Yes you should get an iPhone, had mine for 2 weeks now, and use it more than my laptop.
Yes the battery life isn't the best, but that's only because I use it so much.

Posted from my iPhone.

went to scotland, a few days of riding/pics and video etc at dalbeattie/glentress-brilliant. we shared via bluetooth in the evening,brilliant…the iphone owner sat and watched a film…
lovely interface though imo

Really cant see the point of having an Iphone unless
your in graphic design or useing the Apple computer on a
work/professional level.

eh? Graphic design? It's a phone/internet-device – not Photoshop.

For what it's worth, I'm not in Graphics Design and I don't use a Mac (for work or at home) – but I really like my iPhone.

(sat here using it to read this forum while I watch Stargate Universe on telly 😀 )

i've had the iphone for about 17 months now. I bought it for phone/mp3 player uses. In that respect its done its job fine, but for the bulk of the time, there were some annoying issues … copy/paste and MMS as a couple of main examples, but now they are sorts.

Further down the line, there are a few main things which still bug me quite a lot. iTunes, general file storage and how locked down the phone is. I've never really got on with iTunes, just seems to bulky and cumbersome, even on my Core i7 rig. I'm finding it more and more frustrating about not being *easily* able to store files on it and use it as a general USB mass storage device and be able to view stored files on the phone when out and about. The apps … some are good, but I only have a few on it. I'm just not into the tat thats out there.

In general use, its actually pretty good for the most part I must admit. The web browser is good, no doubt about it. I think maybe only the very latest other phones will contend with it ( like hte HTC HD2 etc ).

Call wise, no issues for me. Texts, now MMS is sorted it helps. The only issue I have with the texts is that bubble pish. The texts use a realitvely small font in speech bubbles … nice and cute, but after a while you realise that it wastes a lot of screen space, and the inability to increase the font for easier reading, and have a more normal layout is a bit of an frustrating. The keyboard input is ok once your used to it. My wife doesn't like it, but i find it fine.

Wear and tear, i dont have a cover for it. It scratches on the back, but not terribly so. I have a couple of scratches on the front but it doesn't stop the screen working. Its held up well i would say.

Will I get another on in a couple of months when my contract is up?

I dont think so. The iTunes / files issue is just too much annoyance for me. I want something more open and less locked down in that respect.

I'm finding it more and more frustrating about not being *easily* able to store files on it and use it as a general USB mass storage device and be able to view stored files on the phone when out and about.

Yeah this is the main thing putting me off as well.

I use the iDisk app to view files stored on my mobileme account. Works fine for what I want.

Really cant see the point of having an Iphone unless
your in graphic design or useing the Apple computer on a
work/professional level.

Where do I begin … ?

I just use email to store files – works just as quickly and makes it easy to share with other people if I want to.

It would be nice if they were a bit more easily accessible though.

There are loads of apps that let you store files on it.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/iphone-gems-every-file-storage-app-reviewed/
http://appadvice.com/app/289943355

Or you can just use it to access your dropbox files:
http://www.dropbox.com/iphoneapp

+1 for Hero. I'm chuffed with mine.

Excellent browser, with Flash

Seriously customisable, plus apps/widgets for managing:
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
RSS feeds
podcasts
MP3s
videos
Dropbox
Exchange/Gmail
combining mixed calendars
GPS
sports tracker stuff
BBC iplayer (and live BBC channels)
youtube
loads more

Battery issue aside (which is sporadic), it's a great phone.

Try them both.

Is the Hero battery life any better than the iPhones?

That's the only real bug bear I have with the iPhone.

iPhone looking like the favourite at the mo but ill have a play with the HTC Hero sometime this week.

2 weeks ago I was set on the Palm Pre but have gone right off that now.

I don't have problems with my battery life on my 3GS, work email pushed, WiFi on in the evening, 3G on all the time. I usually get 2-3 days (i have had 5 days) before re-charging. Friend is lucky to get 2 days out of his HTC, but I would say the battery life is pretty much the same.

Go & try an iPhone & Hero. Friends wanted an Hero until they held it, and didnt like the bend near the bottom and are waiting for the HD2.

I usually get 2-3 days (i have had 5 days) before re-charging.

Blimey. I have to charge mine every night. It's just coming up for midday now and I'm sitting at 77% battery. Home and work email is set to Pull Hourly. 3G on. Wifi on. Screen brightness turned down to reasonable level.

So far all I've done is surf for maybe half an hour on wifi, 10 mins on 3G, watch a couple of videos, read some emails and get a couple of texts.

I've never really got on with iTunes, just seems to bulky and cumbersome, even on my Core i7 rig.

Whaaat? Sorry, but that statement makes no sense to me at all. It works perfectly well on my six year old Powerbook, with nearly nine thousand tracks at 320Kb. iTunes is certainly no slower or 'unwieldy' than any other app on my Mac, so what are you doing wrong. I just don't understand the antipathy towards iTunes, it does the job it's supposed to do perfectly well, it allows me to rip music at a bitrate of my choosing, it gets track details and album art, (sometimes incorrectly, but that's down to Gracenote's database), and I can drag and drop tracks as I choose onto my chosen device or storage medium. My GF on the other hand uses WMP, and she has been having all kinds of issues with it, finding folders empty, tracks randomly placed in odd places, the list goes on. The only thing I would like the iPhone to do is full multitask, so I can listen to 6Music using iCarRadio while browsing on here or reading an ebook in Stanza. Perhaps the next gen phone with more RAM will have it, and being able to use a partition of it's main memory for general file storage via USB, wifi or BT would be handy, but it's not something I use on a day to day basis, or monthly for that matter, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Is the Hero battery life any better than the iPhones?

That's the only real bug bear I have with the iPhone.

On a good day with average use, I can get 24 hours. On a bad day it can be half that.

No-one seems to have found a fix for this in the UK. HTC won't admit it's a fault, blah blah.

Have kind of given up trying to work it out (you can manage/monitor apps/CPU usage/etc to see what's happening), because no obvious pattern has emerged.

At the end of the day it works, and as a piece of kit it's brilliant.

Just carry a charger or USB cable with you if you're out for most of the day.

it gets track details and album art, (sometimes incorrectly, but that's down to Gracenote's database)

Highly recommend getting hold of http://www.tuneupmedia.com/

It's an add-on for iTunes that does a really good job of identifying music and getting the right album and track data for it.

Whaaat? Sorry, but that statement makes no sense to me at all. It works perfectly well on my six year old Powerbook, with nearly nine thousand tracks at 320Kb. iTunes is certainly no slower or 'unwieldy' than any other app on my Mac, so what are you doing wrong.

iTunes doesn't work nearly as well on PCs ime – it was really buggy and slow on my old PC. Works nicely on my Macbook.

itunes works perfectly well on my XP driven PC. Certainly no worse than any other interface. Bit's of it are a tiny bit annoying, but that's true of any other system that's out there…

Wait til near the end of the year to get one, Tesco Mobile are going to start offering them soon and you can bet they'll be the cheapest option.

Wait til near the end of the year to get one, Tesco Mobile are going to start offering them soon and you can bet they'll be the cheapest option.

will that come in a blue/white color option?

itunes works perfectly well on my XP driven PC.

Same here. Worked fine on XP and is fine on Vista too.

My only (slightly geeky) issue with it, is that it installs a whole bunch of extra services, which I'd rather not have running all the time, wasting resources.

The UI is less than perfect in several areas (podcast management for instance) but it does the job.

HTC Hero user here, I think it's brilliant. It's not an iPhone, but it will do the same things and will do other things as well. The whole package is not as seamless as the iPhone but is totally customisable so you can have a phone that does exactly what you want it to rather than someone second guessing what you might want.

As far as battery life it seems pretty straightforwards; the more stuff you do, the quicker the battery will go down, and the trick I use is to set the phone up to do stuff when I want it to, so the GPS is off unless I want it on, the mobile internet is off unless I want it on, etc.

The most useful app is the taskiller or whichever variant you use; it shuts down all the programs you don't want to leave running, again part of the customisability of the Hero.

Better than an iPhone? No, honestly not, but it's not an iPhone, it's something different and well worth a look…

…and you can get aftermarket bigger/better/more long-lasting batteries too.