[kdonahue]

I've owned every WinMo phone Verizon has sold for probably the last 5 years - Samsung I730, WM Treo, I760, Mogul, Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2. I just moved from a Touch Pro 2 I flashed with a custom WM 6.5 ROM and tweaked to perfection. I can say without a doubt that this device trumps them all. It's not as polished in some ways compared to WM which is very mature and hackable but for an initial offering, it's damn good. And the potential for this platform is incredible, especially with the likes of Google putting their full weight behind it. In terms of the hardware and integration with the OS, it's very slick and fast. The keyboard is not as bad as some reviews say. I'd compare it to the Touch Pro but it's nowhere near as good as the keyboard on the Touch Pro 2, which had the best one I've ever used. But it's a tradeoff I gladly made. The camera is below average but the video is comparable to a Flip. The file sizes on the high quality means you can't email a high quality video that's longer than just a few seconds so you have to transfer them with USB. Updates to the OS will be pushed out over the air with the first one scheduled for December and then another one rumored for January. I think this device will rapidly pass anything Microsoft or RIM will be doing anytime soon, if it hasn't already. Maybe when WM 7 comes out and there are handsets with capacitive screens I'll start looking over the fence again but for me this is the new hotness.