If you can't rely on it ...
Looking at the comments about people having a "backup phone." If you can't rely on it to do the primary thing a phone does (such as make calls), shouldn't that lead to an obvious conclusion?
My first touchscreen smartphone was the Samsung SCH-i730 back in June 2005. Windows Mobile, touch screen, hardware keyboard, WiFi and cellular networking, terminal apps to dial into *nix systems, tethering to my laptop, removeable batteries, integrated voice recognition for dialing and applications, and, of course, copy/paste. If only I hadn't dropped it so many times, I'd still be using it.
My current touchscreen, the HTC Tilt, has a finger-friendly touchscreen (lost the stylus months ago), decent battery life (full day of talking, email synchronizing, web surfing), tethering via USB or BlueTooth, plus all the aforementioned "features," including copy/paste.