I have been using an iPhone in India for almost a year now. I bought it when I was in U.S(1.1.1). Since then I have cracked and jailbroken the iPhone myself.
Recently I upgraded to 2.1 and loaded a whole lot of cool apps from the app store. I love my iPhone and I feel no other phone can come even close to the iPhone in terms of looks/features anything.
I have used smart phones before and thus my opinion is not one-sided.
The most unique and important thing about the iPhone is the hype it created from the moment it came into the market. Since then hundreds and thousands of folks have been trying stuff out on the iPhone. There is an entire dev team which develops jailbreaks, cracks and other teams which make cool apps for the iPhone. Do you have this for any other phone. Do you hear Nokia offering free software upgrades/new features/bug fixes to its phones? NO. Instead what Nokia does is release a new model and sell the new model.
And believe me this is going to continue. Apple has launched 2.0 series and gave away the 2.0 firmware free to 1.x users. Similarly it will launch 3.0, 4.0 and so on. All of them with newer features which along with the genius-es who build the apps in app-store will make iPhone one of the most happening devices of the century. It will change the way we Indians are used to thinking about phones(Always asking for the same set of features - MMS etc.)
Consider this. Its not really a phone. Its a computer with a 633 MHz processor (highest speed of any phone in the world today) and has OSX as the operating system. The same OS which runs Mac Books. You can load any app onto this which you can load onto a Mac. There are some short comings interms of basic features in the iPhone, but you have all the apps that more than make up for it. Video Recording, Copy Paste, SMS Forwarding, Contacts Forwarding, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger you name it and I have the app for it on my iPhone and much more and I am loving it.
Coming to some of the other fun apps. Seen the new ad of Amir Khan about karaoke phones? Big deal! I have that app(called TuneWiki) for free which does that and better. There is an app called midomi, to which you sing a song, in whichver "besura" voice that you can, it will identify the song. Ever been in a situation when an awesome song is playing on the radio but you just can’t remember the name? Well, Midomi can do that. How about a nfs like racing game on the iPhone? Impossible!? No way! Check out GTSWR. It offers nfs like graphics and the most fun part is you hold the iPhone as the steering, no need of using any arrow keys for steering. It uses the accelorometer to sense the tilt of the iPhone and steers accordingly.
From games to utility apps. How about a googe desktop like app for your phone, it will search from one text input field everything from pictures, sms, call records, mail, songs, applications and launch them with one touch(QuickGold - available from Cydia). How about if you could read news, check your emails, calendar alerts and sms messages(both preview as well as details of everything) from the lock screen without having to go into each app to do it? How about scrolling through your favorite contacts by picture(like cover flow in iTunes) and then tapping your contact to call - all from the lock screen - slide to unlock? Check out Intelliscreen and be amazed. Video recording, checkout Cycordia, the quality of the video is much better than the pictures taken from iPhone camera. How about controlling the mouse of your personal laptop with you phone, or better, take a remote desktop from your phone to your laptop/desktop? RDP and TouchpadPro can do all that. Similar apps for voice recording, sms forwarding(we tools), copy paste(copier-cin) and tons of other. You can’t possibly finish browsing all the apps from cydia and appstore and installer in one day.
I have heard a lot about why bluetooth file transfer is not present. Let me tell you that it is intentional. Apple did not want to risk virus attacks on its firmware through bluetooth. Although you cannot use bluetooth file transfer, you can sync bluetooth headsets which for me suffices well enough.
As for not being able to save files from Safari, again, its kind of intentional to prevent virus attacks. but you can download images and save them on to your camera roll. Just press and hold the picture to bring up a menu(works in 2.1 firmware only).
Overall I feel its a revolutionary phone and it will keep evolving as the number of users wo are enthusiastic about it will never die down. I am one of them and preparing to write my own apps and who knows, maybe sell them one day?