@Jack Funny, I say the same thing about the iphone comparing it to my WinMo phone.

We're all hopeless fanboys.

@maati Your abject lies mean nothing to us, the iChosen. We all know the iPhone has been in existence and able to run N64 games before Nintendo even existed. May Lord Jobs have mercy on your iSoul.

Wait... wait what are you doing? That's my 5 year old phone! No! That's not what you think it is! That's not Windows Mobile 2003 at all! NO! That's not running a SNES emulator! NOOOO!

Who else wants to see Verizon make a map of these responses in their next ad?

"No, this isn't a map for Verizon's 3G coverage; it's a map of the holes in AT&T's coverage! Luke Wilson was unavailable for comment... or maybe his call dropped."

Eh.

@(Unverified) Unfortunately, all the iPhone, Pre and various Android owners disagreed with their wallets. They want phones that are locked down and cannot be customized any way (within reason) they see fit.

@(Unverified) I think you're lacking a bit of the fundamental understanding of virtual machines. I don't mean that disparagingly...

The work OS would have whatever done to it that is needed; setup on a domain, locked wi-fi, whatever, you name it. That OS is completely and totally oblivious to the 2nd OS that is happily downloading viruses via infectmenow.org.

Then, say in the event of an issue or termination, the corporate OS needs to be wiped remotely, as is an option with Exchange/ActiveSync and Crackberry. That virtual OS gets wiped while the personal OS continues on its merry way, tweeting and opening viruses.

Take this real situation: A company gets a nice volume deal through Verizon on Blackberry phones. The company somehow manages to show that moving all employee's mobile corporate e-mail is more cost effective to 'force' them all onto RIM. (Yeah I'm still confused on that, but this client did it.) Aside from that, the corp wanted to have a single, streamlined way to be able to control any internal information, a la wiping a phone in the event of a disgruntled termination, which at least that is understandable. Their IT and other tech savvy people who had everything from WinMo to iPhones, all getting corporate e-mail either via ActiveSync or POP3/IMAP had to start carrying a company-owned Blackberry. Needless to say, many of them would love this option, and their company's bottom line would too.

I now own this phone so I can back up my inane fanboy rants. NE2 was up and I was able to pull the trigger for $150.

So for a mini-review:
I disabled TouchWiz almost immediately. Note that it has to be disabled in two places to get to the default WinMo 6.5 today screen and the default 'start menu.' I have near-zero use for widgets and the TouchWiz program menu is ugly and slow. I setup my 7 e-mail accounts, including exchange/activesync, setup my wi-fi to my [admittedly ridiculously locked-down] home network and have had some fun with the camera and video. Swype is absolutely spectacular and only gets faster to use as it learns your favorite [curse] words.

The screen... my god, it's full of star-err win. This may as well be capacitive with the bonus of working with fingernails. There is practically zero give and it is extremely responsive with the lightest pressure. The haptic feedback is a little strange at first, but can easily be disabled if desired. It's actually pretty intuitive when scrolling through long menus or file lists in letting you know how fast you're scrolling. By default, a short tone is also played with every 'click' that quickly gets annoying and intrusive due to the volume; I disabled that almost immediately. While there's no slider for the unlock feature, the default lock hard-button is recessed and not going to be easily hit. The buttons to wake up the phone from a lock/screen off are configurable, so if you hit a button often while transporting, disable it from waking it up.

The stereo speakers sound surprisingly good to me, all things considered. I haven't heard very many phones play mp3s out loud, precisely four, but these are by far better than anything I've heard. Music and calls are clear and didn't distort much even with high volume.

I reproduced the zoom issue as in the video and it's an Opera problem, so take that as you will. Doesn't make much sense to try to zoom into a page that hasn't loaded yet anyway. I consider that a non-issue.

The Nuance voice recognition is a nice addition and has worked very well for me so far.

I know some people have started rumors that the GPS is locked...
The GPS IS UNLOCKED. There is of course no 'assist' so it still takes ~30 seconds or so before Google Maps picked up the sats.

@DrEngrish I was purposely overreacting to your comment just as you were to the inclusion of a stylus with this phone.

So it has a stylus as an option. Whoopdyfreakin'doo!? It's still a damn good touchscreen for which you'll never need a stylus if you're a typical user. Of course if you're like me and actually log into terminal servers from your phone, utilizing a shrunken desktop with the need for excessive precision, it's a great option to have. Guess what? I'm not carrying around an extra, more expensive stylus to use on a capacitive screen that will just get lost because there's no nice little place to store it on the phone. That is, of course, assuming any of the phones available to me with capacitive screens could actually run the software that enables me to connect to those servers, which they can't.

As far as the implied resistive vs. capacitive argument, you haven't used this phone have you? Of course not. So you have no idea how responsive this screen actually is.

@DrEngrish You're a moron. No, seriously, you are.

Do you cover your ears and sit rocking in a corner when someone uses a #2 pencil instead of a pen to write with?

Do trackball mice freak you the hell out too? Or maybe you draw the line at 'optical' vs. 'laser'?

OH CHRIST DON'T LOOK NOW, SOMEONE READING ENGADGET HAS A CRT MONITOR!

@tbergquist Where the hell have you been? Look a couple pages back for the HTC HD2... Yeah, capacitive and WinMo 6.5.

Maybe you just need some coffee.

Well hello there!