At 25 Nov 2007 17:09:20 -0600 Oxford wrote:

mobile

Um, no. Visual Voicemail is available on any cellphone with an e-mail
client (preferably "push" e-mail) and a audio player. Blackberries,
Symbian and WinMo phones not only have the capability, but actually had
it pre-iPhone. I came late to the party, only getting it in April, TWO
MONTHS prior to the iPhone launch.
To understand this, you need to look at the mechanism behind what VV
really is "under the hood."  VV on the iPhone is essentially a "secret"
AT&T-supplied push-e-mail account hidden behind the VV interface.  You
miss a call, and AT&T pushes an e-mail to your iPhone containg an audio
file of the VM that shows up in your "voicemail" menu instead of your e-
mail.  You click on it and it plays back the audio.  Clever, and a
"revolutionary feature" if you pay no attention to the man, and his push
e-mail account, behind the curtain...

I used Callwave.com's VV for
about eight months- I set my phone to forward all calls I don't answer
(the standard GSM conditional "forward when unavailable" function) to my
Callwave-provided VM box number.  Callwave sends an e-mail to my push e-
mail account with the subject "Callwave: Oxford (612) 555-1212 left a 28
second message."  (Name ID is provided by Callwave, if available).  I
open the e-mail, click the 28k attachment and hear your message to me.
 Just like with iPhone, I can choose what message to hear when, without
calling in to retrieve messages.  Missed calls are reported
as "Callwave: Oxford (612) xxx-xxxx -- Missed call" which is handy if
I've left a service area or gone out of range, since cellphones don't
know who called when they were offline.  When I come back ino a service
area after being out, any the missed calls/voicemails come flooding into
my push inbox.

To differentiate themselves from iPhone's VV, Callwave has recently
implemented an (admittedly goofy) speech-to-text transcriber function
they call "VGist" to give you the "gist" of the message without
having to playback the audio.   So in the body of the message I might
theoretically see: "I've just landed.  I'm waiting by baggage carosel
nine. Bye!" (Unfortunately, unless the caller has the slow monotone
diction of a TV newscaster, I'll probably ACTUALLY see "I've jumped
lantern.  I'm waiting.  Buy baggy carrots; sell nine.  Buy!")

explain

GPS navigation, (neither internally or via an external BT GPS), OTA sync,
saving e-mail attachments as files, edit word processor or spreadsheet
files, VoIP (other than cheesy cellular-reliant callback services
available on any dumb-phone,) NNTP... Those are just the missing
features that ruled out the iPhone for my personal needs- I suspect
others have different lists.

Again, nice phone for what it does, and an excellent phone for a small
subset of features, but certainly not the most featured or most capable
phone on the market, as you seem intent on telling everyone.