I kind of agree with the OP, although I'm reluctant to really point it out. I think its incredible enough to have such elaborate and powerful apps in the first place free of charge, completely done out of other users' free time.

There are, however some general pointers I could suggest that app designers look at when getting to the point of checking the UI for their app (:P):

1) Always visible scrollbar on the right of the screen is a no-no. It immediately gives the appearance a cluttered feel and besides usually the scrollbars can't be manipulated by finger, but need the stylus. Why do we have a scroll bar if we can pan the page with touch-input? I do realise that at times it poses a problem to have both text "painting" and page scrolling in the same app at the same time, but I think the scrollbar should be avoided until the bitter end.

2) Prefer using elements that can be used with your finger. This will naturally result in the following: the appearance will "open up" as it loses its clutteredness as stuff can't be stuffed into the same view. You will have to make elements larger, thus clarifying the whole look. It will also force you to hide some of the functions to other pages.

3) Relating to having too much stuff on the screen, make the text in the app bigger than 10pt and use a font more consistent with the rest of the UI. For example italics tend to strike me most as looking very out-of-place. Same goes for insisting on a certain colour for a text. Think about support for various themes.

4) Never (ever!) hide the "X" and/or "minimize" keys. Not everyone knows of "ctrl + backspace"

5) I know you want to have all the things the app can do right there on the first page of "Settings". Consider evening out the less used features behind an "Advanced" tab or button. This way the user was warned of the jungle of options coming his way.

This is just a few, but I think these ae maybe the most common "flaws" I've stumbled upon. Like I said, really loving the App scene in Maemo, but making your app functional and looking good would be an ambitious yet justified combination.

If I had to name one "example app" that's native to Maemo for how it should turn out, I would name the Calendar and Modest. The calendar has a lot of features packed into it, but still it looks good and you can get the most of its features, even if it all isn't seen at a glance. There are numerous things I would change with how the calendar works in the first place, but graphical design is IMO good.

Modest is my second picking as an example app because it doesn't really have anything fancy going for it, but its dead-consistent with the rest of the UI and pulls off showing your e-mails, e-mail settings, postboxes etc. without it feeling like a techie's app. I think Claws, Nokia Messaging/Nokia Mail (whatever its truly called) and numerous other e-mail clients for mobiles are really too cluttered to ever compete with Modest.

Does this give anyone a more "concrete" idea about what the UIs should look like?