The windows phone was pretty interesting. It took my partner a couple tries to figure out how to use it (I'd seen demos online so I was more prepared for the UI) but they eventually got it. Still, the UI was broken in some very weird ways-- for instance, going to the datebook app, you could easily scroll from day to day, but what if you wanted to go a year into the future or the past? (The phone was set for last year)... eventually we were able to figure out how to bring up a calendar view that showed months at a time, but tapping on a particular month or day didn't bring you to that particular month or day's agenda! Never did figure that out.
I give Microsoft credit here for trying to come up with something new. I think in a couple years, they will have something very usable, and it certainly is very different and potentially innovative. (Didn't get to use the device long enough to see if it was different for difference sake, or if there was a fundamental UI insight behind the way it worked.)
Then we picked up the HTC. It was pretty eye opening. I did like the animated background, that's cool. The icons are fugly, though. Its like someone who didn't know what they were doing tried to copy an iPhone. The device was really cheap plastic. The touch screen wasn't very reliable, and the apps were ... poor at best. I was surprised at how fiddly everything was... you couldn't just launch an app and immediately know how to use it. On the iPhone (and windows phone it seemed) there are standard controls and paradigms, like the tab bar and swiping left-right. I'm sure android has these features as well, but they aren't really supposed to be features... they're the common commands that Apps should share so that the user spends time comprehending your app and what it means, not trying to figure out how to get to the next page, or whatever.
I don't know, or care, whether this was the "latest" android phone. In fact, replacing an iPhone every 2 years is a much better experience than having to keep up with a marketplace of phones that changes every three months... and given that Apple always delivers a superlative experience, while the android hardware market is competing more on headline features, there's a huge incentive for android makers to put in some feature (like LTE, or a power hungry processor) that undermines a more important, but less exciting capability, like battery life. Trying to keep on top of all that, making sure I'm not getting screwed is more effort than I want to spend when shopping for a phone.... especially when I can just buy the latest iPhone and get the best experience, and know I'm not going to regret my purchase.
