Apple has a de-facto monopoly. Competition is not gonna kill the iphone.

>Good to know.
>
>>But is it an iPhone killer, as some gadget bloggers have
>been
>>asking?
>
>>The Pre will be a hit, but the iPhone isn’t going away.
>First
>>of all, Apple’s lead of 20 million phones will only grow
>when
>>the new iPhone 3.0 software (and, presumably, a third iPhone
>>model) come out shortly.

And we're all looking forward to finding out whether Apple improves on the original yawn-worthy announcement of the 3.0 firmware.

>>Third, even the Pre has its annoyances. Opening certain
>>programs can be very slow — sometimes eight or nine seconds
>—

No other reviewers noted this, so I doubt it'll be any big deal.

>>and there’s no progress bar or hourglass to let you know
>that
>>it’s still working.
>
>>There’s no memory-card slot

Shame, but it isn't on the iphone either.

>>to expand the eight gigabytes of
>>storage, and no Visual Voicemail

Mneh. Might be nice, but either that restriction comes in on Sprint's end, or presumably they'll add it in a firmware update.

>>(where messages are listed
>>like e-mail). The ingenious universal search function
>>(searches your programs, address book and the Web
>>simultaneously) won’t look through your e-mail or calendars.

And that will almost certainly be added, at least as an option.

>>Finally, the Pre is not quite as simple as the iPhone. All
>>those extra features, by definition, mean that there’s more
>to
>>learn.

I'm an adult. Features > simplicity. Especially when simplicity is defined by the opinion of Steve Jobs.

>>So do the Pre’s perks (beautiful hardware and software,
>>compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash,
>>multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh its weak
>spots
>>(battery life, occasional sluggishness, ringer volume)?

You left out the "yes indeedy."