I would agree with you that some of these newer Windows Mobile devices are pretty nice looking. That Samsung posted further up the page looks very nice imho, and on par witht the iPhone in design. The qwerty keyboard is a matter of preference though. I'll reserve judgement on that until after I've tried the iPhone's keyboard. No tactile response will take a little getting use to, but those who have used it say that it's not too long and you don't even notice any more.
As for a screen protector, the screen is said to be coated with an anti-scratch coating to help prevent those issues. People said the same thing about the PSP, and my launch system doesn't have a single scratch on it.
And of course the iPhone isn't going to have the options for software upon release, but third party apps are coming, and the Mac community loves to create new apps. The fact that it runs OS X means that applications can be ported to it very quickly, so once it's open for new software, you'll see a lot of new programs very quickly. It'll close the gap in terms of quality software on these devices very fast.