The blackberry bold is coming out soon, maybe you should hold off until then.

Symbian is being open-sourced, and Nokia is known for being developer friendly as far as I know.

iPhones are cool, but don't seem to be particularly developer friendly. Also, FYI, I think you need a mac to develop for them.

Yes you do need a mac. The only mac in my room out of the many, many computers I own is a PowerMac G4 I got with 768mb of ram (500 mhz proccy! :( ) for $30 a month or so ago.

Got a fresh install of Tiger on it, then stopped using it. I like OS X, but the lag kills me compared to my primary server/desktop machine with quad xeons and 4 gb of ram :\

Sigh. I'm not paying what apple or second-hand sellers want for a mac. Period. Unless I get a steal or Apple invents the second-coming of performance.

I run Tiger inside VMWare on my Dell.

I second waiting for the bold. It's quite capable, and has a screen with double the pixel density (screen has the same resolution, but is smaller to make room for the keyboard) of the IPhone. It's beautifully sharp, and I'd have to say that the tactile keyboard leaves any touchscreen in the dust when it comes to actually doing input to the device.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-op student at RIM for the summer. This means that I've gotten to play with the Bold, but it also means I'm a bit biased =P

I looked at the bold, and as long as I can subvert the tethering fees that T-Mobile has, I'll be okay. It seems to have all the features I want, and the processor looks beastly. This is important (TM) to me, because laggy interfaces make me want to fling devices across rooms. namely, my room.

What was your experience, in detail, you'd say, with the bold?

I'm not actually using the Bold (I'm beta-testing a different device as my personal device) but I've played with it, and I'd say that it's a major improvement over the curve.

It's much faster, the screen is beautifully sharp. It's browser isn't great -- especially when compared to WebKit -- but it works decently well.

Really though, I think the best option is to find one and play with it when it comes out. Try everything you can out yourself. Still, if you were considering getting the Curve before, I strongly suggest waiting for the Bold.