Who is going to be the first to wow me with a mobile phone UI?

I just came home (04:06) from a New Year’s Day Party which was quite revealing. We had a Nintendo Wii with one controller being shared amongst 4 players, in between turns people of course would play with their mobile phones. Entire conversations were being started when everyone was showing off pictures they took or newly acquired ring tones. I got a chance to play with a relatively new Samsung slider phone, a Windows Mobile candy bar style device, and an LG Chocolate.

Each device had a completely different operating system, and user experience, but none have made me go "whoa that’s awesome!" My Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E61 doesn’t even make me go "whoa!"

So what is this "whoa" factor? All you have to do is look at Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and more recently Beryl for Linux. The subtle fade ins and outs, 3D effects, audio queues, and innovate ways to manipulate windows and media, these are all things that make my experience richer and make me go "whoa!" To this day I can vividly remember the first time I played with OS X and saw that crazy dock and expose, Windows Vista with its subtle bling, and finally got Beryl to run that famed cube desktop manager on my Ubuntu box.

So while yes Nokia is making phones with powerful 3D graphics engines for the sake of the next generation N-Gage platform, what are they doing to harness this power to make my interface experience a memorable and visually striking one?

Goodnight for me, and enjoy your lunch (12:06) Finland!