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Here's a nice comparison of the two cool new PDA phones coming soon.
The HTC Kaiser (on the left) and the Glowfish X800.
Main differences re the Kaizer sports a qwerty keyboard, but the X800 has a much higher res screen (nice for browsing) and a better GPS chip set.
The lack of a keyboard is a killer for me personally though. Can't live without it now I think.
Still think this is one of the more remarkable new gadgets to appear in recent months. Within a week of use the predictive QWERTY combo rocks. Mine has changed my life and would have continued to do so if the screen had not died on me. 
Died a funny death too
It's gonna fail. iPhone has already got too much hype for these to become a huge success.
iPhone hits one price/function point but it's a huge market; there will be different tradeoffs for different segments. the question is: will it become the new dominant design for smartphones?
I've been particularly struck by Helio's Ocean:
What's interesting about all the phones we have listed here is that their primary innovations are in industrial design reather than software interface.
All good stuff, but for me that's why the iPhone was so drool worthy. It's not the be all and end all mind you. But it does get others to start pushing beyond the static phone "desktop" we've been trapped in for a few years now.
I think basic mobile phone design converged a while back, but smartphone design is still a little fluid. The slide up keyboard like the Helios and iMate seems to be the current fave, but full touchscreens give you a lot more flexibility in input modes at the expense of tactile feedback from mechanical buttons. Having been a Palm user for years, I'm ok with that tradeoff, but let's ditch the stylus for good.
seems like a major innovation will be the mainstreaming of the hacks available and being used to reconfigure the phone application interactions and user environment. A modular phone 'desktop' will be pretty useful.
