I got my Touch last week after lots of wrangling with Sprint at the end of a 2-year contract. Got a great deal, lots of nice discounts and a great new phone. I've been on the PPC-6700 since the day it came out in Portland and have tweaked like crazy for 2 years, trying just about every ROM and program available.
Here's my review:
First off, let me say I really like this phone. I reserve the word "love" for humans but if I had to use it for technology I'd come close with this product. Its form factor, response and performance have all been excellent with just a few glitches. Here's the lowdown:
LIKES:
1. Form factor, weight, screen, d-pad are all 10's for me. I almost forget I have it in my pocket its so light
2. Daily usage has been great. I'm a pretty heavy business user and need to sync to a Groupwise account at work and Outlook at home for contacts and calendar. Everything just worked when I plugged it in. There were a couple of the usual Windows quirks but I was able to solve them thanks to two years experience with the 6700.
3. Tweakability! I see there are already customizations, cube enhancements, and more coming out. I've done about 5-6 reg edits to get things the way I like them and I look forward to doing lots more once the tweak-heads get some time under their belts.
4. Sound of the speaker, phone and just about everything is better than the 6700. The reception is better too with a stronger signal everywhere I go.
5. MEMORY! Wow, I've put just about everything from the 6700 and I still have 107.8 of storage and 55.5 of program. I ordered a 4g card and am still using the 512 that came with it. No problem installing some things to card.
NEUTRAL
5. Web access is quick. After a few fits and starts the TV, Music and everything seem to work. I haven't been able to access all sites. No YouTube and I haven't tried the GoLive and mapping stuff yet.
6. Bluetooth hasn't been turned on yet. Don't do the headphone and only use it for mapping occasionally with external GPS. I'll get to that when I need it.
7. Touch Keyboard - just like most have posted has its quirks. I downloaded TouchPal free from
www.cootek.com and loved it and then it disappeared. After some more research I found the SIP changer and now I have it back as my default keyboard. It is very cool the way it works and I type faster than on the hard keyboard (which I rarely used) on the 6700. Still a few quirks and kinks to work out on the soft keyboard.
DISLIKES
1. That I didn't have this a year ago! I haven't really found too much that I don't like about this phone. There are some software issues noted below but I am sure those will get worked out by developers.
2. Hard buttons. I could use a few more but I'm going to try AEbuttons and see how that works for me. I don't miss them as much as I thought I would.
SOFTWARE:
1. I use lots of SPB stuff: Time, Weather, Phone Suite, Mobile Suite, Plus (I left Diary off this install and don't really need or use it), Backup (haven't tried that either yet). All seems to work fine although I dumped all the Sprint and HTC stuff on the Today screen as it was redundant and not as well laid out as Plus. There is a bug in Plus4 that makes the phone come up when you close out programs. Voice Command 1.6 works but had some early quirks. Seems more stable with a few tweaks. Just about everything else works just great. I use Pocket Informant and that seems stable as always. I'll look to install a few more things this weekend but for now it's pretty much how I use it.
I'd rate the whole phone experience about a 9/10. A few of the bugs and quirks puts the overall at 8.5 but it gets better every day as I get used to it.