[Windows Phone 7 General] ErikWithNoC:
It really depends I suppose. For me I have never been an Android person and have never had an Android phone so will not offer my opinion of the platform. I am very familiar with iOS and WP7 and will offer my opinion's on those.

I purchased a Samsung Focus at the beginning of February over the iPhone, and just yesterday I exchanged it for the iPhone 4.

WP7 is very smooth and very nice looking. I liked the notification system on it and most of the way the apps worked. However, I jailbreak my iOS devices so perhaps this is not the most far comparison. A jailbroken iOS device is amazing. I can theme it any way I want, I have all the emulators I need (which is a big one for me). WP7 doesn't even have a fully functioning NES emulator yet, instead it has 3 separably developed ones that are each missing something the other one has (cmon really?!). I have changed the notification system on my iPhone, I got a tweak for the camera so I can take pictures with the volume buttons, and the list goes on. Right now the hacking scene for WP7 is very basic and I hope that it evolves with time. iOS has had a lot longer to develop and it shows.

If we were comparing stock devices I would probably lean towards WP7. Like I said WP7 is very smooth, I found myself enjoying texting on it much more. On top of that it was very pretty. I found though that there were some glaring problems with it that worried me. The Samsung update fiasco is a bad sign. Two updates have been released that don't completely work for the Samsung devices and from what I can tell they are updates that change very little. When major updates like Mango are released I worry that the update process will be worse than it is right now. Microsoft has also been delaying its updates for far to long. It is March and they are now coming out with a MAJOR update that adds copy and paste. They don't even have a select all feature with it, and I don't consider copy and paste as a MAJOR update. Although you can say it took Apple "X" amount of time to release "X" feature it was also 4 years ago. Microsoft needs to be pushing these updates fast and not playing catch up. Apple will be releasing another major update later this year (if their track record is to go by) while Microsoft has only (hopefully) released a Copy and Paste update, along with bug fixes.

My next issue is related to apps. Yes iOS has way more apps, we all know that, but thats not what I'm taking about. Many developers have their apps take hold of the theming that WP7 has in place (accents), but many do not. Apps that don't make use of this quickly show their ugly side. I found myself not wanting to pin an app to the homescreen or even download it unless it changed with the color of my theme. Scrolling in apps was usually pretty bad (unless it is a native app like messages) just take a look at the Facebook app. Also, has anyone else realized that all the xbox live games coming out for WP7 are just ports of the iOS counter part with the addition of achievements? Developers want to make money so their going to be porting their apps until there all ported. Once they do that their going to develop new applications for the other platforms and then port them to WP7. This process will continue until WP7 actually shows itself as a big enough competitor to attract it's own unique games (there are a few now, but they are the exception not the rule).

I feel like I have bad mouthed WP7 quite a bit, so I will now tell you what I enjoyed about it. The notification system was much better than iOS. I found myself being uninterrupted by the system and I knew when I had a notification. I could see on my lockscreen that I had a missed text and an upcoming calendar appointment while on iOS all I have is a little bubble on an app telling me theres something there. Further more WP7 has a very nice keyboard and I like how I can tap on a word and immediately change it to something else that it recommends which makes typing easier on WP7. WP7 also has the benefit of the Zune software which kicks iTunes ***. The music player on WP7 is beautiful and even integrates artist information fantastically.

Next WP7 had 3 buttons on the face of the device. I found this to be a mixed bag. The back button was very useful and I occasionally find myself looking for a back button on my iPhone only to realize its in some obscure location within the app. The home button works as expected and the search button was awesome. I could hit that button and say "restaurants" and watch it pull up local restaurants. I personally loved that a lot. However, these buttons were capacitive and that is were the problem was. As I played games I had to either actively think about not clicking the buttons or face the consequences. If my hand so happened to brush the home button the game would close and I would be screwed (such as in EA's Tetris which made me start over if I was in marathon mode).

If you take a look at the hardware you will also notice that the iPhone is just better, not spec wise, but build quality wise. The Samsung Focus had a plastic back and felt light while the iPhone 4 has a glass black with a silver band running around it making it absolutely gorgeous (in my opinion). I have yet to see any phone more beautiful than the iPhone 4 (although I think the HTC Legend is quite a beauty).

I personally think that as WP7 evolves it could be either a success or a failure. Microsoft is going to need to push updates out that actually fix the bugs and don't damage the phones (even though Samsung could be to blame). The Marketplace app was/is very buggy and we all know that. It would freeze up and require you to turn your phone off and back on. I think something like that is a major problem and should be fixed as soon as possible, but has yet to be remedied. If Microsoft commits itself than WP7 could be a big success. It's on the right track with its new UI system and coupled with its killer Zune service it could be a game changer, just not yet.

So in case you didn't read what I said above:

Jailbroken iOS > WP7

Regular iOS =< WP7

If there's any typos...well sorry, but I'm not reading through this again :D