[Omnia 7 General] Dyonas:
I've had a few days to play with the phone now and overall it's pretty solid. The screen on the Samsung is gorgeous with black areas looking like there's no screen on at all instead of the muddy, dark grey on my Desire HD.

The UI is simple to use, transitions are quick and apps load quickly enough like the DHD. Unfortunately there are still limited amounts of apps with it looking like there are far more paid than free apps in comparison to Android. Sadly I'm also noticing a lack of apps that I would normally use with a few exceptions. A few apps I have like Shazam Encore is being charged at £3.99 on the WinPho 7 Marketplace but far less on the Android Market. I can't say what it normally costs currently as it's on sale for 10p. The main apps you might use like Twitter, Facebore ... sorry Facebook and YouTube are available and the UI is the same throughout each so you always know how to find items. A bonus that seems to be applicable to all apps is that they have a "Try" option. They might be limited in some way or have ads displayed. If you like it you can "Buy" it, and it'll unlock or remove ads. Similar to Android offering refunds but with this I don't think there are limits on trials unless they're displayed in the description.

You can sync photos to SkyDrive when they're taken or choose to upload them manually but there's no Dropbox app available currently. The easiest way I found to get images on the phone for use as wallpapers (lockscreen and photo hub background) was to create a folder on my PC, drop the images in and sync it.

Auto-rotate..... oh boy do I hate this. Auto-rotate is always on and there's no toggle option to turn it off. Why is it an issue? I use my phone in bed to check a few things like Twitter or if I get a text message and after unlocking it and loading the app it'll flip to landscape unless I sit up. Small annoyance but one Android lets you toggle. It's quick enough to rotate and it might not annoy others but that's my thought on it.

Background updates are something I was curious about since it wasn't allowed outside a few apps at launch but has supposedly been allowed more widely in Mango / 7.5 and that may be true but finding apps that take advantage of it isn't easy. Mango apps can use live tiles that update in the background but unless you know an app can do it you'd normally end up looking through each one to find it mentioned. There is an app that will help you do it called AppFlow but if you didn't know that you'd be stuck. I'd like to say that the apps I have with live tiles enabled work flawlessly but they don't. I have a Twitter app (not the official app, that sucks just like on Android) that supposedly updates every 30 minutes or so (no option to choose) and I have not yet seen a live tile update from it even with the option selected. I may be doing something wrong, I don't know, I'm still getting used to things. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing though and if so then background updating needs work or apps need more work to make it happen.

Final thoughts are really that it seems very much like Android when I got my G1 way back when it was new which was before even Cupcake / Android 1.5 was around. It has a lot of potential, there are some great touches (keeping the UI consistent throughout and with apps is good) and even with carriers customising all they can do is add apps and maybe a theme. You can uninstall the apps (I did, take THAT Orange!) and change theme with no issues. It's similar to Android back then but with more polish overall. With updates I can only see it getting better. Basically I can see it improving and being a competitor but how long that takes I can't guess. I wouldn't give up Android for it but I'm definitely keeping an eye on it to see where it goes.

Any questions? Let me know and I'll try to answer them but otherwise those are my thoughts on Windows Phone 7.5 after using Android exclusively from release.