I love the iPhone. Before getting one, much to my wife's chagrin, I could never force myself to keep my cell phone with me. Because there are so many things I love about it, I was uneasy when I decided this spring that I'd be switching to Windows Phone 7 when it came out. But I made this decision because I planned on developing apps for it and writing the Windows Phone 7 book.

I've gotten a chance to use a Windows Phone 7 for a while, and I've been using many of the apps that are now out in the marketplace. Honestly, I'm surprised by how much I like the phone. So much so, that temporarily switching back to my iPhone felt like a downgrade. I did not expect to feel that way. Sure, there are many annoyances (such as the Marketplace app) , but I greatly appreciate:

• A Mail app that actually works really well. It blows the iPhone Mail app away, despite not having threaded conversations. I've been using the app for Exchange, Hotmail, and Gmail as three different tiles, and I love it!
• Seeing the next meeting & mail status (per account!) on the lock screen.
• The behavior of the keyboard (caps lock, seeing letters in lowercase or caps, the text suggestions bar, …).
• The cool "I'm running late" functionality.
• Live tiles. I'm looking forward to having a good Weather app that exploits this. The WeatherBug app is a great example of this feature. My iPhone home screen, on the other hand, always tells me it's 73° and sunny. That permanent forecast might work out okay in Cupertino, but it's rarely accurate in Redmond! :)
• Zune Pass. Actually very nice!
• The truly excellent Facebook and Twitter apps. The Facebook integration into hubs is cute, but certainly no replacement for the full Facebook experience. My biggest gripe about the Facebook app is that it currently doesn't show you who likes things.