I have found call quality to be very good to excellent, the speakerphone also works well.

Yes you can make many shortcuts on the desktop.

I like the feature where you can create a shortcut to a particular contact on the desktop and when you click it a box opens with all the ways of contacting that person, their home phone number, mobile, SMS & IM etc.

You can also make a desktop shortcut that opens the phone application. However I usually press the power button and select phone, I have got used to that.