Mobile Thoughts

• Windows Mobile has a huge learning curve.  In old Microsoft fashion, somethings are not where they should be intuitively.
• Windows Mobile has a large amount of 3rd party software, but no central "App Store" like the iPhone does.  If you want software, you'll have to go scouring through the internet to find it.  Places like Handango and PocketGear are nice repositories though.
• With Windows Mobile, there are no restrictions on apps produced.  The same cannot be said about the iPhone platform -- ie. No Opera on iPhone because it's too similar to Safari, wth?.  And, no, Apple going through the apps in a heavy handed way does not guarantee any safety for you.  Nor does it guarantee that you're getting quality applications.  It is very apparent that Apple doesn't go through the apps very thoroughly before putting them up on the store.  Examples would be "I Am Rich" and "Netshare".  All this guarantees is that Apple wants to have full control of what you get and what you don't get.  You are Apple's b*tch when it comes to applications on the iPhone.
• Tactile thumb board well worth the trade-off in screen real estate.  Sure, with the iPhone, you get all that extra screen space to view webpages, movies and other media.  But, when it comes to typing, it is just not the same.  The tactile feedback of a button click cannot be beat.  This all comes down to what you do with your smartphone though.  As a messenging device, a thumbboard is the best thing.  If you want a hybrid consumer device for media and some light messenging the iPhone is fine.
• The Windows Mobile UI is generally "laggy".  Even with a 325Mhz processor, the screen redraws are quite apparent.  Launching apps is generally snappy.  There is actually a spinning beach ball in Windows Mobile.  Ironic.
• Moving around text with d-pad is a lot easier than with the touch interface on the iPhone.  When I am trying to back up and edit something (say a misspelling), it is a hell of a lot easier to use a d-pad to move around and put the cursor where I need it.  Using the magnifying glass and fat-finger on the iPhone to do the same is a pain-in-the-ass.  This is especially true when you want to put the cursor at in front of the first word of a paragraph.  The first word is at the edge of the screen, so trying to get the cursor there is near impossible.
• The Windows Mobile interface is too clicky -- it takes too many clicks to get something done.  This is a considerable part that plays into the large learning curve of Windows Mobile.  There are menus, lots of menus.  But, most all menu items have numbers associated with them.  So if you use an app long enough, you can memorize the most used menu item's number.  Then you can just Menu+# to activate that function.
• Most Windows Mobile devices have batteries that can be replaced by the user, go figure.  The Moto Q9H even comes with two batteries, a slim one and a fat extended one.  Take your pick which one you want to use.  And, no, a user replaceable battery does not help make a device thinner as Lord Jobs would have you believe. My original iPhone was 11.6mm thick.  The new iPhone 3G is 12.3mm thick.  My Moto Q9h is 12mm thick.  Huh.
• Want more storage on your Windows Mobile device?  Go buy an expansion card (Moto Q9h takes microSDHC cards for user swappable storage).  Want more storage on your iPhone?  Go buy a new iPhone.
• Hey, look, cut and paste.  That's innovation at work.
• The webbrowsing experience on the iPhone cannot be matched. Mobile IE 6.1 is OK.  Opera 8.65 is OK.  But, neither matches Mobile Safari.
• Windows Mobile devices can multitask.  The iPhone doesn't.  It can, but it doesn't.  This means that if you want to have your instant messenger open, you can't do anything else.  On my Windows Mobile device, I can have my IM client open in the background while I go and do other stuff.  Sure, Apple has promised "Push" notification for applications so that they can simulate running in the background, but Apple has slipped that promise.  Job's continues to try to push the idea that apps running in the background will drain the battery faster.  Yes and no.  I ran my IM client on my 3G Moto Q9h all day yesterday (on the slim battery) and still made it throughout the whole day without recharging -- and this included calls, RSS reading, and websurfing.
• I wish I could quit applications.  Some applications in Windows Mobile let you quit.  Some don't (like Mobile IE).  The only way to exit applications that won't let you do it nicely is to kill them via the Task Manager.  Microsoft could do us all a big favor and make sure that the user interface across the whole platform requires that an app have a Quit function -- and maybe they can implement it themselves, say in Mobile Outlook and Mobile IE.
• Bluetooth functionality in Windows Mobile is not neutered like it is on the iPhone.  I can connect via Bluetooth wirelessly to ActiveSync on my Windows box and synchronize all the information on my box -- including PIM stuff and files on the file system.  Not only that, I can use Bluetooth on my Windows Mobile device to send contacts, calendar events, and files to other Bluetooth enabled devices (except the neutered iPhone, of course).  I can use the Bluetooth connectivity on my Windows Mobile device for making calls on a Bluetooth headset.  Oh, and I can listen to music wirelessly using Bluetooth on my Windows Mobile device.  What about the iPhone's Bluetooth capabilities?  Severely limited to one thing and only one thing:  Bluetooth headset for making phone calls.  How lame is that?  iPhone users, when it comes to Bluetooth, Apple wants to welcome you to the 90's.
• I have to say on a whole, the stability of Windows Mobile and its apps have been a lot better than the stability of the iPhone and its apps.  The iPhone 2.1 update did a lot to fix the crash problems that iPhone apps had, but it didn't fix them all.  Safari was one of the worse offenders, often dumping me back to the Home screen without warning.  So far, no Windows Mobile app has done that yet.  I have not had to restart my Moto Q9h to clear up any issues.
• The out-of-box experience on a Mac is much better for an iPhone since all MacOS X applications are built to work with the iPhone.  If you have a Windows Mobile device and a Mac (giggle), you'll have to get something like PocketMac to get the two to talk to each other.
• The out-of-box experience on a Windows box is the same suck-ass experience for both Windows Mobile devices and iPhones.  Mainly, you can't synchronize to a Windows box unless you buy Microsoft Outlook.