I paid the $529. I bought it almost immediately after it was announced and got free overnight shipping (not sure if it was suppose to be like that or if it was a glitch I took advantage of before it was fixed).
I bought the dock for $45 and paid $5 for ground shipping but still got it the next day. Will also be buying the car charger/dock whenever the damn thing comes out!
I was going to sell my G1 to help justify costs, but I ended up just giving it to my brother. I already had a 60$ a month plan, and so over the long run, it was cheaper for me to buy the phone outright and stay on my $60 plan rather than buy it subsidized and be locked in to a plan that was $20 more for 2 years!
I've never owned an iPhone, but I had an iPod Touch (still have technically). My PERSONAL opinion is that Android is far superior. It may be a bit less "smooth", but I attribute a lot of that to the extra things it does, like multitasking, that Apple precludes from their devices. The best part of this phone though is that the build quality is amazing, and the phone has that sleek sexy feel, but the quality and composition of materials used means I don't have to put it in some bulky ugly case to keep it from getting scratched up. I really like the teflon coating, and I think it feels good in your hands and still looks nice from afar. Every Apple product I've ever owned, while looking sexy out of the box, either ended up looking like crap from all the scratches it would accumulate (because of that super high glossy plastic), or I'd have to put it in some rubber or plastic case that would defeat the purpose of the sleek form factor. This phone is truly the device I've been waiting for. I thought it was going to be the Blackberry Storm, but I ended up not liking the form factor at all. This device gives me a beautiful phone, with great specs (especially the 1 GHz processor!) AND it just happens to run what I believe to be the best phone OS on the market. I really couldn't ask for much more.
