I keep hemming and hawing on whether I'm really the kind of person to buy an iPhone. With an 8GB capacity, it doesn't replace my 80GB iPod's key feature of holding my entire music collection. With an iPod form factor, an iPhone won't fit in my pocket. Those points and more mean I'd have a drastically different relationship with an iPhone than the devices it'd mostly be replacing, and that makes me question whether I'm even a smart phone kind of person, regardless of how nifty this one might be.

But nothing makes me want an iPhone more than my LG VX6100. This isn't a "boy most phones suck so a nice phone can convert anyone no matter what the cost" kind of thing, because I mostly like the LG VX6100's execution of the phone's basic features. If it weren't for the buttons on the sides, it'd be the perfect phone:

• With the phone closed, holding one button down turns on the camera and starts snapping pictures and filling up memory. Several times a day I hear a "ka-chick!" fake camera noise from my pocket, meaning it's time to take the phone out, cancel camera mode, and delete more black squares—three keypresses and a 5 second delay for each picture of the inside of my pocket.
• Another button, when held, toggles manner mode, which vibrates the phone and disables the ringer, causing me to miss calls.
• Another toggles "driving mode," a mostly great feature that I don't use because I don't own a car, which leaves the phone in speech recognition + speakerphone mode which I don't notice until everyone on the bus hears the first few seconds of my next phone call.

Otherwise the phone meets my needs very well. Heck, I'd downgrade to Verizon's cheapest Samsung except I depend on the secondary display for the clock and the caller ID. It seems silly that these frustrations would kick me over into the $600-for-a-smart-phone market, but at least $200 of that is from hating my current phone, and the rest is just for a nicer iPod.