I have used, and owned, just about every smart phone (from the very first Nokia communicators and Ericsson smartphones, to the Handspring visors, a few HORID pocketpc phones…).

I currently own a Treo 600, a Treo 650, a Treo 750, Nokia 9500, Nokia E90 (Superb phone!), AND an unlocked iPhone with firmware 1.0.2 (it was 1.1.1, but I downgraded since it was more stable and hackable on 1.0.2).

I love my iphone… It syncs with my mac, something that has always been a issue for me (with every phone except the E90). Currently, the only phone that challenges my iPhone is the E90, keyboard on that is great, it has 3g, can send SMS, and has built in GPS.

However, the E90 has been relegated to a secondary device, while my iphone lives in my pocket. I use apptapp and have many great third party apps installed!

So, I agree with you, the iPhone is by far the best (although it does have some significant shortcomings. I had to add a third party app to send an SMS to multiple recipients, I have to share my wifi connection via ssh to use it as a dialup modem, I have to use afp to access the file system, I can’t send MMS etc. , etc, etc, SO, there is still a lot of growing and fixing… But, it is still a killer device).

Thanks
Faisal

Exchange server: email to be handling by Visto (see original article).

Corporate VPN clients: iPhone supports L2TP and PPTP VPN connections.

“Real” 3rd Party Apps: I’ve seen a plethora of webapps tailored for the iphone come out in the last week. I’d like to see native apps on the iphone but a lot of the big needs (ssh, for instance) are being addressed by nascent applications like webshell.

BT DUN: BT DUN was so important to me that I rolled my own system (Pulse), for the BlackBerry. I still would like to see it but, after using this phone, my need for it has decreased substantially.

The bottom line is that the iPhone experience is better, and you aren’t going to understand it until you actually get a chance to use it. This isn’t a great tech reference, but Tycho over at Penny Arcade summed it up pretty eloquently:

“My old phone, one based on Windows Mobile 5.0, had almost every feature the iPhone has - point by point. The differences between the products (like the differences between their desktop cousins) have to do with how functionality is exposed to the user. In this matter, you’ll find that Apple’s product is almost infuriatingly superior.”

There have been quite a few instances where it’s been of great benefit to be able to whip out my laptop in the middle of nowhere in a parking lot and do something via BT DUN that just wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. No matter how great that little web browser is on the iPhone, nothing compares to a real web browser with real screen real-estate, as well as a real e-mail client that can open, edit, and save real e-mail attachments in their native and full featured applications.

Now I understand that the iPhone is aimed more at consumers as sort of a do-all multimedia device, and that’s great. It’s awesome at that. But there simply aren’t any real features that the iPhone offers over the Treo 680 or 755 outside of visual voicemail, and there are a LOT of things the Treo has that the iPhone doesn’t. Tomtom, BT DUN, robust third party application support (despite your opinion to the contrary), a ssh client, 3G, an IPSEC VPN client, Activesync etc. Sure the iPhone comes in a pretty little package, and it’s really cool, but for those of us that live in less-than-stellar coverage by AT&T, it’s not even a feasible option, no matter how great the media capabilities are.

-Daniel