> The only issue is that after a while some animations start being a lot to sit through each time, especially the multitasking interface animations and app fly-in

This is what annoyed me a lot about WP7, too. Long "cool" animations that slow you down with each action you perfor, get boring very quickly, and eventually become frustrating.

On my Android phone, I've even set the animations to be faster than they normally are, precisely because I want stuff to be done fast, not watch a 1-second long animation each time I tap on the screen.