That's a no brainer, but tethering is not available on the iPhone for whatever reason (who knows who's really at fault for that). So unless your carrier's TOS doesn't mind you tethering your phone with the wrong plan (basically with a phone-only data plan, and they will care if they find out), your point is moot.

Also, "UI be damned"? I've used many smartphones before and the iPhone has the only mobile browser worth using right now. The UI matters a lot.

If you can tether your phone then the browser on the device can be of much lower quality before you care.

Any time I'm somewhere for more than 5 minutes (coffee shop, train, meeting ) I tether my Eee 901 to my phone (a 6120c, which comes with 3gb of data for ~$20/mo). That gets me a _good_ keyboard, a large screen, and full blown Firefox + addons. Way, way more usable than an iPhone and cheaper over it's lifetime.

Because of that I only use the browser on the device for flash movies, real player streaming radio (from the BBC), and mobile-friendly data like movie listings or rss news. Two of those the iPhone can't even do, and the other one it offers no real advantage for.

Indeed. But I do a lot of those on my phone anyway. Lot simpler than pulling out the laptop, and I like browsing on my phone more than I do on my laptop (egads).

Windows Mobile phones can tunnel socket connections over ssh natively?

No. As i added to my comment: It has general connection sharing. No tunneling needed.