The iPhone 3G is a fantastic mobile phone (perhaps the best I have ever used), and it is spectacular at a couple of traditional PDA applications (Contacts, Safari, Email), but it’s Calendar is not quite as good as the old Palm Calendar yet (though it comes very, very close), and as for Notes – well, that is the main reason I continue to carry my Tungsten C. The iPhone 3G simply sucks as a notepad. No cut and paste feature, no global search feature, and though typing on the touch screen is acceptable for a quick text message or short note, it is painfully frustrating for any serious note taking. The iPhone really should simply allow Bluetooth keyboards to connect to it; they could even start with Apple’s own Bluetooth keyboards for Macs and expand to 3rd party ones later… sigh.

So – as all portable devices have a limited life span due to wear and tear and natural use, I am very interested in what Palm is doing next and hope that Nova is good enough, though I am not holding my breath.

I also hope Apple, or a 3rd party, develops a secure method for cutting and pasting from one application to another on the iPhone, and that global search for text strings gets deployed soon.

As a phone the iPhone is simply awesome. Best sound quality of any mobile phone I have ever used.

As a camera, the iPhone is surprisingly good as a cheap point and shoot with tiny lens (it certainly will not replace a real camera, but it’s decent in a pinch).

As an MP3 player it lacks sufficient storage to do more than my routine podcasts and some music.

As a PDA or ultra-portable computer is where the iPhone has been shockingly lacking.

• Calendar/Datebook: the iPhone comes with excellent Calendar/Datebook/iCal software that syncs with either MobileMe or iCal on your Mac (which can in turn be synced with Google Calendars).
• AddressBook/Contacts: the iPhone comes with excellent Contacts that can be synced with AddressBook on your Mac or MobileMe.
• Notes: here, the iPhone falls down; big time… first of all, out of the box the notes do not sync with the computer desktop (ouch). That was a show-stopper for me. Second, the absence of cut&paste buffer is very limiting. I am very happy to say that finally, through the use of ECamm’s PhoneView software, it looks like Notes can be synced with computer just fine (though rebooting the phone to sync is annoying). I am reviewing the demo, if it stands up – this solves the notes problem for me.
• Reading documents, grabbed websites, books: looks like the iPhone has this stuff a plenty.