Current Jeff level of geeklust for an iPhone: 8 out of 10.

Odds that I’m actually going to buy one: about 1 out of 3.

Why? Because right now, it looks like Apple and AT&T are still crippling the single feature that I actually need: Bluetooth tethering, aka DUN. In plain English, this means “your Internet connection can actually go places other than your cell phone.”

Back in January, I jumped ship on T-Mobile to switch to Sprint EVDO and a shiny new Palm Centro. The Centro is perfectly cromulent as a smartphone; as you can see in the attached photo, the user experience can best be described as “the wet dream of a road warrior… in 1998.” The Palm OS is getting very old and very creaky; it works well (especially in comparison with the Windows Mobile devices I’ve used), but most of the time when it’s doing something particularly cool, it feels like an Atari 2600 that’s been upgraded with a 16K RAM cartridge. Compared to the iPhone 2.0 demoed last week, there’s simply no contest.

But there’s one thing it excels at: dropping that EVDO connection into my MacBook anytime, and mostly anywhere. I’ve found that 50-60 KBps covers most of my Internet needs (exceptions: podcast updates, video streaming, and large software downloads), and I’m unwilling to go without it. At the time of this writing, AT&T is yet to say whether they’re going to offer 3G tethering with the iPhone.

Which is somewhat galling, as they offer tethering for Blackberry phones, and the iPhone 1.0 is perfectly capable of tethering with an unofficial hack. So if tethering is a must-have feature, there’s only one option right now: keep the Sprint phone and get an AT&T plan just for the iPhone.

Geeklust, yes. $200 a month worth of geeklust? Not so much.

Plan B is to go with the iPod Touch, which strips out a few iPhone features (notably GPS, which is on the “want but don’t need” list), but with Wifi-only access, its biggest drawback is that it’s only supercool about 50% of the time. That problem could be easily solved if the Touch could be used to tether to my Sprint phone—which again, is something I can do easily with my Palm TX. (Why would I tether a Palm TX to a Palm Centro? 480×320 screen resolution, versus 320×320 on the Centro, and a faster CPU.) Again, the jury is still out on whether this will be allowed by the corporate masters at Apple and AT&T.

I’ve been a happy uncustomer of AT&T Wireless since around 2000, when they hit me with a $500 charge for “going over” my unlimited minute rate plan. Yes, that still boggles my mind a little bit. My gut tells me that all of the various technology crippling I’m talking about here is based on some bean counter’s analysis at AT&T, not Apple, and I generally avoid companies with policies like these on general principles.

(For that matter, I’m less than impressed with my AT&T experience today, the first weekend that they’re offering the new free Wifi connection at Starbucks. I’ve been to two different hotspots today, and it’s taken over 15 minutes each time to reach the login screen, a sure sign that the servers are completely overloaded. I suspect that the same thing will occur when the 3G hits the shelves for a few weeks.)

I have no doubts whatsoever that these problems will all be solvable with third-party software upgrades; I have many doubts that Apple will allow such applications to be sold in the Application Store. But it’s for this reason that I’m very happy to hear that Apple is no longer sharing in the revenue of AT&T’s service contracts; since Apple keeps 30% of the revenue stream from application sales, that means they’re incented to offer software like this, and less likely to be in a binding contract with AT&T that prevents them from doing so.

Only time will tell whether that means we’ll see applications such as two-way tethering, VOIP, and (dare I dream?) online poker on the iPhone; give me the first and I’ll buy one. Give me the third and I’ll buy two.