Life Windows Mobile 6 Edition — £199.95
HP iPAQ 614c with £50 Cashback Offer! HP iPAQ 614c with £50 Cashback Offer! — £344.95
HTC Touch Cruise HTC Touch Cruise — £399.95
HTC TyTN II HTC TyTN II — £469.95
Palm Centro Palm Centro — £179.95
Surely that list might have some bearing on the Top 10.
The feature of the iPhone that people who aren't just trend following (so, you know, maybe 5% of its owners) admire most is the web browser. Gigabytes and megapixels mean nothing. It's the user interface that matters. Just like in Wii versus Xbox versus Playstation land, technologically minded publications prefer to elevate things that can be measured in numbers over the actual experience of using a thing. Maybe it's just a cheap way of avoiding the need to actually form a subjective opinion?
So, while any or all of these phones may best Mobile Safari for all I know, or you might think that the browser is good enough that the real keyboard puts the phone ahead of Apple's, you really need to start saying that. Not "this phone must be better, as it has a camera rating of 2.3 and the volume goes up to 11".
To be honest, I think your admission in the Samsung SGH-F700 that the iPhone has a "better-than-the-rest browser" suggests that these phones are the top ten iPhone competitors, not the top ten iPhone beaters, and your article name is a Webster Phreaky-level attempt to enrage anyone who has anything positive whatsoever to say about Apple.
Fixed that for you.
Should be subtitled: If you can cope with Nokia's phone's increasing instability and their shit contacts and calendar.
And Nokia, GET SOMEONE ELSE TO WRITE YOUR DESKTOP SOFTWARE. It's all crap! It's always been crap. Standards, cross platform, interactive, flexible, remotely useful - these are all words and phrases that can not be used when describing your software.
Any smartphone review that ends up with the n95 in first place is immediately suspect. Have you actually USED an n95 in real life? I've got one and I can't wait to get rid of the piece of crap. The latest firmware updgrades have improved the shocking battery life (a bit), but they can't do anything for the lousy ergonomics and the creaky UI, and the map thing is rubbish.
Personally, if I don't get an iPhone (and I now see no reason NOT to get one) then the SE Xperia X1 looks like the only interesting alternative on the horizon.
Ok, had one of these puppies for about 6 months now. It's AWFUL!
Seriously, terrible. The only decent thing I got from Vodafone were the Bose headphones, the phone it's self is painful. the memory is limited, it STILL fails to run the GMail app it's supposed to. Plug in USB and it turns the BlueTooth off, it mis-reads the screen taps randomly, sending me to strange new places I didn't want to be in. The browsing experience is horrific, it even mangles The Reg.
There is a whole list I could go on about, but I'd just say, having lived with the damned thing, DON'T BOTHER
...make a Touch Diamond with a full-face 3.5" screen, with a slider keypad. Then you've actually got enough physical screen acreage to browse the web properly, and you don't need hard buttons on the front. Oh, and add a microsd card slot, increase memory to 8GB, and get Microsoft to write a decent mobile OS for it.
None of the smartphones in this list are competitors for the Iphone, they're all a generation behind in actual use.
I just returned my new Nokia phone and swapped it for a Sony-Ericsson - life is so much better now. It isn't an iPhone but then, I don't want to be locked to O2, especially as I can't really move after the contract ends and I'm left with a useless piece of kit. If Apple really wants people in the UK to buy the iPhone who don't want to have to go through the unlocking or jailbreaking process they should change their system. Other countries sell it unlocked - Apple needs to forget it's a US company and that there is a world beyond the east and west coasts of the US.
What you've neglected to mention is the mobile Windows nonsense running on these machines is the most unreliable p-o-c around. The hardware can work great, but when you have to reboot the thing every day and things just mysteriously cease working (as happened to my boss's XDA on countless occasions) you understand why the iPhone2 might actually be a success.
Gates as the devil for, erm, obvious reasons ...
As to how many of these phones are being bought by octopii. As I see it, it needs at least two tenticles to operate a sliding phone while keeping one free for other things. Or do they work like flick-knives on a springy-type thing, with a satisfying thwik as it opens up and clicks home for business? And why are my puns recursive?
I'm perfectly happy with my SE P1i (WiFi, Opera broswer, push mail, touch screen, 3.2 Mp camera & 3rd party apps in a package that fits neatly in the pocket).
Cost me a lot less then the mainstream "smartphones" phones which all get regularly reviewed as the "top selling" phones, plus the RIM and N95 owners I work with keep asking where I got mine from (owners because very few ever seem to actually use more than 30% of the functionality).
That and mine never gets picked up by accident from the office desk because "it looks just like my one, sorry".
Still, I always wished I could call my mates from my walkman, so good luck to the iphone.
Paris, because she likes to play with her sidekick
I'm another N95 hater. I read all of the reviews and got a free one with an 18 month contract. It has to be one of the worst Nokia phones I've had. I consigned it to a drawer after a month and its still there.
Nokia are rapidly becoming the MS of handset makers. They manage to assemble all of the necessary features but somehow they don't all quite work together or don't work 100% of the time. It smacks of release dates being set by the business and a ship and be damned attitude.
I honestly don't understand all this love for WM-based phones. My MDA Vario II (which is a rebadged TYTN) has been so shit that I have, for the first time in my life, been forced to buy a *replacement phone* before the contract ran out. Oh MDA Vario II, how do I hate you? Let me count the ways: Lousy battery life, frequent crashes, soft resets, crap build quality (it's been replaced once, repaired once and reflashed *three times*, most recently with T-Mobile's WM6 image), terrible reception and a truly appalling GUI, positively *hates* synchronising, be it with Windows or OS X... the list is endless.
I've owned some real bricks and lemons -- Nokia 9500 Communicator, anyone? "Let's build a phone with WiFi, but make the CPU so damned slow that you might as well be connecting using two tin cans and a piece of string!" -- but this is the first time I have *ever* had to do anything like this.
The replacement phone? A Nokia 2630. This cheap-and-cheerful phone (it was the cheapest PAYG I could find that had Bluetooth) works like a charm, is tiny, synchronises perfectly with my computer and -- get this -- gets the bloody job done without any fuss. It's stable, reliable and easy to use. That, dear readers, should be the #1 design goal of ALL technology. (I'm guessing that's the real reason the iPhone is selling so well: it's the *design*, stupid! Features aren't worth shit without good design.)
My other half is stuck in a loveless 18 month contract with an N95 and is insanely jealous of my 1st gen iPhone bought at the same time. He chose the N95 based on the "better looking specs". In reality, the N95 is clunky and slow, cheap-looking, has a really crap web browser and the software is abominable. The only thing better is the 5 MP camera, although that too is dreadfully slow and unresponsive compared with iPhone. If that's really the best your top ten iPhone killer list can muster then I'm very pleased I'm one of the sheeple.
>mobile Windows nonsense running on these machines is the most unreliable p-o-c around
My experience is quite the opposite. Axim Pda, Ipaq Pda and two MDA's are my track record and I find it strange if I have to reboot any of them, usually its after trying out a new app or hack and I expect some stuff to be a lttle flaky but they are easy to remove.
Had a play with the Diamond today and finding it hard to resist but the Xperia X1 is due in Sept. and Im tempted to wait.
Erm, HTC are already making that device, it's the Raphael or HTC Touch Pro.
And how can you say all the devices are a generation behind the iPhone? TyTY2 has 3G, Satnav, touch-screen, sliding keyboard, microsd slot, and a camera. Until a week ago the iPhone was a generation behind that, as of today it's alongside it. D'uh.
I've got an original, and I've used the 8gig quite a lot too.
With the latest V21 firmware on the original N95, I'd have that any day of the week over the 8gig... Loosing the removable memory card from the 8gig was crazy (although we know why... Guess where the 8gig is connected inside!).
And for those that ask why... Well go out into the field with an N95 and a Digital SLR. Put the MicroSD into a full size SD adapter, and plug it into the camera. Shoot your photos onto it... Then put MicroSD into the phone, and you can email the shots, preferably via a nice wifi point! Two devices do the job perfectly. No need for a laptop.
You can't do that with the 8gig... :-(
My BB 8300 (the Curve) is actually decent, the only thing lacking would be GPS (no use for this), support for playlists in the media player (oops?), and no *video* camera. Other than that, I'm pretty much OK with the thing.
And it doesn't have that evil Windows Mobile OS. (I've yet to try a Symbian-powered phone.)
I don't see an N95 on the list....
N95 8GB? Fixes most of the gripes about the N95. Firmware update to N95 solves all the software slowness/stability issues.
Can't say the web browser is nicer to use than the iPhone's.. but on more than one occasion the N95 has found a wifi network and the job is finished before the iPhone has even managed to get a connection.
.. and I echo the cry
E71! E71! E71!
.. and are all Blackberry devices *that* bad that they don't make the list at all? In my very brief exposure to one, I was wowed by the little trackball thingy. Is it just a gimmick?
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"Re. SE X1, E71, BlackBerry Bold etc"
"When you can buy 'em, we'll review 'em."
You obviously don't check the right places. My colleague has the E71 in his pocket right now, and has done for a couple days. He ditched his TyTn II for it because the latter was a pile of poop.
You did also miss established masters of the smartphone (more than a smartphone if you ask me) E90, along others.
Paris, cause she knows what's going down.
Forget the two Touch models featured here, the real king of the Windows Mobile heap for the last year has been the HTC Tytn II - so good it's also called the O2 Stellar, Vodafone V1615, Orange Tytn II, T Mobile Vario III, AT&T Tilt, the list goes on. One model to rule them all.
It pretty much takes the exact opposite approach to the Iphone, and that's what makes it great - it's loaded up with every hardware feature you can shake a stick at, and that's where Windows Mobile really comes into its own, because it supports all of that and remains open to more at the same time. Stick WinMo on some trimmed down Iphone-alike, and all you have is an overly cumbersome interface for a relatively simple phone - but make it drive a powerhouse like the Tytn II and you have real mobile computing in your pocket. It's no smartphone for the masses in the way that the Iphone and its pretenders are, but it's a hell of a device for those that need it.
And what's not to like about that unique form factor. It tilts!
I agree with Tom, the K800i was really good. I still have one, although I'm currently using a P800 because I'm in the US and my K800i is locked to a UK network. I've had colleagues who've had an N95 experience and from the swearing I've heard, it hasn't been a satisfactory experience. I have yet to discover a phone with WinCe/Mobile inside that I'd trust to work reliably. All the phones I've had have crashed occasionally, but as a rare event rather than something to get used to. The current smartphones seem to do it once every two or three battery cycles (and the way they eat batteries, that's not long).
I did wonder about getting a Linux smartphone, just so I could see if I can come up with my ideal mail client, browser, etc instead of what the manufacturer decides. However, such phones have a way to go before I'd expect to see one in the top ten.
Most of the problems reported are due to network operators refusing to provide updates to their branded firmware. They don't want their users to update their existing phones, they want the users to replace the phones and renew their contracts.
The answer is to debrand the phones and install Nokia's original firmware, which is usually light years ahead of the firmware present in phones supplied by network operators. Google is your friend, it's easy to do with NSS.
I have a N95-1 sourced from a UK operator. One of the first things I did was debrand it and upgrade from v12 to v21. It solve a raft of energy management problems and the WLAN connection is now far more stable (I use the N95 as a VoIP phone connected to my Asterisk server over the WLAN).
So, if you want to blame anyone because your Nokia phone is slow and unstable, blame the operators, not Nokia.
I assume the same applies to other brands of phone too.
...that a whole bunch of phones without a Qwerty keyboard made the top 10 and the Nokia E90 didn't.
To my mind, if you can't easily write and edit documents on a phone, it's not a Smartphone it's a toy. And don't tell me that virtual keyboards and predictive text are an adequate alternative - they aren't.
All bitching and moaning about smartphones.
Nokia 6650d, T-mobile, 600 mins, unlimited texts/data, does teh odd bit of intermanet browsing I occasionally need down the pub when someone suggests a good festival/concert to go to and I want to google it, does my gmail, and makes a good fist of making calls and sending texts.
you can take your N95/TYTN/iPhone and stick 'em up your arse :-)
Steven R
I know you meant to say something, but all it sounded like was "baaa, baaa, baaaaaaa!"
There's a good reason the Blackberrys aren't in the list - they're useful business tools, whereas to be an iBone "beater" they would have to be something that appealed to gormless fashion victims. Regarding the list, I'd actually prefer the HTC Touch to the iBone, but then I'd use all the features rather than just pose and listen to Moby on it like the average iBoner.
Is this a joke? None of the phone makers able to duplicate the iPhone. Even Palm and Microsoft with partners. Reason is simple, they all just dont get it, iPhone is not mean just a phone, but rather a new generation hendheld communication device that Plam and Moicrosoft took two plus decade and unable to achieve,
Only morons will take a piece of wireless phone with wannabe buttons pushing gargets emulate into touch screen compare to iPhone and claim it top ten beater. RIM is great for e-mail but still a dumb design and cocoon in the classical innovation cage.
Only one at the moment consider catching up is LG Dare. That's it.
my girlfriend had an n95, it was pretty crap really, it says it has all these features like gps but then when you try and run it it doesn't even bloody work properly, it's all crap, she got an iphone a few weeks after i did, im sure theres some sort of specialist use people have for them, so whatever, the experiences i had with the things were terrible and the experience i've had with my iPhone, particularly for looking at the net when travelling, has blown it out of the water face first into a pile of old bums
You write: "getting a perfectly decent Windows Mobile smartphone"...
I for one would not put "decent" and "Windows Mobile" in the same line.
That said, your losers lineup is interesting, but each one seems to do only bits and pieces of what the iPhone is capable of. Not that I'll be getting an iPhone, as I'm currently in Canada and, well, the Canadian mobile companies take major prizes in the ripoff sweepstakes.
..and found it instantly usable.
I was setting it up so the customer could surf the web with WiFi.
It was abundantly clear that this phone was easy to use. That buttons and keys are cumbersom. The graphics power is used to seamlessly scale webpages and everthing more around naturally.
Yes the WiFi could have worked better, but then I was using a crap router. The lack of 3G was an obvious omision, but then they don't have 3G in California so that's understandable that they forgot. The other problem was the O2 contract.
I am quite happy with my TyTnII, which i got after being 18 months with an MDA Vario II (previous version of TyTnII). Windows Mobile is much more flexible and stable than other windows, and had never any problems with sync. I still don't understand why people insist comparing iPhone with PDAs. iPhone is something in the middle between them and normal phones. I cant see hardcore PDA users getting used to iPhone
Is a fantastic piece of kit, 100% customiseable. I have flashed mine many times trying different flavours of WM6 and 6.1, the cube is customiseable too. Have to say for me it beats the iphone because of this.
Should have been top of the list. The touch dual shouldnt have been in it, theres no wifi which is why I didnt buy it.....
ROTFLMAO - you would prefer an HTC Touch to an iPhone? Please, take the one I just ditched after I spent a night in a queue getting my 16G iPhone. There is NO FREAKIN' COMPARISON in terms of fit and finish, features, and overall ease of use. But what really drove me (besides the WinMobile instability and useless cascading menus!) was the touch keyboard - after a year with the Touch (had one of the first 100 in the UK!), the iPhone 3G keyboard was light years easier to use when I tried it.
And, btw - I use my phone for business and personal productivity, not as a mobile media device or gaming platform. And I have never owned an Apple product before (despite buying my first PC in 1982). The iPhone 3G is simply a superior product, from soup to nuts...much as it pains me to admit it.
For those whinging about missing out the E71, how can they can include if they haven't had a review unit?
I think its sad that Se have stooped so low as to have to release a Windows Mobile device, I know a few people who have had WM based devices and they all hate them because they crash etc. just like the desktop version then.
As for Paris' choice of phone, I seem to remember she had a sidekick, don't you all remember the story about the servers at T-mobile USA being hacked and the numbers of all her sad, oxygen stealing celeb girl friends being splashed all over the web and the one about some poor soul ending up with her old mobile (or cell if you are American of course) phone number?
Mines the one that says down with blackberrys and smartphones on the back.
My choice of phone is an SE K800i
..surfing the net and all the other crap I do is the reason I carry a laptop. Christ, do you have to be entertained every minute of the day? WTF do you *really* need a small-assed screen to watch movies on while going somewhere for? Damn, I am continually amazed at people today.
That said...
I'm quite happy with my Motorola W755. It does what it's supposed to without all the whizbang bullshiite.
Paris, because she *needs* to be entertained every minute of the day. God help us if she ever got bored.....
Seriously? There are people waiting for a supposedly all-singing, all-dancing new SE? Word of advice: find someone who waited patiently for the P990, only to buy one of the buggiest most poorly thought out pieces of electronic tat ever released. Then subsequently had to deal with being abandoned by SE who washed their hands of the thing and refused to offer any more software fixes despite recognising its obvious flaws.
If you all really want to line up so that SE can rip the piss and laugh their way to the pub with your money then more fool you. Look for something better, and try not to put your hopes in people who delight in dashing them.
I don't need entertaining 24 hours a day, but I do get a lot of buses and trains as I don't drive, and after a while just sitting there gets really quite boring, that said, I'm not prepared to buy and take a laptop with me just to get out for an hour or two on the train, I'd rather just have my iphone, I don't have any videos on it at all, just a bit of music, and that and the fact mobile safari does a big smelly poo on all the other phone browsers is reason enough for me, seriously, trying to look at the web on the nokias/SE's I've had has been a seriously painful experience
To underline a few posters above, just the fact we're all talking and comparing everything to the iPhone is proof that the iPhone is a big deal.
Love it or loathe it (and I happen to love it) Apple have done, in just over a year, what Nokia, Motorola, Sony etc... spectacularly failed to do in the time they've had on the job - make a handset that's pretty good (and sometimes amazingly good) at everything it sets out to do.
Yes, it could have a better camera (my understanding is it's limited by light into the camera rather than megapixels) ... but c'mon, how many of us actually video-chat or even MMS (the other "omission")? I love the way when people compare the iPhone to other devices they cherry-pick - as in "the ibone sux... htc has a better touch screen, sony have a better camera, nokia has a keypad etc...", but do any of these devices combine these things so elegantly? With movies and software and an iPod and Google Maps and GPS and 3G and YouTube and then all that with iTunes?
What's great about this, is the more people post up "hate-mail" on the Reg and other sites, the more they underline the simple truth - the iPhone is the most exciting and innovative handset to come on the market in years... and potentially the start of a whole new computer platform.
None of the handsets mentioned in this article or the above posts can claim that. Seriously. Can they..?
I loved my htc wizard/o2 xda mini s and kept one when we added the K850 and the W880 to our home phones.
I like the fact that you can read/edit your word/excel documents on it, but I also like being able to use it as an e-book reader.
The great advantage of Windows Mobile family is that there are a lot of applications available for it and that it allows a proper choice of kit from candy-bar to sliding keyboard form-factor.
Put me down for the SE-X1 when that comes out - or whatever the next generation of HTC Touch is - but I really do like a slide-out qwerty keyboard as a 'must have' feature.
What I really want is an A5 touch screen like a Star Trek© data padd, or the slide-out screen like the video phones in "Earth Final conflict"
mines the anorak with LotR and STtNG patches
A few people are claiming that while individual handsets ape various Iphone features, none of them combine them all. Just for the record, that's complete bunkum - the Tytn II in my pocket (mystifyingly ommitted from this list) does everything the latest Iphone does, despite being a year older. Broadband speed data? GPS? Youtube? Been there, done that.
If you really want the best of everything, an open WM device like the Tytn II (or one of this year's improved VGA models like the Touch Diamond or Touch Pro) will always have the advantage over a closed model like the Iphone. Take Youtube for example - the Iphone has a nice app built in that streams videos over a live connection - very nice. On my phone, I have freeware developed by enthusiasts, rather than Apple Corp, that not only lets me stream live video in the same way, but also save my choice of videos to the storage card, so I can watch them offline anytime I want, when I'm going through tunnels on the train, or I just don't want to burn up my battery with a constant connection. It's a simple thing that Apple could easily have chosen to do it, or could allow someone to release via the apps store, but they won't because it doesn't suit their data-centric business model (and it probably has copyright implications etc that a corporation wouldn't want to touch). That's where a completely open approach to development, as found in the WM environment, really benefits the user. Similarly, I can use my GPS to the full with a wide choice of navigation software (no question about TomTom support for me), and radically customise my handset with different UIs, themes, and a huge range of other software without anyone being able to "vet" what I choose to install.
So many other things I take for granted are lost on the Iphone. Why is there no tasks application? How can you promise full Exchange support without the simple and useful standard feature of a syncable to-do list? Can I mention copy and paste? How about editing any of those email attachments? My Tytn II (and every other smartphone I've had for the last five years) has full document editing built in, I can jot my expenses down in Excel, compose a quick letter in Word - where is that in the Iphone? Where is it in the App store, for that matter?
If any of these commentators idly eulegising about the Iphone actually looked at what a competing product like the Tytn II is *really* capable of - not just paper specs, but the real nuts and bolts of what you can do with the thing - they might begin to see beyond the smoke and mirrors. In terms of basic functionality, the Iphone 3G would be a massive downgrade for me - yes I'd enjoy the shiny new interface, but I'd lose out in so many other ways, it really doesn't bear thinking about. If you want to look at a truly converged device, that *really* combines all the features of the Iphone with so much more, then give Windows Mobile some crediit and look at the Tytn II.
"....after I spent a night in a queue getting my 16G iPhone...." = Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Seriously, if you weren't a fanboi, there is no way you would stand out all night waiting for the iBone. It speaks volumes that you committed so much time (mind you, from what is probably a quite pitiful existance) to queuing for a fashion accessory! I bet your "business use" consists of ringing all your mates during your Mcjob fag breaks.
As to business use, I set up a tablet PC for the CIO of one of our companies so he could take it to SLA meetings and show live data from our OpenView over WiFi. As a bet, he challenged me to do the same for his O2 XDA (a badged HTC device). I could not only do the same, I could actually access the onboard iLOs or use Remote Desktop, which allowed his techies to remotely access servers for troubleshooting from their XDAs. I have done similar tricks from a Blackberry, minus the Remote Desktop, but I would laugh at the idea of doing anything that useful with an iBone.
the E71 is sold out where i live and work. even the demo pieces are taken. and that's without any network subsidy.
the phone is beautiful and well thought out.
but it's not the iphone beater. it's the phone to be beaten. and it's the phone i'll pay for just as soon as i walk into a store that has one.
The N82 has all the features of an N95 8 GB, albeit it has a micro SD card slot and only 100 MB or so of internal memory. It's also got the best camera bar none, thanks to a decent lens, high pixel count and xenon flash.
It's a far worthier contender than most of these phones and is in a nice compact format as well.
Only thing lacking is a nav-wheel, but that may come yet...
Heart - because I love my N82.
You have to be kidding me!?!?!?!
The interface on the N95 is completely unusable (needing 7 button presses before even getting to the screen where you can change the ringer profile is just ridiculous).
I cut my teeth on Motorola and Nokia phones, and I was a hardcore Unix Engineer for many years (so I have no love for Microsoft), but I have to say that Windows Mobile is by far the best mobile platform I've used (yes aesthetically it is ugly - and no I haven't used an iPhone, but more on that later).
I have a HTC WM6 phone (stylus only - no hard buttons for me - I don't think the model is particularly important), with all the bells and whistles - Wifi, GPS (with maps on the storage card - so it works when out of coverage area), HSDPA, SD card slot, Camera, I can play mp3's and video's and best of all - no-one tells me what I can or can't install on it (it's not even locked to a provider) - about the only thing my handset doesn't have is the accelerometer (but there are other HTC WM handsets that do). Even without any 3rd party helpers tools, all of the important applications and settings are only 1 or 2 taps on the screen away.
Another plus is the many free apps available for download - I have quite a few games and productivity apps installed, and I also have some interface enhancing apps too - like CooTek TouchPal (a brilliant virtual keypad), IrisBrowser (built on the same rendering engine as the iPhone browser), and PointUI Home (which takes some inspiration from the iPhone UI). This gives me an experience that is very similar (I'm told) to the iPhone on my WM handset (bigger controls, swipey type control actions and a more aesthetically pleasing interface).
So even without the extra bits, my HTC WM handset stomps all over the Nokia handsets, and with the extra bits it's on par with the 3G iPhone (interface is almost as good as the iPhone, but I have full control of the my handset - a pretty equal trade in my book)
Let the flaming begin (likely to come from all sides with this post)
Touch virtual keyboard? Yes, it's shite, if you stick with the OOB version. But CooTek's Touchpal is free and pisses all over the iPhone's slightly-better-than-most-but-still-a-sack-of-shit version.
But then, when you're using a WM6 phone you can put whatever you like onto it to customise the UI without having to get down on both knees and beg St Steve's indulgance first.
Depends what you want. If you're happy with the OOB plus approved addons experience go with the iPig. If you want to actually own a device and do what you want with it, don't*.
*Yes, I know that you *can*, with judicious use of Rocket Science, customise the things, but living on the bleedin' edge and continually looking over your shoulder in case the Lord Jobs decides to piss on your picnic ain't my idea of "usable".
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