I am really familiar with the current system and how it works. But a good 48 hours of no sleep made me go into default S60 mode of operation (previous E90 user) and it took a good 5 minutes to find out how to SMS a contact that called me 20 minutes back. It makes no sense to be able to SMS an unknown number and not actual contact numbers. I hope these minor annoyances get fixed soon.
I have to agree with all your points we took these features for granted on S60 platform, guess that comes from its maturity as a phone OS.