Wow, some overly harsh criticism. Why do we judge Apple on every dream world gadget wishlist and not others? All companies' device updates are incremental since they have to balance the latest innovation vs. profitability. This is equivalent to whining that all apps should be free or $1.99 even if thousands of hours of labor went into making something.
I think faster data access, faster processor, voice control, video recording, improved autofocus camera, compass, fingerprint resistant casing, improved battery, double the memory, and Nike+ are a very significant upgrade. The inline remote control support will be awesome with the voice control as well. It would be even better if voice control integrates with bluetooth car kits. If spotlight (which already outperforms the universal search on the Pre) also integrates with voice control, this will be amazing.
I have not moved away from my 3 year old Treo, but I've been closely watching the smartphones evolve. I've been on the fence of Pre or iPhone and this announcement may have put me over the fence toward the iPhone GS. In an ideal world I'd like a few more things such as front facing camera with video chat, a 5MP camera w/flash, higher res OLED display, and 3rd party background apps (Slacker/Pandora/Simplify/Wunderradio would be sufficient). However, what we got was better than I expected and who has all of these features anyway. What's the standard here (besides an excuse to troll)? If you selectively compare the best features of every other phone out there to the iPhone, Apple will always come up short. There is no single phone that tops every other phone on features and there may never be.
The Pre has plenty of failings and in my opinion the Pre only best the iPhone with 3rd party background apps, consolidated notifications and cloud integration. Personally, I've not been impressed by what I've seen over the weekend of reports on the performance of the cloud integration because most of the cloud sites are flaky on contact management (hello google). Sure this will improve in time. As for the notifications, luckily I'm not a big on IM, text message, etc. If you get hundreds a day, this is a much bigger advantage. The lack of 3rd party background apps does suck, but that's my only remaining reservation.
The dream feature I still want from the iPhone or any other smartphone is a world class audio processor chip, so I can get better utility from higher end headphones and lossless audio files. Then I'll no longer need a separate media player. We don't know yet what chips have changed with the 3GS, but I doubt the audio processor is one of them. That said, no other smartphone has better audio processing than the iPhone.
The list of features that the iPhone bests others (including the Pre) on is enormous. Sure AT&T still sucks. With the 3GS improvements, OS 3.0, Tom Tom app and real document editing coming, I think my Treo 700p is finally being retired for an iPhone 3GS. The 3G was not enough to get me to pull the trigger, but the 3GS is.
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