Yes, I stood in line. My old phone was crunched - not dead, but it would have cost more to buy a replacement screen than to simply upgrade/replace it.

Bugs/issues

• Battery life is definitely much worse. Received wisdom is that this is due to the 3G radio… Turning off 3G to save battery life really isn’t practical without something like a single button toggle app — any takers?
• The new device won’t take a charge from the little Belkin Griffin adapter that I have in the car. Apparently this is a known issue. Luckily, this adapter is in two parts, the plug that goes into the 12V “lighter” socket, and a USB-iPhone cable that plugs into that.  It turns out that while the Griffin “USB” cable doesn’t work with the new phone, if I replace that cable with the USB cable from the iPhone power adapter, it works fine.
• Apps take a long time to load in general. A friend of mine who works for Apple says that the SMS and Contacts apps in particular can slow down when you have a lot of SMS messages (or Contacts). If you have a Mac, you can backup and clean out old SMS threads with SyPhone, but I’m not aware of an equivalent for Windows.
• Contact list right-hand alphabet index scrollbar takes 5-10 seconds to start responding after contact app is loaded. I can understand that it takes a while to pull 1000-2000 contacts into memory, but still, ugh! Apple can do better.
• Contact search input field should float as you scroll so it’s always visible.
• There should be a preference to always allow Camera and Maps to use GPS location services, instead of prompting me all the time.

Good stuff

• Appigo’s Todo app with built-in support for over-the-air sync with RTM. It’s not “push”/real-time sync, but the app is very well done, and the sync works well.
• Pandora - free! rocking!
• Tuner - streaming internet radio stations! Check out WSUM, WFMU, KALX, Little Radio…
• Pandora & Tuner streaming over 3G, jacked into the car stereo!
• Movies.app
• Remote

Missing stuff

• KeePass/KeePassX password manager. I switched from SplashID to KeePass a while back because KeePass has a much better UI, and also because SplashID has Windows & Linux versions that use the same database… I don’t really need the Linux feature, so I could switch back to SplashID, which does have an iPhone version ($9.99 in the App Store). I took another quick look at SplashID though, and the UI kindof bites, and I bet KeePass will come out on the iPhone before too long.
• Notepad sync - so lame that this still doesn’t exist
• Google Calendar sync. I was using NemusSync on my 2G phone, but an equivalent doesn’t yet exist for the 3G. A native Google sync app would be better.
• Google Contacts sync. Something like Funambol might eventually work, but a native Google sync app would be better.
• 1Shoot - best little one-function app ever!
• uPoze - automatic Flickr uploading - I want this back!
• jailbreak, of course - not quite out yet, but almost…

I’ll update this post as I learn more

I bashed up my old phone down in Baja, and so I had to replace it with something new. My friend Des showed me his BlackJack and said it was the best phone he’d ever had, so I got one once I got back up here to SF. After using the BJ for a week or two, I took it back and swapped for a Blackberry Pearl. Why? The BlackJack is impressive, it’s thin, light, does a lot, and the Windows Smartphone OS works fairly well… …but, there was no pleasure in using it, and, well, I also had one other major gripe - see below:

• The menus and dialogs are very inconsistent - sometimes you need to use “More”, sometimes “Menu”, sometimes something like “Applications”, and then “File Manager” or whatever. Typical Windows bullshit, really. Poor UI design overall.
• Impossible to set different ringtones per profile
• Cannot filter the task list to exclude already completed tasks, without a third-party app. Why would I want to see tasks I’ve already completed??!? Idiots.
• Very slow to load some applications, even ones that are built-in. The Picsel Viewer used to view, ahem, photos from the camera phone is especially disappointing. Weak!
• Sending an SMS takes 7-9 steps. Feh.
• No built-in way to copy & paste text. Jeez, guys.
• Proprietary connector: sucks. Just use mini-USB.
• The controls are only just fair. The scroll wheel is a nice idea (and I can see where they got it from) and sometimes useful, but would need to be better integrated into the OS to be really helpful. The trackpad is tiny and too close to the other buttons on the face of the device.
• And, worst of all — the RF performance SUCKS. I can roughly 50% of my calls dropped - 50%!!! Also had no reception over New Years in a location where two other friends on Cingular (two different devices) both had coverage. The Cingular store swapped out the SIM card (it was already a new one), and that seemed to improve the RF, but it still wasn’t up to snuff.

So, the BlackJack went back, for a Pearl:

I’ve never had a BlackBerry device before, and I have to say, well done!

• Great, consistent, intuitive UI. Most of the time, the options are what I expect them to be, and the one I want is pre-selected.
• Great RF.
• Good built-in PIM applications.
• Keyboard shortcuts!!! wow. love it.
• Tiny (quite a bit smaller and lighter than the BlackJack).
• Mini-USB!! I can use the same cable to connect the Pearl to my PC that I use for my Canon digicam. Amazing!!
• I can’t really find anything wrong with it - the screen could be brighter and more colorful, but, well, I’ll wait for the iPhone for that.

Sayonara, “SmartPhone”!

PS - did I mention that Cingular gave me a $150 *refund* when I swapped for the Pearl? A final bonus is that the battery life seems excellent.