[Hawk]

Hmmmm.... I Have no problems with speaker volume. I work in a mock store at our office ( I do Merchandising) and I can play my playlist at about 80% volume and hear it quite well throughout the store. Even got compliments on the volume level for "such a little bitty thing", and complaints because some people were on the phone.
As far as text vibrate notifications, The phone itself has to be on vibrate ( ringer muted) and your text will be on vibrate. The vibration is about the weakest feature on my phone. I miss more calls because of it.
Other than that, I am quite happy with the iPhone's performance. I am still waiting on Flash, MMS, and copy/paste, but that's a whole other ball of wax...