I don't know why everyone dislikes its appearance so much. I find it very nice looking. Plus, it's squared corners make it infinitely easier to keep a hold on than iPods and iPhones (which I drop time after time on a daily basis). Some people take issue with the black edge that sticks out (the right edge in the above photo), but it's really necessary because it gives you something to grasp on to. Without it you'd be frustrated by having to hold on to the screen where you'd be activating things accidentally.

The things I love:

• It feels very robust and sturdy. It feels indestructible.
• It comes with a 16GB SD card and has a replaceable battery.
• It has a 5MP camera with dual LED flash. It's very nice that you can instantly share your photos/videos via gmail or other online services.
• It is extremely responsive. It has a very fast processor (relatively speaking). There is little to zero delay when doing most anything with the phone. Most importantly you can switch back and forth between lots of different processes instantly.
• All programs run simultaneously. This means while you're doing something, if you're interrupted (or you interrupt yourself like to send a text message) your other processes continue unimpeded.
• I get a 3G speed Internet connection everywhere. (If you want specifics, there's a map for that.)
• I didn't know this until I got it, but it has a very large, very loud external speaker on the back. This is an Enormous benefit to me because I usually am forced to wear headphones with my iPod Touch while I'm driving because its speaker is very weak. It also makes speakerphone calls wonderful.
• (Free) voice-guided GPS navigation with satellite view and live traffic updates. I think everyone is familiar with this feature by now.
• Very simple universal search allows you to search for anything (websites, map locations, contacts) typed or spoken, and the "spoken word interpreter" is very smart even able to figure out different spellings than words sound (e.g., "in n out" or "pick up stix").
• The keyboard, while a little small, feels good and is well laid out (as long as you type with your fingertips).
• Instant notification if new Gmail arrives.
• Centralized listing of all notifications needing my attention.
• You can easily manage the content on your phone without the need for proprietary software like iTunes.

The things I'm confused by (because Google should know better or might work in some way that I can't figure out):

• Nevermind this point - see comment below. While the phone is on silent or vibrate mode, you are not given *any* kind of notification that you have received a new text or gmail. What's the deal with that, Google? At the very least the screen should activate so you have the visual notification, but it should definitely vibrate if you have the phone in vibrate mode. Instead it just sits there dark and silent forcing you to manually check it every few minutes to see if there are any new notifications. (I did discover you can set the notification volume separately from the phone volume, but the notification has to be audible.)
• Some things are slightly buggy. When setting the notification volume lower than the general phone volume, all volume became almost mute and would not increase until I restarted the phone.
• There doesn't seem to be any way to uninstall pre-installed apps I don't want, like the "Amazon MP3" app. Perhaps there's some way to do it, but I haven't been able to find it.
• There's no way to set the ringtone individually for different types of notifications (e.g., new gmail, new text, etc.) There's just one ringtone selection to rule them all.
• Though it's a snap to upload tons of songs via a USB cable and your computer and use any of them as your phone ringtone, there's no apparent way to use them as the ringtone for notifications.

Anyhow, just thought I'd share my opinions and also hope that maybe someone will inform me how to do some of the things that appear to be impossible. All in all, it is by far the very best phone I've ever owned (my last phone was an LG Voyager, ugh). It's really like having a fully-functional portable Internet-connected computer and I love it.

[edit]
I have tried this and can verify it works: a commenter on Motorola's site says the following about adding your own custom notification ringtones:

"you can make Android "see" these files by placing them on your SD card in specific folders. The folders by tone type are as follows:

Notifications: media/audio/notifications
Ringtones: media/audio/ringtones
Alarms: media/audio/alarms

I have found that Android appears to be rather picky about filenames. I got mine to be visible by removing spaces in the filename when I placed them on the SD Card."