After much research and debate whether I should go for the iPhone or the HTC Touch, I finally purchased the latter with Sprint. What finally tilted the decision in it's favor is Sprint, which offered me an amazing deal (it's quite unbelievable) which also implied i'll have the faster EV-DO network.
The Good:
- Slick form-factor
- Excellent IM and Emailing capabilities.
- The Touch-Flo technology is very impressive
- Very good voice quality
- Superb speakerphone
- Superb music playback capabilities
- Good speed on data transfers and nice browsing experience
- The overall package when purchased is very classy .
- High quality stereo headphones supplied.
- MicroSD slot (box comes with 512 MB card)

The Bad:
- Pocket Internet Explorer is a piece of crap.
- Soft keyboard is a bit small
- The clock and alarm seem a bit buggy.
- Substandard camera for its class, even though it's 2MP
- Lack of a tactile feeling on the dialpad.

As you can see, the pros clearly outweigh the cons. But the fact remains that this is not an iPhone. With it's multi-touch screen (which renders the 'pinch' capability possible), the iPhone clearly kicks as* and once you start your honeymoon with the phone, you can kind of understand why Apple took a few decisions it did, like locking down the phone. However, on the flip side, there are so many super-cool apps for smartphones nowadays, like Google maps and Opera Mini (which is a full fledged browser unlike the pocket IE).

Anyhow, I would definitely recommend one of these 2 phones to people who are contemplating on a smartphone. I have researched the other phones too but none of them are close to the HTC touch and the iPhone.