Having not used Modest in Fremantle yet, I can only base my opinions on some screen shots and a recent Screencast (4.9 MB OGV file).

It seems to me like a "traditional" desktop approach is still being taken in the design of the maemo user interface of the new version of Modest. Sure, it's more finger friendly, but a lot of screen real estate is being used to display items that might be better served in a "Sub View" (see the Maemo 5 HIG for for info). This is especially detrimental to the space allotted for the "Body" field of a New email.

Anyway, I've attached a reconfigured screen shot to display what I mean. By removing some of the visible fields and creating buttons for their functionality, I've greatly increased the size of the Body field. Heck, it even gave me room to add a couple more important (imho) buttons. (Alternately, the Body field could almost occupy the entire screen if all of the top-most buttons were placed into a window-specific View Menu -- again, view the HIG for more about that.)

As an aside, while viewing various screen shots of the current/new Modest UI, I've found that many elements are either not centered properly on the screen, or they don't use consistent spacing when compared to other like elements, etc. This is usually only by a few pixels here and there, but I think it is important.

I didn't really want to add this to the Brainstorm -- yet -- but I'd love your opinions...

Tim