My phone can do all you said and more. I can put however big of a memory card I can get (8GB, 16GB, 32GB in the future, etc), I get full GPS and navigation, I can install Google Maps Mobile, I have Office Mobile. I can play Windows Media/divx/etc, probably real media if I installed a player (but why bother, RM sucks), etc.

They are hardly unique features in the smartphone world. The only "smart" phone that probably can't do some of that is the iPhone (can't edit office docs).

Let's not forget that having an iPhone forces you into an expensive as hell AT&T plan. I have no major issues with my Windows Mobile phone, and I pay $30/month+tax for my plan, including unlimited texting/data/etc.

Windows Mobile phones are fairly open, you can pretty much do whatever you want without paying and being censored by Apple, and without hacking the phone as well.

Relevantly to Cody though, and besides any other consideration, I think the iPhone is GSM only, that being the predominant international standard. His carrier is CDMA only.

iPhone is GSM, so you don't have many choices in the USA anyway, so you'd still be stuck with AT&T most likely. So if you're going to pay their rip off prices, you might as well get the contract/subsidized phone cost from them.

One day the phone companies here said "Ok, forget CDMA and all the other standards, everyone will use GSM". And in 8 months, every company switched. They even sent GSM phones to those in CDMA networks that could not or would not want to buy the GSM phone themselves. Why can't USA do something similar? Wouldn't it be better if you had a single network?

Of course, GSM is pretty unstable (limited nodes, which lowers signal strength and sometimes even leave you without it), but looks like it is the standard to use.

Interesting. The article says the Apple Stores sells them unlocked and without contract, though. If you buy from an AT&T store they asks you to be an existing client only.

It is a lot more open than the iPhone just because of that. Anyway, the reason for having to install a hacked SPL/whatever isn't WinMo's fault, it has to do with the bootloader written by the manufacturer, because they lock it down to only load signed ROMs. As far as GCC, I dunno if there is a version that can target WM or not, so I won't argue that point. And if you get a phone with a locked down default config, it is almost definitely the carrier's fault. MS doesn't do any of the locking down, whereas Apple does.

As far as ROMs, ppcgeeks has FTP space hosting roms for most people. MS doesn't bother them too much, in fact, I only recall MS taking action once in recent time the whole time I've followed the WM scene (~2-3 years). They sent a cease and desist to remove one specific rom that was using a kernel from a beta version of WM 6.5 that was covered by NDA. The cease and desist specifically mentioned that only that rom and ones based on the same base were to be removed, all the roms using publicly released code were not bothered. And I doubt it is Microsoft not knowing about it, because said C&D letters were received within a couple of days of the ROM being posted, so it seems like they screen for such issues pretty frequently.

You mention them going after people when WinMo 6 got leaked. Well of course, because it was leaked. It seems to me that publicly released stuff is fair play, but anything leaked is a big no no.

It seems pretty obvious, at least to me, that Windows Mobile seems pretty open. Granted you don't get all the source code or anything crazy like you do with Android, but you can do mostly whatever you want.

Technically they are switching to LTE, which iirc is a combination of CDMA and GSM, taking the best parts of each, but it is more GSM than it is CDMA. And also, iirc most places will either use LTE or Mobile WiMax. Mobile WiMax will reach the market first in a large way, but I think many carriers are still betting on LTE even if they will be a couple years late.