[Vibrant General] N8ter:
I don't think any Mobile OS or device should be dependent on third-party dev support to make the phone function as advertised. That is part of the issue with Android (not as a whole, but specific [even most] manufacturers). The initial Honeycomb tablets may be different, though, since the manufacturers aren't initially skinning the OS.

The Motorola ATRIX, with all its great hardware goodness, lagged it's way to a 9/10 (cause it has lots of accessories?!) on Engadget. Maybe when their brain catches up (apparently lagging as well) they will get around to giving it a believable rating...

These reviews have been unchanging for the past year, year and a half. No matter how much hardware you throw at Android: "phone lags a lot", "you should be able to get a day out of it with moderate usage (some phones piss the users off if they have to charge more than ever other day - smartphones mind you)" "bad UI yada yada" "skin this and that" "still running older version but update coming *soon*".

Hardware accelleration means graphics processing is offloaded to the GPU. Apps open as fast as they do on any other mobile OS, and faster than others. Of course if you're running a mobile game with (relatively) large files to load when it starts up this will not happen instantly. The use of the term instantaneous wasn't really meant to be taken uber literally...

Android runs less efficiently on better hardware because the system taxes the CPU more, since the GPU is going unused as far as the general UI/widgets are concerned. This is why the devices are usually overspecced and/or have functionality ripped out of them.

One of the biggest failures of Samsung was releasing this phone with such great GPU hardware in it, but not putting hardware accelleration into their firmware. Perhaps if they had done that the system would have run a bit smoothly. Nothing could save it from RFS, however.

I'm talking beyond the user interface. I'm accounting for functionality as well :) The TouchWiz music player is not comparable to iPod Touch in the iPhone. DoubleTwist makes an app that looks like iTunes, but iTunes obviously blows it away when it comes to features and functionality, for example.

The HD2's camera is actually pretty bad. I'm sure the cameras are similar, they are both 5MP cameras with 720p. But, I'm also sure they aren't the same, because the picture qualities are IMO a bit too different for that to be the case (even across multiple OSes on the HD2). That being said, I've never done a teardown, so I don't know for sure.

If anyone wants a great camera on a phone, it would behoove them to get an N8. That phone can compete with some DSLRs when it comes to picture quality.

I went from Vibrant to HD7 and don't mind the lack of flash. Flash, IMO, was not ready for mobile devices when it was released for Android. It's too bloated and resource intensive. It has this same issue on the desktop, but fortunately those machines are powerful enough to just shrug it off in most cases. Flash 10.2 is supposed to bring hardware accelleration, but I'm not sure how much that will help Galaxy S devices...

It causes a lot of Pinch-Zoom and Pan lag, and scrolling on a page with a few flash artifacts on it can be a PITA on some websites.

I do know some sites that crash the Android browser 100% of the time, though...

In the case of moving from Android to WP7, the lack of Flash was actually a bonus for me. If the Vibrant had shipped without Flash (needed it from the market) and Flash Lite was also available in the market, I'd probably have just installed Flash Lite 5 minutes after installing the FroYo update and trying Flash. The irony, though, is that Flash Lite worked for most of the crap that I needed Flash for... I regret even asking for [full] Flash.

9 of the tiles on my WP7 home screen are Live. I'll take Live Tiles and normal tiles over walls of icon and widgets with no unified Look and Feel cluttered across 3-7 Home screens. Don't really care about the list. IIRC Android has an option to make the App "Page" a list as well...

A phone is not a USB thumb drive.

Yes, however managing media on a WP7 or iOS device is much better than on Android, where this sort of stuff is non-existent in the stock builds and requires you to duplicate tons of functionality on the device, set defaults, etc.

There is DoubleTwist, whose Desktop App runs like a 1200lb Gorilla from my experiences (at least on Windows - I thought it was my computer, but I have 5 computers; fortunately), requires a redundant media player to be installed, and sells WiFi media synching (free in Zune).

WinAmp has media synching, but again requires a redundant media player.

WiFi Synching, Automatic Transcoding to the best possible format, etc. This is all done transparently. Once Microsoft Adds Skydrive support and that other stuff in Mango, I don't forsee many complaints about WP7.

But even now, it's a very polished experience. I even prefer the notifications on WP7 to Android, and I don't have to worry about numbers getting burnt into the top of my screen anymore.

Yes, it's a great device that ran well even on WM. Marred by bad QA on the part of HTC. I never saw a reason to run another or a non-stock OS on my HD2s, personally.

Meh, this is the Vibrant forum :P

All that said, I have all three phones and can choose to use whichever one I please whenever I want to. The Vibrant and the HD7 both have active SIM Cards in them with Data plans, so I can care less what anyone else choose, likes, dislikes, or doesn't choose. I don't have to choose anything, I just have to "prefer at that specific moment." XD