First off, I want to say that I agree with you. I have an HTC Wizard (the T-Mobile MDA, which is the predecessor to the 8525). A couple of corrections to your list though...

The iPhone is actually ARM based and from what I understand has more than one ARM processor.

You can develop for Windows Mobile using a bunch of different tools. .NetCF is one, but there's also eVB and eVC which are free from Microsoft, as well as Platform Builder. eVC gives you direct access to the WiMo OS (.NetCF gives you access to the .Net framework, although you can get access to the underlying OS through P/Invoke in .Net).

You don't need to buy the Professional version of VS2005 - the Standard edition includes SmartDevice development support and is only $299 - and Microsoft tends to give away the Standard ed a lot.

There is a Flash Player for WM5, but it's only Flash 7 and it's a little wonky.

It should be noted that while the iPhone has an onscreen keyboard, the 8525 has a physical keyboard, an onscreen keyboard, Graffiti, Jot and handwriting recognition that works surprisingly well. You can also add third-party on screen keyboards and input modes.

The iPhone can view, but not edit, Word and Excel documents. WM5 can edit them as well - and can create new ones.

And I'm not sure the "Proprietary" in the email and media player rows for the iPhone are justified. WMP10 is no less proprietary as Quicktime is, and POP3/IMAP are public standards.

Other than that - it's good to read articles that cut through the hype and rhetoric surrounding the iPhone. I'm especially tired of hearing the 'it's only v1.0' argument. Yes, it is - but it has the entire freaking MacOS X operating system in there... and the stuff they missed isn't stuff no one else thought of - these are features every other phone has.

Missing something everyone else figured out isn't a v1.0 issue - it's an arrogance issue. They've been working on this phone for two years or more. Maybe they should have spend less time on coverflow and more time on the basics.