But I heard from some people I trust that they didn’t like theirs for various reasons, and I wanted seamless integration with my iTunes, and movie making stuff, so I got an iPhone4. So far I love it, but I can’t help wondering “what if?” (type of person I am [major buyers remorse]). If I could do it again now, I might get the Windows Phone, but I’m not sure.

Just my couple o’ pennies.

I’ve used the iPhone and Droid based extensively and currently use the Captivate on AT&T here is my take.

iPhone: it really does just work. It’s awesome if you couldn’t care less about playing around at a deep level like rooting, installing different ROMS and so on. If you just want to buy a phone and know that you can install apps, make calls and that an iPhone is an iPhone (as dumb as that sounds) then get it. Fun to play with without worrying about fucking something up.

Android: hit or miss. Some devices are great (HTC Droid, HTC Incredible, Nexus One/S) but others suck both in hardware specs and the version of Android. Unless you are willing to potentially brick your phone by hacking it you are stuck with whatever updates and version of Android your phone vendor gives you. The Samsung Galaxy S is what I currently use but it has faulty GPS and they still haven’t released 2.1. My only option is to buy another phone (not feasible) or install custom ROMs which I don’t want to do.

Win7: I’ve heard great things from a few people that jumped from the iPhone. Stupid fast OS and hardware, really cool features like Xbox Live and Exchange integration. To early to tell about some deeper issues though. Certainly worth a shot and it looks like Microsoft finally got the mobile space right.

As far as providers go it’s a mixed bag. I’ve had no problems with AT&T but some people punch themselves in the face when they talk about them. Verizon is awesome but really expensive. I have no recent experience with Sprint but their customer support was insanely bad 5 years ago and I left.

All 3 of the phones are so similar with regards to browsing the net, txting, Facebook and so on that you really can’t go wrong. People talk about the iPhone “experience” like its completely unique but at the end of the day you end up doing the same thing no matter what smartphone you have.

There is kind of a floor in that you can’t go wrong as far as platform. At least since you don’t seem to have specialized needs or uses, but just want to get a snazzy smartphone. As far as platform, whatever you choose, you’ll almost certainly be very happy with.

Brett’s got good summaries above.

What carrier you have makes a big difference in selection and quality. If you are also choosing carriers, that complicates a lot. To be brief, assuming you’re in Seattle or Portland, AT&T has actually been the fastest network for data transfer, especially upload. They’ve trounced the competition BUT they will be probably the last to upgrade to 4G.

4G is basically a marketing term now. None of the three current 4G implements available are actually 4G by spec. That’s not to say they aren’t improvements over their own 3G implementation; they are, but in some cases like T-Mobiles, the improvement is negligible.*

However, Verizon now has the iPad and will almost certainly have iPhone this spring. So consider that the expected massive migration away from AT&T could actually improve their performance even more in the coming 2 years before they roll out their LTE network.