Hi:

Nice to hear someone else has similar feelings toward the recent Apple advertisements, and attitude. Although the commercials may not say the iPhone is the first phone to allow internet etc, it is certainly implied. I have been on the net with Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices for 6 years now, starting with a Visor Prism and Intel 802.11 Springboard module. Also used the Phone Module for the Visor. The iPhone, and iPod Touch are certainly not the first devices with these capabilities, and I too am getting annoyed with the arrogant Apple commercials. Similar to you, I own several Macs, too many iPods to admit to, several Newtons, and the Apple TV.

I have used Opera Mini 4 on a HP 210 (WM6), a Dell x51v (WM5), a Sprint PPC-6700 smartphone (WM5), and a Toshiba e830 (WM2003SE). On all four devices, Opera Mini has done an excellent job displaying full internet pages, and has been exceptionally stable. I prefer Opera Mini 4 to Safari on the iPod touch. Safari sometimes has a problem with older, single column webpages unless the webpage developer has added a Viewport metatag. In order to view some older webpages at a comfortable reading level with Safari, you have to zoom to a level which requires horizontal scrolling to read each line which gets old after about 2 lines. Unfortunately, Safari does not wordwrap again when you use the pinch zoom which is sometimes required because the double tap zoom does not enlarge the text on some single column pages to a comfortable reading level. With Opera Mini, there is a setting for mobile view which results in old single column webpages word wrapping correctly, and allows you to read them at a comfortable text size without the dreaded horizontal scrolling. With Opera Mini 4, you can display just about any full internet page, and still display the old webpages correctly.

Apple's Safari may get all the hype, and press, but for me, Opera Mini gives the better internet experience for both the full, and mobile internets.

[Edited at March 08, 2008 01:54:01 AM.]

[Edited at March 08, 2008 01:57:39 AM.]

My phone for about the last 16 months has been a Sprint PPC-6700 with WM5. The 6700 has a nice slide out physical QWERTY keyboard which works fine with my big fingers. I do not like virtual keyboards for anything over a sentence or two. I have tried full screen keyboards on VGA WM devices, and the hyped virtual keyboard on the iPod touch. I am just not a virtual keyboard person.

I have seen posts about alleged unstable 6700's. My 6700 is very stable, rarely needs a reset, and I love the plethora of 3rd party apps available for WM. I regularly use HanDBase database, CedeFTP, H-Bomb HTML editor, Slingbox Mobile, Opera-Mini 4 with IBM's JVM, most Resco apps, IM Plus (supports most IM clients), Vectorsoft Draw, PrintPocket CE (print wirelessly to network printers), and stream video from NAS drives using CorePlayer which supports most codecs. Based on extensive use of Opera-Mini 4, and mobile Safari (iPod touch), Opera-Mini does as good a job as mobile Safari on the full internet, and a better job with some single column pages that require horizontal scrolling for every line with mobile Safari. Oh, and it is pretty nice phone as well, with excellent EvDO coverage in Boston and suburbs. I have been able to purchase some extra batteries on eBay (original OEM batteries) for about $6.00 a piece.

I intend to keep the 6700 at least until the 2 year contract is over. At that time, I will check out the crop of new phones available then, and probably purchase another WM smartphone with at least 3G, - 3.5, or 4 would be better. I use the phone more for data than voice, so a WM device with multitasking, and the plethora of 3rd party apps is the ideal choice for my needs.

[Edited at March 12, 2008 00:49:26 AM.]