I decided that the only way I can express my decision making process, which has led me to NOT buy a new iPhone tomorrow, is to externalize the conversation taking place in my head. So here ya go:
WM Owner
Ok, I've decided to stick with my HTC Touch Cruise (substitute any of the latest wm phones with 3G and GPS).
iPhone 3G Owner
But how can you think WM is still a better choice when the new iPhone is so great?
WM
I know, I have to keep reminding myself of the reasons. Let's do this though. You start telling me the things you love about the iPhone that you think are either unique to it, or better than WM. And I will respond with something that is unique or better on WM; OR demonstrate equivalent functionality on WM, and see how far we get. And I'm not just going to list features for features sake; these are things that really matter to me
iPhone
Alright. Let's start with mobile web browsing. Web pages are displayed like they are on a desktop.
WM
Yeah but opera 9.5 on wm does the same thing as safari now. It has all the same benefits. The only thing it can't do is the multi-touch pinch, so just to even us up, I'll throw in the obvious wm advantage that it can be used with any carrier world-wide and supports more radio bands.
iPhone
Fair enough. So how about the great multi-media ipod functionality? It plays videos beautifully.
WM
I'll give you that it's better overall at multi-media, although I can play xvid torrents natively on mine with minimal slowdown, while those have to be converted for the iPhone. Also I can play audio over bluetooth and expand my storage with the SDHC card reader.
iPhone
The iPhone is great for texting with its threaded display and smart keyboard.
WM
Actually I have threaded txting now too, and I can copy/paste things into my txts/emails from any other program on the phone. I also have a 3rd party keyboard that incorporates all of the smarts of the iPhone keyboard, plus the ability to choose your layout and customize other useful options.
iPhone
I love google maps on the iPhone. And now I have gps.
WM
Yeah I have the same google maps program with gps, and I also have MS live search which includes turn-by-turn gps support via the internet. It even does rerouting when you deviate from course. And it supports voice commands.
iPhone
The gesture-based UI is great.
WM
I'll give you that it's nice, although multi-touch is probably underutilized. HTC phones do gestures now though too. All lists are flick-able. I can flip through pictures and emails. There is a program launcher that is all gesture based. And I can even zoom in on areas of pictures by drawing little circles instead of doing the pinch.
iPhone
Email support is great, and now supports exchange push.
WM
That's great, but obviously WM has that too. Also, it implements ALL exchange features. The iPhone is missing tasks and flagged emails, which are extremely useful to me.
iPhone
How about how you can browse itunes and buy/download music directly over wifi?
WM
Good one. Although I have an app that will auto-download podcasts over the 3g network, which I find more useful than buying songs. I also have apps for twitter and flickr uploading, all running in the background, which I understand you can't do with 3rd party apps on the iPhone as they can't stay resident.
iPhone
Honestly, when it comes down to it, the iPhone is all about the overall amazingly fast and beautiful user experience.
WM
You win on ux and speed, I can't deny that. It takes a lot to overcome this one for me. Here's a few things I haven't mentioned yet: OfficeCommunicatorMobile for corporate IM and true freedom from the office; decent 3mp camera with auto-geotagging; windows remote desktop, for tweaking my home server from the road; laptop tethering to the internet via Bluetooth; spare batteries; Skype.