I second your opinion - I switched from 3GS to Samsung Galaxy S. Completely correct that it's not polished like the iPhone, but being able to mount the phone as your choice of device is just, as you said, liberating. Have an AVI movie? No problem, just drop it on the device, it plays. Oh, it's in MPEG? No problem.

Swype is cool too, I now can't live without it -- in fact, I stopped using my native tongue in SMS form because it's THAT much easier to type in English.

Oh, now I also have an SFTP client, an SSH client, turn-by-turn navigation, WiFi analyzer -- all for free. Pretty soon, I will get tethering. The only downside to my particular phone is the AT&T crapware you can't get rid of, and it infuriates me that I have to root the phone to delete it. But even that is better than having to deal with iTunes.