The biggest problem I face is that we kind of (and god I hate to say this) "need" Verizon. Most of our family and friends are on Big Red, so if we switch, we're going to take a major hit to the minutes. I'm talking over 2500 minutes a month that currently go to "shared" minutes on the Verizon network. This is in addition to around 1100 "regular" minutes, and about 900 "nights and weekend" minutes. Those "in-network" minutes would now be regular minutes, meaning we'd have to go to a much, much more expensive plan. I like that AT&T has the rollover minutes, but I don't think that will come anywhere near to making up for the discrepancy.
So while I really, really want an iPhone, I'm not sure that I can afford to switch to AT&T. Therefore I'm left with what I see as three viable options: the Samsung Omnia, the Blackberry Storm, and the HTC Touch Pro (the Diamond looks like a crusty, old terrapin so it's out).
From the reviews I've read, the Omnia is kicking the Storm's ass on speed and the user interface. The Omnia virtual keyboard, while physically smaller, is also more accurate than the Storm keyboard. The Storm seems to have a better screen, but the Omnia screen isn't bad, so I think I can probably live with it.
Both report fairly major problems of "stickiness," lag when moving from screen to screen or opening apps, which is incredibly disappointing, as I see myself throwing a very expensive piece of hardware against a wall when faced with such lag. I guess I should just make sure I get accident/breakage insurance.
Every phone's interface is where each falls sorely short of the iPhone. The iPhone's flow is just so tasty and quick, and this alone means there is no such thing as an iPhone killer out there right now. Argh.
The Omnia does have a 5MP camera with video, so these two features beat out the iPhone in those categories.
The Omnia also sports 3G and EV-DO as well as Wi-fi. Very nice.
The Verizon phones also have removable memory media (microSD), which is extremely convenient and sorely lacking on the iPhone.
The Omnia can only sport GPS via VZNavigator, which costs an extra $9.99 a month, so that sucks, but this would be the case with any phone on Verizon (bastards). I'm wondering if there's a hack out there somewhere.
I like what I've seen of the features and interface on the HTC Touch Pro, but the hardware itself is pretty clunky. It had been at the forefront of my list, due solely to the dedicated actual keyboard, but that's slowly fading into the background. Size (or lack thereof) is becoming more important the more I really think about actually carrying this thing around.
I saw a couple weeks ago that someone had Android running on the HTC Touch, but they couldn't get the phone itself working with the platform. So while it was fun to watch someone navigate with Android, what good is a phone that you can't actually, um, call someone with?
So... I need to go use an Omnia. It seems to be the current winner in the "I can't switch to AT&T" phone universe. Hopefully it won't fall sorely short of the sexy-sexy that is iPhone. I'll let you know what I find.