iPhone serves the purpose. You can view all the MS office files on it and it has its own spreadsheet with many arithmetic formulas.
You can also access to Google Doc from your iPhone. Another option is open a Box.com account and save all the important document over there n then access your account from iPhone to view all the saved documents.
Even in email you can open the attachment in many other phones it's difficult.
You can also access your desktop or laptop through Remote access and navigate your PC or Mac remotely. Newly released Storm doesn't have this feature. And Storm has many other issues when it comes to open up many application at the same time and navigation. Touch screen of Storm is jagged and poky.
When you switch to landscape mode it takes 20 seconds to flip. It's so annoying.
iPhone has so smooth navigation that sometimes even at home I use this for quick reference rather than my Computer.
iPhone doesn't support external memory but it has 8 and 16GB inbuilt memory so I don't think anybody would want more than that on a Phone.
I don't know what exactly are you going to use it for but it has many educational app available in the App store. You can also download many free Podcast and iTunes U educational program right from your iPhone for free.
You can watch so many other website like daily motion,meta cafe and dont forget the rich iTunes U where you can find immensely valuable audiobook and video from universities like Princeton, Stanford. Itunes U has become a need of the students today.
And you can send email to many people at the same time with one click why would you want to send SMS. People from 20th century might wanna do this coz they dont know about messaging many people at the click of a button through e-mail.
iPhone have cut and paste in its Spreadsheet. It has many pre set formulas that makes it easier and convenient to use.
You can access your desktop with great ease so finding documents is not at all difficult.