Google Sync was EOL'd 2 days before I bought my Windows 8 phone, leaving me with no way to sync my Google calendar on it. I don't want to be in anybody's walled garden exclusively, I want more interoperability and platform independence. Even Google has plenty of room for improvement.

It's certainly best in class in touch parallax and mediocre usability.

Because nothing defines usability like a crap soft keyboard, broken voice search, broken inter-app sharing, tiny, static notifications, and junk stock apps, right?

Take away Gmail, Google maps, and Google search and all your iphone has left to brag about is smooth scrolling.