Re: Actually quite like it
I had to send my HTC Desire HD off for repair at the end of last year due to a hardware fault (speaker blown) and the only backup phones I had were a G1 and a Motorola Milestone. I took the opportunity to buy a second-hand Samsung Omnia 7 for £150 on fleaBay because I had been curious about WinPho7 and almost bought into it instead of Android when I got my G1.
I figured it wasn't a bad price for a fairly new handset with no marks on it and I got it within a week. Unfortunately, coming from Android I was used to being able to set things up my way, how I wanted and customising it to suit me and WinPho7 has very little in that department. The choices you seem to end up as, "pick one of these options", with no third-party customisation. Is that a bad thing? That depends on the user and what they want really. I can see the appeal in terms of simplicity and keeping things consistent through the phone experience but it won't be for everyone.
In the end I decided that it was a pretty good phone, my first experience of of Super AMOLED left a lasting impression, and the OS was ok but that it only had the potential to be more. Right now it feels like a lot of recent games - sell the core product and then add DLC / updates later. The only difference is the OS updates are free (to date). They need more functionality to attract customers, you can't sell minimalism as a feature when people are used to having tons of choice with Android and the shiny-shiny of Apple. Yes there will be people who it will appeal to but not in massive numbers.
Nokia hardware has generally been pretty good, it's the software side that has let them down since the N95 onwards and even that was a mess in terms of options hidden in menus within menus and more menus. Nothing was intuitive. I haven't owned or used an N8 so I can't comment but I hear a lot about how it was a fantastic camera and decent UI experience. It says a lot when I'll be looking to pick up a second-hand Nokia N8 over a Lumia and WinPho.