If your girlfiend is going abroad avoid any form of mobile communication even skype on a mobile as your still going to have to pay for data rates which can be very high at times.

I don't rate either the viewty or the iphone highly in all honesty both are very early examples of where the current technology is going to go. But between the viewty and the iphone I would go for the iphone, as I've had some very poor experience with the viewty.

At the moment the best phone on the market is the nokia N95, it's not the most pretty phone but it does everything the iphone does and more and it's cheaper. Although the iphone does have a pretty user interface and it's music and movie abilities can't be rivalled by any other phone but its should be a phone first and an ipod second.

If I was you I would keep in contact with my girlfriend using a good old computer and email. I would get a webcam and skpe on my computer so we could chat and see each other and we could also record video message to each other if the time difference was huge.