6.5 (and 6.5.1 if it ever sees the light of day) makes alot of great UI improvements.
The lock screen has alot of improvements, as well as the main standard winmo UI.
The top bar with all the small ass icons on it is now magnifyable, and touch friendly (swipe, scroll, etc).
The titanium theme is awesome (similar to zune HD's UI).
And you're right, the base UI from 6.0 and lower is terrible...however 6.5 is alot better.
Not to mention all the third party UIs available..
Symbian there is handy shell -- and.....that's it.
Even samsung, who spent tons of energy customizing the windows mobile UI to skin every single preference screen and built in app has done nothing of the sort for symbian...except for touchwiz, which is home screen only, and...a huge dissapointment, until we see some functional widgets available (I am sure there will be just why is it taking so long? Widget contest has been over for months..)
Flash and QT are great...but if they can't be integrated into the shell or home screen -- then no matter what app is made, it loses a HUGE piece of functionality on that fact alone.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think SPB Mobile shell \ TouchFlo3d are bad shell extenders?
I think they're both amazing...Symbian has nothing like that.
Especially the new touchflo3d with the animated weather backgrounds -- that seriously knocked the wind out of me when I saw that...
Even when I saw the Hero's weather clock, that amazed me as well...I mean I am easily amused but ...
What Symbian equivilants are there that even come close to those?