I'm not sure whether or not I like the comparison between game machines and smartphones. Certainly, that comparison works great when talking about game machines and old-school phones. When the only thing in your phone that you can really customize is your contact list, the friction to changing phones is very low. On the other hand, when you've had an iPhone for a while, you've built your life around it. Changing to a different phone is non-trivial. How will you sync? What about the apps that you've bought? There's clearly more friction holding you in place, and that translates to a first-mover advantage for Apple. Still, if I ask myself how I actually use my iPhone, I mostly just make phone calls, read email, and surf the net. I occasionally use the calculator. I sometimes use the mapping app. I rarely run the 3rd party apps I've installed.

Of course, I've got a Mac, and an iPhone was the obvious choice since it syncs painlessly. Still, I'm migrating more and more of my life into Google. The Android phone is all about Google integration, and it looks like the Palm Pre is similarly aimed at supporting that, as well as more traditional Microsoft Exchange integration.

Meanwhile, I'll hand it to the Palm Pre for having serious eye candy to rival the iPhone. None of the other smartphone vendors have eye candy as good. An interesting question is whether Apple's going to flex its patent muscles and go after Palm. A patent lawsuit like that, with countersuits and everything else, would be a battle to behold.