The good: The Apple iPhone has a stunning display, a sleek design, and an innovative multitouch user interface. Its Safari browser makes for a superb Web surfing experience, and it offers easy-to-use apps. As an iPod, it shines. The bad: The Apple iPhone has variable call quality and lacks some basic features found in many cell phones, including stereo Bluetooth support and 3G compatibility. Integrated memory is stingy for an iPod, and you have to sync the iPhone to manage music content.

Sure, the iPhone and all those whiz-bang Nokia crowd-pleasers have users in their thrall, but that doesn't mean you should feel bad with the something else you've got. While searching for cool software for a Palm Treo 650, I discovered a productivity oldie that has yet to crumble into the dust of antiquity.

I put out a similar question earlier this week regarding the iPhone to a One More Thing panel of Apple users, but I've decided to broaden the scope. I'm trying to get a sense of how many people own a smartphone, or are in the market for one, and the kinds of things they want to see in an advanced phone. This is not going to be conducted in the most scientifically accurate fashion, but what the hell, let's take your pulse.

BlackBerry owners may be feeling like they have nothing to brag about now that the iPhone has added connectivity to Exchange e-mail systems--the BlackBerry's bread-and-butter feature.

I remember a time when making ringtones used to be a very cumbersome experience. My technique of choice was to use the open-sourced Audacity then do various conversions in iTunes or Quicktime Pro by tweaking some of the advanced settings. However, the Web has spawned newer, less tedious methods. On of them, Audiko, is a particularly well-done effort, letting you grab audio tracks from your hard drive or the Web and customize them for use on your mobile phone.

MxTube is a fantastic new native application for jailbroken iPhones. If you're one of the lucky few with a jailbroken handset and the installer app, you'll find MxTube in the recent packages section as of last night. The app is fairly similar to the iPhone's native YouTube video viewer with the added benefit of being able to download entire clips and save them to your phone's memory for offline viewing.

This week I perused the demo version of an upcoming product that promises to unlock the secrets of the iPhone by telling you about all sorts of secret tips and tricks. It's About Time to learn iPhone, as the product is called, is offered by a small Silicon Valley company that exhibited at last month's Macworld. I met Saied Ghaffari while I was there and he told me about an online demo, which I only now got around to trying (the GSMA World Congress got in the way).

Pedestrians repeatedly thumbing their cell phones could be playing the latest mobile game, but it's just as likely they're microblogging addicts updating their Twitter accounts. Twitter's short-form service makes it ideal for two-sentence contributions from mobile phones, IM services, browsers, and desktop apps. Here are a few ultraconvenient third-party Twitter-updating apps.

Twenty four hours after Apple revealed its procedure for getting third-party applications on the iPhone, developers have a few questions about the software development kit, but seem mostly satisfied. In the immediate aftermath of Thursday's presentation at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., reaction was almost universally positive to Apple's SDK plans. Some developers had feared worse outcomes, such as having to submit their source code to Apple, and seemed willing to let Apple take a piece of their revenue and be the exclusive distributor for iPhone applications in exchange for getting a crack at the technology.

After months of strict control, Apple welcomed software developers to build applications for the iPhone and also challenged BlackBerry for the hearts of corporate America. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled enterprise-friendly features and a roadmap for third-party developers to create applications for Apple's iPhone. Apple has licensed the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol, which will make it much easier to do push e-mail and contacts with Exchange servers. Until now, iPhone users who wanted to get e-mail on their iPhones had to jump through a series of technical hoops. And as a result, a lot of business users, who would have otherwise bought the iPhone right away, have stood on the sidelines with their BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile phones drooling at the iPhone.