An interesting phone is about to be released in the US, the Palm Pre. You might have heard of it. If not, check out this in-depth review with a good video. Many other reviews are out there, basically saying that it’s very good, it’s like an iPhone but different, and it has a few issues that will hopefully be ironed out by v2.0.
I see the lack of SDK as a huge problem. Developers screamed at Apple for the SDK, and when it arrived, it ushered in a new world of mobile applications, changing (in a real way) what I could do while away from my main Mac. The Pre doesn’t have that yet, and they won’t get professional-level games with the web-based systems in place right now.
Another huge stumbling block is that the Pre is, so far, CDMA-based. The US still uses CDMA but the rest of the world has moved on (like the metric system and A4 paper). So, no Pre for the larger world for the moment.
On the plus side, it’s great that Apple actually has some competition — albeit from a product made by many ex-Apple employees. The iPhone is still a great phone and I’d recommend one to almost everyone. I’m still kind of excited that I managed to make a talking-book version of my kids book for the iPhone — I just need to figure out what to do with it.