well, I spent some time trying to actually use the 3gs today so now I can give you lot my verdict for now:
the 3gs is a very good phone, quicker interface than the hero (apple have done what they do best). but having started off with the hero and its functional buttons, I felt a bit lost in the more complicated apps (browsing, for instance!)
the hero gives you more confidence to fuck about with the interface, however. there is more space for this stuff, too. [5 virtual desktops vs 3, atleast, by default]
camera on the 3gs seems better tuned to variable light conditions - two photos of the same scene come out utterly different, both to the scene and each other. red is alot more apparent and it handles low light, whereas the hero's colour is a touch more real it needs tuning or more light to achieve the same visibility
email is good on each as are the basic phoney/texty functions. the keyboard on both is very good and easy to get used to, the only difference being that the hero offers a bit of word completion.
the browser on the hero, despite being slower to load pages (20%?), works better to me because of the scrolley ball (it's alot less guessing when it comes to hitting buttons on pages, etc) and the copy/paste is alot more sensible too than the 3gs's [again, scolley ball], since you have more buttons [back, menu and so forth], it just seems easier to manage.
The irony is that the 3gs has quite a few buttons around the phone [on/off on top whereas htc's on/off is next to the rest], but they all do things that aren't related directly to the phone interface. they both have on/off buttons and volume buttons - the 3gs has a clunky toggle 'silence' button on the left, whereas the hero has a menu, back, search, home and pickup/putdown buttons. the iphone, like most macs, has just one button which we have to assume does what you want each time in whatever situation you are in.
In the hero you have alot more power over the apps so you don't have to constantly put your finger over the screen to make your choice since the scroll ball is both a selector, scroller and clicker - there are menus for most things, but they stay hidden until you press the menu button, which is good for screen space, amusingly the iphone wastes about 15% of it on emulating what the hero achieves with its physical buttons. I'm not sure which was the better design decision.
both have google maps, and the music player on the hero is actually rather good (suprising!) haven't tried the iphone's but it'll surely be good too. the htc does ogg, but neither does flac (yet!).
physically the hero can sit on your fingers whereas the iphone needs some of the meat of my hand to sit in it. the iphone feels quite tacky but mine has a cover that gives it the same feel as the htc (matt plastic) but also means it looks like it is in a gimp suit. Which is probably a good thing since it has far too much silver metallic-plastic surround the screen-side and "shiney shiney shiney" plastic on the rear. without the cover I'd be at risk of scratching the iphone's surface whereas the htc has a slight tilt to the base meaning you'd need some big sand grains on the table/whatever to actually have a go at it where you so thoughtless as to place it face-down.
without the case the iphone was quite a bit thinner than the htc - it was always wider and longer anyway. the case makes it about as fat.
I really prefer the look and feel of the HTC - there are screws (SCREWS! for gods sakes) and metal grill showing at the bottom of the 3gs. how did apple manage to let that happen out in the world of unibody powerbooks and so forth ?
screen size similar but not identical - the iphone's is about 15% larger in every direction, but wastes space on displaying buttons for functionality.
by default the hero comes with a 2gb microsd, but you can match the iphone's 16gb with a 40 quid microsd from elsewhere at your leisure - something I intend to do as soon as I fill it - you can even change battery. the iphone's can't be changed.
charger-wise, apple are still in ipod mode. I don't own an ipod so I have just the one charger for it. Whereas I happen to have microusb chargers throughout my home and work and look forward to the day my razor (not a motorola, I mean, the thing you use to take hair off your chin) has one too. the htc works perfectly with microusb, even though the interface isn't shaped identicaly [squared off on one side], microusb fits and charges and lets you do the usual shit on it that the otherwise htc-provided cable does.
to sum it up any phone that now gets advertised based round how it can do cut and paste must surely have reached some sort of engineering pinnacle, whereas the android/htc I feel will only get better, the iphone will struggle to find ways to improve or reverse bad decisions that everyone has come to accept, whereas the android will probably change quite a bit in the future. the iphone screams to be noticed whereas the htc tries to be ignored. I expect to see improvements on the htc whereas I doubt I will notice much change on the iphone. I'm going to have to live with both.
I cba with pics of them so here you go with some I found off the web:
