I was just fumbling with a Windows Phone 7 and I must say, I’m really, really impressed. Everything is extremely polished, the aesthetics are crisp and fresh and it’s damn fast. It feels like a typical modern smartphone, yet it is clear from the first moment you turn it on that it is quite unlike an iPhone or Android phone. (Funny enough, the only thing I didn’t quite like is its behavior when you reach the end of a list. It’s springy but lacks the enthusiastic bounciness of the iPhone.)

It was clearly developed with an eye for detail, not the list with features. I often think that Android is exactly the other way around. (I can’t blame Google, though. I’m not even sure whether what Google is doing is wrong in any way. I happen to prefer small details to a huge list of features but that’s just me. I don’t know what the majority of people want.)

Microsoft deserves to be lauded for its mobile OS efforts. The sad news for Microsoft is that even though I like Windows Phone 7 a lot I probably won’t buy one any time soon. The ecosystem just doesn’t feel right (yet?).

They are smoother indeed - I was very surprised when I first tried one out a few weeks ago.

Windows 7 uses the GPU for its interface, so I'm guessing it is smoother than Android.