There definitely is more freedom, but I do have to commend Apple's ability to deliver a finished product. I played with the Google N1 when it was still under testing within the Google community and there were a few quirks which would prevent me from really considering it as a replacement. Specifically, the UI was not as snappy and the phone actually crashed a couple of times.
From a developer's perspective, I prefer the Android platform because I can actually develop apps for it without having to buy an expensive Mac. However, I haven't yet seen a phone that I like enough--I'm still waiting for an iPhone-experience-comparable phone to come out from HTC. They're the ones most likely to deliver a solid Android product.
Windows Phone 7 is also an interesting case. I had the opportunity to observe it from close by since I have a friend whose on the WinMo team (or I guess WinPho, now) at MS... didn't get a chance to play with it, unfortunately. MS is moving in a different direction, though, by keeping their app framework a little more closed and getting rid of multi-tasking. Having used a WinMo 5 phone in the past, these seem like drastic improvements. The only thing those were good for was development--you could just download the development kit for Visual Studio and then use the emulators/mobile platform framework to test. It was very finicky, even then, though.
