I currently have the HTC Touch Cruise. Although the touch features are cool, it's not as sophisticated as the iPhone's UI. Consequently it makes the lack of a hardware QWERTY and/or keypad much more pronounced.
If I were to go back to a Windows Mobile Pro device it would probably be one with a HW QWERTY like the HTC Touch Pro or the Sony Xperia X1. The added touch enhancements of the Touch Pro and the X1 would be welcome over the increasingly outdated "vanilla" 6.1 interface.
If I were to go to the WinMo Standard OS it would likely be the S740 or a Pantech Duo. A QWERTY keyboard would be a must for a Windows Mobile Standard due to the lack of a touchscreen.
I'm also looking forward to the HTC Dream, which will likely be the first Google Android based phone in the market.
As for S60 devices, the N96 looks pretty good. They are supposedly coming out with a NAM 3G version. The S60 Touch interface that Nokia is developing seems promising too, but I need to play with it for a while to see just how well it pans out.
Although there is still no NAM 3G version of the N82 and to my frustration there may never be one, I really like the N82's camera bar form factor and added Xenon Flash. Perhaps in some future model the Nokia gods may shine favorably upon us with a Xenon Flash device...
As for what will ultimately be my next phone, I really don't know. I'm keeping my eye on the X1, but I may wait a bit because the launch price (more than US $900) is way up there, not that it isn't worth the price with the level of 3G compatibility it is going to have (yes, it may even have the 1700 band for US T-Mobile 3G, I guess we shall see...).
The Google Android OS also looks promising, but I'm not sure I like the form factor of the HTC Dream. I may wait until the next generation Google Android phone devices start coming up.
The same is true for the S60 devices, sure the N96 is out there to take the top spot for a while, but it's more of an evolution of the N95 than anything else. A true flagship should really raise the bar, maybe throw in a VGA res screen, integrate the upcoming S60 touch, and for the love of all that's good have ALL the 3G bands in one device because there are people out there willing to pay the extra money to have it all in one device. It wouldn't hurt to have a Xenon Flash as well so we can leave the point and shoot pocket cameras at home.
I always thought Blackberry devices were kind of plain, but maybe that's their beauty, to do one thing extraordinarily well, which is to push corporate e-mail, and have everything else pushed to the wayside. Blackberry has been slowly raising the bar in terms of multimedia starting with the Pearl and the Curve and then taking it up a few more notches with the upcoming Bold with a half VGA screen and a (hopefully) better browser.
I think they made a slight misstep omitting their famous thumb wheel in lieu of the trackball, I mean why not have both? They are also going to make a huge leap from their tried and true hardware QWERTY, with the upcoming Blackberry Thunder, which will be their first fully touchscreen offering. I guess we will see how that goes as well.
Needless to say, it always seems to be a big waiting game for the "perfect" phone to come out. With all that said, I may actually go with a non-smartphone for my next mobile device. The Sony Ericsson C905 seems to have everything I want, a solid camera, a great looking form factor and really good multimedia capabilities and WiFi, while the whole smartphone market thing gets sorted out.
I'm a bit spoiled with my TomTom Navigator software with full turn-by-turn directions on my HTC Touch Cruise though so I'm not sure how well the GPS on the C905 will work out but I guess we'll see on that too.
