[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
I have an HD2, HD7, and a Vibrant.

Yes, WP7 is snappier. I never said anything to the contrary. If you want to hack your phone (I don't), you can make a Vibrant a lot snappier. I never really had any complaints about my HD2, I just wanted a phone with more functionality. WM6.5 has superficial functionality, but it's terrible support for modern hardware really causes you to pay premium prices for premium hardware that the OS cannot fully utilize. Such was the case with the HD2.

WP7 has done the same at realease. No BT file transfer. No BT/WiFi tethering (except hack a bit up on some phones). No Sockets support or Contacts integration so applications like WhatsApp and IM Clients are impossible to implement on W7. No 1st Party WLM Client. No SkyDrive storage support - which cannot be hard to add because they already have the Camera Roll working with SkyDrive. No Twitter Support in People Hub (they said this was Twitter's fault with the APIs, but waiting a year for it???).

The only reason why lots of people, and reviewers had as much faith in WP7 as they did was because they thought Microsot would iterate fast on the platform (which is why the update deal was a HUGE deal) to patch in the holes. They aren't.

If this is the way they're going to manage the platform ("Wait until WP7.5/WP8/etc.") then I don't see much benefits for WP7 over Android other than the fact that it looks refreshing and it's (2) screens swipe fast.

There are also tons of QoL issues that need to be fixed. Marketplace crashes (apparently in NoDo). Video camera settings not maintaining across uses. Horizontal Scrolling (Pane Switches) is WAY too damn sensitive - I end up switching screens 50% of the times I swipe up or down, and the phone is almost unusable for me while lying down due to this. The touchscreen sensitivity is refreshing, but sometimes it feels like it presses things when you hand is very close to the screen, but not necessarily touching it.

There are issues, lots of them. And the reason why lots of people brought into it is cause they thought Microsoft would move fast to correct them and add needed features in.

They are failing on that front.

The platform is good. The user experience is good.

But it's 2011. I'm not buying into it any longer.

The whole T-Mobile Vibrant debacle is a lesson on how things work and what people expect these days. People will not put up with this crap much longer.

It has nothing to do with relevance. When new phones are released with more capabilities, if you want those capabilities you have to upgrade - period. There's no way to put a FFC in an HD7, or a better screen, or a better SoC with a better GPU for games that can potentially bottleneck on that level in the future. The only way to do it will be to upgrade.

The same goes for any phone.

Even iPhone 3G users eventually have to upgrade unless they don't use their phone for much outside of music/video, surfing the web, and running Social Networking and IM apps. Advancements in hardware drive sales - as evident by Android which sells tons of phones even though the OS version on most of them is the same (2.3 out, phones still shipping with 2.2 even though some older phones will get a 2.3 update).

Yes, the phone may still be somewhat relevant, but by the time I get two factorably updates on WP7, it will be almost time to upgrade my device. That's no different from Android.

NoDo is a maintenance update, for all intents and purposes. Copy and Paste is put in there to make it seem like a feature update, but I can't really consider it that. It's mostly bug fixes - fixes for bugs (performance, memory management, marketplace, etc.) that should have been caught and fixed before release or shortly afterwards. 6 months to fix Resume Lag? No mention of the laggy scrolling, etc? OH, but you get Copy and Paste.

No HTML5 Browser which means websites like Engadget do not show the comments when viewed in WP7's IE browser (have to use Vibrant to not go through hoops to get to them). No Flash Lite player (Lite, not full flash, Lite is good enough for 80% of web Content IMO). No Silverlight support.