... since many of your complaints are factually, provably incorrect.

"Email - the lockin to Hotmail and inability to use another email as the driver for contacts / calenders / etc...."

Other than needing a Live account to identify your device (just as Android requires a Gmail account to do the same), WP7 draws contacts, calendar, etc. from a wide variety of sources. In fact, I find its unified view of data to be more consistent than Android.

"VPN - nada" - Wrong

"Facebook - it does some things well but others (photo tagging / Flikr) are missing" - Wrong again, photo tagging is there. Even automatically detects faces to suggest I need to tag them.

"Maps - compared to Google maps... enough said" - Maps work fine and are "feature complete". Bing Maps work just as well as Google Maps, which is to say there is a small chance you'll be sent down the wrong path. In my experience, Google Maps send me in the wrong direction slightly more often, but Bing's driving time estimations tend to be wildly optimistic.

"Photos - why does the OS automatically resize? There are times when I want the full photo in all its detail." - It doesn't resize them. You can zoom in plenty on the device, and see them in full size after syncing too.

"Win8 - have yet to see any guarantees devices today will get the upgrade." - That's true for EVERY phone OS with the exception of iPhone, which has done a good job at ensuring OS upgrade availability.

J.Ja