I've now installed it, and used it enough to have some initial impressions.

- Animations generally look a lot better.

- Buttons, though obviously now buttons look like they were rendered in MS paint.

-Status bar. Finally. Praise spaghetti monster.

-Notifications screen looks massively better.

-Not being able to pin 4 folders to the bottom of the main screen with all frequently used apps contained therein slows workflow significantly, forcing you to swipe to the app grid. An option to do this would be good.

-Speaking of the (ugly) app grid ... I still don't understand why it is unthemed. It's always looked like an afterthought and remains so now.

-The only thing the lock screen (and pulley menu) were previously good for was quickly silencing / muting the phone. There's no way to do this at all now. Which is a total joke.

-Ambivalent about change to buttons rather than swipes for app covers, but that they haven't been expanded upon is pretty bad - we've desperately needed a wifi / mobile data toggle forever on the settings app cover as Conman is so poor and connectivity so unreliable.

- Still very little configurability of gestures. Jaakko said he'd be looking to make it more configurable in response to some feedback. Hope this hasn't been abandoned.

-Split screen mode isn't in and hasn't even been mentioned since the end (initial end) of the kickstarter. Schedule was for October .... I wonder if they've even started work on implementing the code for it and how long it will take.

-Pulley menus seem less stuttery, but the one on the lockscreen is totally pointless and the option to lock the screen with downwards swipe seems like a bizarre thing to take out (again, option please).

-For those already familiar with the OS and its resource issues, the dead app covers just serve as an unpleasant reminder of how bad this is. But given that you can't quickly access your most used apps anymore, I guess this attempt to sweep it under the rug is better given the new UI.

-Lack of improvement of core apps is shameful. Little to nothing has been done in 2 years. Either functionality or design. That they don't have folders implemented yet in Gallery is particularly extraordinary, given that tablets are first and foremost intended for media and browsing. It's been done to death already, but still no text highlighting in browser (or notes) and no global copy paste. what is so hard about this? we don't even have an ETA for these most basic functions of a modern OS.

- Apps do close much more smoothly, but this is about it as far as I can see for performance improvements. Oh, and keyboard hasn't hung on me yet, but that was more of a bug.

- Performance wise, nothing has changed. Apps still hang when loading the CPU to a significant extent, OOM is still awful, browser is still dog **** slow, and there is still a huge gulf in performance between native apps and android apps in Alien Dalvik (I still suspect a bad or very rudimentary task scheduler in SF). I know some were hoping for change here, but there are no signs of hope that are obvious.

-Speaking of the browser, there seems to be a new rendering bug. When a reasonably complex site is being loaded and it's semi-hanging (as happens constantly), when you scroll, text and images that were off screen but already loaded in are blurred out, and then only unblur when it unhangs after 2-3 seconds. It looks awful, and it's yet another reason not to use the frankly appalling browser. Also, why can we still not swipe to close tabs? Opera and FF on Android let you, so why does the native browser of a "gesture based" OS force you to press a button?

I could go on, but so far I feel like it's a case of the emperor's new clothes.