I havent really looked at the email besides setup. gmail allows you to sync your email, contacts and calender from one place (although i unchecked contacts and calender in settings, my wife doesnt really use the calender) Another awkward thing was lumia doesnt sync with Outlook, you need to download a strange tool to link hotmail to outlook and then sync your contacts to windows live. weird.
Oh the nokia "contact transfer" tool is so strange also, i tried to connect the iphone 4 to the lumia 900 using bluetooth with "contact transfer" without much success untll i hit pair on both phones at the exact same time. This took me about 20 tries to figure out and it is classic Nokia.

Since typing would be email centric thing, The keyboard implementation is good though. The layout of keys looks irregular on the keyboard and phone daler, which is kind of the design preference of wp7. non centered & unaligned lines, uneven size boxes on the same line. Gives it a unique look.