iPhone vs Android vs Windows Mobile

I've got an Lumia 900, 4GS, and an HTC Inspire (Android)

The HTC I rooted within 24hrs and put custom ROMs on it. My favorite ones where usually the MIUI variants. I'd ditch their launcher and go with the Zeam launcher and keep the phone's UI very light. Have run a few 4.x ROMs on it too. It's older hardware but you can over and under volt the CPU, over and underclock it, kill all of the crap in the back ground and get a single core 1Ghz CPU to be very performant.

Gave the iPhone to my wife, hate it. Find the OS buggy, don't like the uber desk top approach, and hate that there is no back button. It's too controlled and too uniformed, meh. The screen seems tiny too. I hate her iPad too, same grips and don't get me started with iTunes.... so much dislike.

Find since I tried the Lumia I've not used the Android as a phone at all. I had a Focus when WP7 first came out, was not that much of a fan. Like the Lumia better.

With Android I'd only do it if geeking out with your device is what you want to do. I find all of the stock manufacture UI's horrid. The basic AOSP UI is good, but can be a lot better with some custom tweaks. I really like being able to do what ever I want with the device. I hated the native 2.x Exchange app, needed to use something like Touchdown to get decent HTML Exchange experience. I do like the 4.x Exchange experience. Hated the proxy support (LACK OF) for use in corporate settings. I now use the Inspire in my car to tether the car's OBDII data to via Bluetooth (using Torque App) and as a GPS puck for my rooted Kindle Fire. I use the Kindle as a 7" display in the car, audio source, GPS device, game device for the kiddo. The Lumia provides internet access, works really well. With just the Inspire I can tether over devices to it via WiFi too, but it's limited to the slower data network and that starts to show with a few devices attached.

With the Lumia I really like the Exchange integration and the Nokia apps for maps, navigation (being able to download and use maps offline is fantastic) and their image app is good too. I find that I don't really want to geek out on the WP7 platform. I notice the device a lot less, it's there it works, it works as a phone, the screen is the right size, the screen looks good.

Keep in mind that all of the current WP7 devices will NOT be getting WP8 coming out later this year. There's no hardware related features supported in WP8 that I want, so I'm not sure if I care about it yet. The Lumia will be getting WP7.8 and that sounds like it will address your complaint of the Live Tiles and two screen layout.

Overall:
iOS wins the App race, if you want tons of apps iOS is it.
iOS wins the aftermarket race, there's so many different devices and integration scenarios.

Android wins the geek'ing out race. If you want the device to be yours customized to your wants, 'Droid it is. There's also so much more hardware out there to play with. Quad core CPUs and mini HDMI oh my! There's a ton a of Apps for Android too, but I still can not get past any of the stock UIs.

WP7.x is simple and works great in corporate settings. I'd say that WP7.x feels like the most adult experience of the three. My wife was using my Lumia on a long road trip this last week and she's interested in WP over iOS now with the simpler UI.

Neither of game on our phones very much, neither of us have an obscure Apps that we use, so we're really looking for phone performance, email integration (Exchange, Hotmail, and Gmail), RSS, and web browser performance. I use mine as a GPS and map device a lot too.

I've got a Motorola droid bionic and it replaced the original moto droid. I really like it and did look at the iPhone 4s but the biggest hang ups for me is the lack of any kind of widgets and non flexibility. For example I'm a corporate email user and the iPhone mail is ok, but not very functional for me. With my droid the default email app is worse but I can install a third party add on that is a far better email client than either phone by default. If I don't like the text messaging interface I download a new app. Apple doesn't give you those options. Oh, and flash player was another huge sticking point for me.

I agree that androids flexibility giving vendors the ability can make it suck but it's also the beauty of it. Think back to windows and the old Mac of the 90's. Mac made you buy all their hardware and limited software which made it consistent and stable, but that was also its downfall. People like to be flexible and I don't think apple has figured that out yet.

I was all about buying a Droid for my first smartphone. Then I played around with a 4S for awhile. Wow. Love it, easy to operate (really intuitive). Screen size is really what I thought I wanted... as in Galaxy Nexus, but the 4S screen size hasn't bothered me at all. Resolution is more than fine.

Since this is my first smartphone I have nothing to compare it too but at this point the $199 + $30 mth data plan is well worth it to me. I have nothing but great things to say about the op. system and the phone overall. How did gadget boy do without one of these for so long ?

And yes, Siri works great too.

I'm looking forward to the new Windows 8 Mobile.