I found this thread as I've had a TP for a little over a month and am about to switch to an 800W. As a gadget freak I love the TP, the VGA screen, and of course all the ready-made mods on this board. Unfortunately when it comes to using it as a phone and email device it falls short. Sure it's cool and sure it does cool stuff, but right off the bat you don't even get a real directonal pad. I get what they were doing with the flat lower control portion with no protruding buttons and even appreciate the touch-sensitive buttons - however they are hard to hit accurately (directional) and after 6 weeks of use I was far more efficient with my old Tmobile Shadow. It looks nice but it simply doesn't work very well.
I do find myself playing with the cool toys on the TP and am amazed at how useful the remote desktop client is at full VGA - but I'm sick and tired of putting people on hold by mistake, having to re-type my unlock password several times on the touch screen, getting my swipes, clicks, presses, etc. mixed up by the UI, and of course clicking left and the phone takes me home.... It selects links I don't want it to select, it dials people I am trying to swipe past, I find it more frustrating than it's worth.
I loaded SPB mobile shell and disabled touch-flo in hopes of increasing performance and efficiency by losing the silly slidey touch-flo. It's better but still takes far more steps to do anything than it ever did with a well laid out today screen. My old winmo phones, while laggy, became second nature to me and I barely had to look as I clicked around with the Dpad and other buttons. I cannot do that with the TP as I never know if my touch or click or whatever will actually work. If you want to use a phone intuitively, single handed, don't even waste your time with a TP.
I guess the good news is that this keeps me from using the phone for much in the car whereas I used my previous winmo phones all the time while driving
I figure the treo 800w will better suit my needs although I will definitely miss the vga screen.
For me the bottom line is that I need to use this as a phone and an extension of MS Outlook via exchange. I like the cool stuff but need to get work done more than have a toy (yet I love toys). I thought the slide-out keyboard would more than make up for the other trade-offs but I have found that on the whole I'm better off with another device.
My humble opinion of course...