iPhone capacity issues?

Just wondering if anyone would share their opinion on how effective the iPhone is as a fully functioning iPod as well as all its other features, when the total capacity of the phone is 8GB.

I currently have a fourth gen iPod and was considering buying one of the new Classics until I decided to get an iPhone. Now I'm thinking if I can get all my music (or the stuff I listen to most, I guess, since my current iPod's 20gb drive is almost full) on there then I may as well not bother with the iPod.

Is the full 8GB available for storage or does some of that account for system files or whatever? And also, is there a limit on the number of SMS messages that can be saved, like with some other phones, or can you split the whole 8 gigs whichever way you need to?

yeah, im even having problems with 2 gb full its very slow

umm with my iphone i can prob have like 1000 messages in the inbox and then it tells me its getting full and to delete some./... and my iphones kinda slow when opening up texting i think it may because i have space used up.... and the format takes relatively few mb's of space.. not even seeable

The full 8GB is not available for your use, only 7.3GB can be used to store things. Now I'm not sure if this applies only to music and videos, or email and text messages as well. Though 700MB for the operating system, which is a stripped down version of OS X, isn't that hard to conceive.

I have yet to experience any slowdowns as a result of having too many emails or text messages on the machine.

Unlike other phones, there doesn't seem to be any explicit limit as to how many text messages you can have on the phone. I guess you can theoretically hold as many as is limited by the available memory.

I can concur with Kash. My new iPhone only showed 7.3 GB available for storage of music. I loaded up nearly 6 GB and the device still functions beautifully. No observable slowdown. Seems like a marvelous device to me.