I don't have much luck with games I love being ported to the iPhone. That said, 505 Games has really done a great job with the Mobile port as it really captures much of the fun of Terraria. My only major gripe is that the game is not quite as easy to control as the PC version, but its pretty damn good considering the touch only interface. But don't take my word for it,...

I was going to write up something just like this in a few days once I had more time with it and tried some boss fights. I had a bad experience with it the first day, but I kept with it and I'm glad. It takes some getting used to, but it's great for when I want to kill some time. I've mentioned before that I don't play many mobile games except time-wasters like Jetpack Joyride and Angry Birds, but this fills that role and actually feels like a real game as well.
The controls are clunky, even after you get used to them, but they're serviceable. I put blocks where I don't want them pretty frequently, and I can't imagine fighting Skeletron with them. We'll see how that goes.
I played the PC version some to compare and contrast, and I disagree that on PC you *must* build a house the first night. It's timed well so that after you've spent the day collecting the materials you can use the first night as a chance to build out some of your basic needs, but it isn't entirely necessary. I ended up collecting fallen stars my first night. That said, it wasn't exactly easy. On the iOS version, it's much easier to pull off.
The player emitting light was an interesting choice. I actually prefer it for iOS. Placing torches frequently needs some precision controls, which you don't get here.
Resources are definitely more plentiful, which is good, as you said, because I don't want to put up with the controls long enough to find them.
I do like automatically moving over terrain, and I'm glad that's coming to the PC version as well (for one block, anyway).
Your non-empirical data is pretty empirical. I've seen that complaint all over the place since it dropped. It's quite annoying, I feel like unless I fall into a pit I shouldn't get fall damage just from walking left or right. It did lead to a more interesting build for me, though. My spawn point was in a very jagged snow biome, so I ended up building a snow block fortress in the center of a snowy hill rather than a rectangular thing like usual. It's bad design, but at least it led to some creativity.
So yeah, I agree with you. It's as good as an iOS port really can be I think, but it still isn't *real* Terraria to me. This doesn't bother me at all, though, because I still have it on PC.
Good (or not) to hear that other people have seen what I have. I hope they roll out a patch to fix it up, it sucks to exist in a world that is so uneven. I'll just keep generating worlds until I find something with a more manageable surface.
That said, you should post how the later game goes for you. Sounds like you are further into the base game than I am as I only just started harvesting gold and don't even have a full iron set of stuff yet. Just poking around trying things out and collecting stuff.