[Captivate General] jsgiv:
Considering I just went through this myself.. :)

I had an iPhone 3G - recently came off of contract, decided to try the Captivate, WP7 came out - and I was dealing with the well-known problems/issues with that phone (GPS / Random shutdowns).

Since I'm still in my 30-day window - I decided to take the Captivate back and try the WP7. As you've noted - this is really a personal preference with regards to the phone/OS overall.

Personally - I believe WP7 is *close* to the same overall functionality as Android - though, currently, Android has a much more extensive library of applications, etc. (along with the awesome dev support here).

For me, however, it came down to what works "out of the box" as advertised by the phone/manufacturer.

On the Captivate - the GPS worked around 70-80% of the time. The Google Navigation application worked wonderfully - *when* it worked. However, the main problem is - the GPS *doesn't* work consistently. Add to that - when the Captivate started to randomly shutdown and forced several missed calls (I didn't shut the phone down - it just randomly shut down.. WTF?), it became a deal breaker for me.

I've just came back from a business trip with the Focus and, overall, the phone does exactly what it advertises to do: First and foremost - phone calls/functionality are excellent. Second, GPS works out of the box - with (from what I can tell) 98-100% accuracy (immediate startup no waiting - directions are spot on - phone tracks with you easily without any discrepancies). Third, no random shutdowns/dropped calls (yet) - and I've had both phones about an equivalent amount of time now (about 8-10 days each).

Regarding Music: Zune Integration and Music playing via the Focus, though slightly different from the iPhone, IMHO, exceed iTunes/Coverflow of the iPhone. it's a great music player - that automatically downloads relevant information/material regarding the artists/albums you have loaded in your collection/library. I've never really liked iTunes - and Zune's software seems much easier / more integrated to use.

Finally, the Focus, the more that you use it, actually appears to tailor itself to you, the owner, via the pictures / information you enter and setup on the phone. The "people" hub shows random snapshots of all of your contacts. The Pictures hub is extremely well done, immersing your content into the overall look and feel of the OS the more you use it.

Granted - you can extend tweak the Captivate/Android interface much more to your liking, etc. - however - I found the overall experience of the WP7 to be more "personal" the more I used it. I'll also add that I'm much more comfortable with the WP7 interface after using it a week than with the Captivate (both using TouchWiz as well as LauncherPro). It's hard to quantify, but I find WP7 to be easier to quickly pick up, do what I need to do, find the information I need to get, and then quickly put the phone away. I feel like I'm NOT fighting the WP7 interface as much as I did with the Captivate.

This became even more clear during the business trip with my colleague (who has an HTC android phone) where we were comparing notes/basic functionality/tasks between the 2 devices constantly during the entire trip. A prime example: he had to use 2 different applications (google maps, where) to find information out about a restaurant we were attempting to find in the area - whereas everything I needed to find out about the restaurant (directions, website, phone number, reviews) was quickly pulled up in a single bing map search. Overall, any time we "raced" to find the information we needed - the majority of the time I won these little races - primarily - I feel - due to the inherent/"simplistic" nature of the redesigned interface in WP7.

Overall - it really boils down to how you use the phone and what you expect of it. For me it boiled down to if I was comfortable "hacking" the phone (Captivate) in order to get the true (expected) functionality out of it (and subsequently violating TOS in the process), as well as waiting on a potential fix to the GPS/Shutdown issues to show up with Froyo 2.2 (assuming I wait for the official release instead of using one of the 2.2 ROMs here) - or - was I more comfortable with going with WP7 - with everything working as advertised out of the box, along with, again, a proposed future update of additional functionality to be added early next year (i.e. Copy/Paste (not a big deal for me), Turn-By-Turn Navigation (would be extremely nice if this is, in fact, included in the next WP7 update), etc.)

As it stands - I have another 10-12 days left to make my decision (or just return back to my iPhone and wait for awhile). I'm hoping the Froyo 2.2 update will be pushed to Captivate over the next few days (I keep hearing 11/15) in order to get further information. As it stands now - I'm heavily leaning towards keeping the Focus/WP7 unless Froyo 2.2 shows up and reports come in that it corrects the 2 deal breakers (for me that is). If that does happen - I'll have a harder decision to make - otherwise - unless something goes horribly wrong with the Focus - I'll probably be keeping it for the long term.