I don’t own an iPod Touch or iPhone as they don’t have the connectivity options I need but I have played with them quite extensively and find that Safari seems to work quite well. I do remember it quitting on me once but coming from WM land, it just made me feel at home

Yes I know (as mentioned my “right pocket” device is an iPhone :)) but in this context “pull up” was refering to the time it takes, as its a very “demanding” page. Even though the iPhone pulls it up nicely (browser handles it ok that is, as it does with any blog) but it takes a significant amount of time including on wifi. The only page that has had my iPhone tilt a number of times is Engadget, it just closes the browser and that’s it, at times. Yes though I have a “hacked” iPhone, unlocked with a number of 3rd party “native” sw (not through iTunes).

NetFront 3.5 on my WM6 device displays Engadget quite nicely as well. It reformats the text to fit my display to minimise horizontal scrolling (just like the iPhone). It takes a while to render the page but once this is done, moving around the page is also very easy.

I’ve used Opera 8.65 on my Axim X30 (PXA270 624MHz), iMate SP3i (TI OMAP850 200MHz) and Samsung i780 (PXA3xx 624MHz). On simple, small sites, Opera works reasonably well. On more complex or larger sites, such as the Engadget homepage, the device stutters and becomes unresponsive for 10-30 seconds while it renders the page. It even has problems when you’re trying to move around a complex website.

“You are aware that on Windows Mobile “closing” a program is NOT the same as shutting it down, right?”… Of course. One of the most useful apps on my phone is the Task Manager. How sad is that?!

OS X Mobile is not that hungry on system resources at all. If you take into account the browsing time on EDGE or even WiFi (over 7 hours!), you’ll realise that the real culprit is the 3G radio.

I don’t know what you’re using/doing but I never had any issues with Opera Mobile, on the contrary it is a lot faster and “lighter” than Internet Explorer! I’ve used most previous editions of Opera on my 624Mhz Dell x51v and it has always performed better than IE! What device are you using and what else do you run at the same time? You are aware that on Windows Mobile “closing” a program is NOT the same as shuting it down, right?

@Billy

BB products are next into unknown in many regions outside North America, also indeed the BB products had fallen “behind” a while ago. It is only quite recently when they became more up to date and marketed (more aggressively) internationally. I mean just look at the history of Blackberry products AND the Blackberry software (two very different things from a history point of view BTW) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry it wasn’t until 2002 that they released a “full” smartphone (not to mention the outdated look/feel of it) whereas Nokia has had the Communicator out since 1996 for instance. I feel that the NA market has a diffused image of BB being something very advanced just because a fair amount of government departments have used BB products and services for the long time. As such however the BB products have not by any means been ahead of other smart phones, not to be confused with the BB email handling that has been recognized by most mobile phone manufacturers who now incorporate support for BB email.

@coco

I’m sorry but having extra battery/batteries is not the solution we are looking for, if we include that as a feasible solution the list of devices we could then consider/compare becomes endless. Whereas I have defended the iPhone a lot on here so far and I do like the iPhone UI but in this 3G case of battery time it just becomes evident that we need a “next generation” of either processors or batteries, or BOTH. Carrying around a number of batteries is NOT the solution. However what COULD be one step in the right direction is the development of LCD panels that have solar cells built into them.

As for the experience many have made with the battery life of the iPhone and other comparable devices, this confirms my opinion that the Shift’s 2 - 2.5 hours I can get with surfing via WiFi or 3G (not both on at the same time) isn’t as bad as many made it sound in previous discussions (still, an extended battery would be nice). And hardly any UMPC beats the Shift if you only use it for emails. This can almost exclusively be done in WinMo 6 (liberated SnapVue) and the battery lasts for 2+ days with 3G constantly on. You can even add an internet surfing session where a mobile browser is sufficient from time to time without seriously reducing battery life.

Just get a backup battery. I got mine from iPhoneck brands. Their new 3G backup battery is probably one of the better looking products in the market. Their website is http://www.iphoneck.com

Opera Mobile on a 200 MHz ARM processor runing Windows Mobile? Tried it once… never again. Opera Mobile is barely useable on my 624 MHz device. There is no way around it, to acceptably render most webpages these days, you need a lot of horsepower.

Just FYI, the iPhone can sort of run background apps. They’re so far back, they’re running on a server! I haven’t looked into the API but you can have background tasks running on a server (hosted by Apple) and every time the task needs your attention, the server notifies the iPhone and you get a notification on your screen.

Probably not the most elegant way of doing background tasks but at least it won’t result in the laggy mess which plagues other smartphone platforms *cough* Windows Mobile *cough*.

http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3410770%26_diaIndex=10%26_seite=1

Just curious you consider the blackberry “low-tech”? It has more features and versatility than an iPhone. While some of the apps might be more polished on the iPhone it lacks a lot.

Either way I welcome the iPhone and hope it spurs competition and innovation in the smart phone market.