The main "vision" of the UI seems to be "you're looking through a small viewport onto a much larger area". Which doesn't seem like a feature to me ... having a

The main "vision" of the UI seems to be "you're looking through a small viewport onto a much larger area". Which doesn't seem like a feature to me ... having a too-small display and having to scroll a lot has always been really unpleasant in my experience: using remote desktop to connect from a small display even to one that's only moderately larger always gives this uncomfortable feeling (perhaps not unlike claustrophobia?) of being in a cramped space and always being partially blind to your surroundings. Additionally, one naturally tries to keep a "full size map" in one's head, which is a lot of extra cognitive load. I believe this effect is mitigated when most/all of the offscreen elements are just more instances of the same type of thing as those already shown (example: repeating table views), and also when the offscreen portion of the elements are along a single axis only (i.e. you would only have to lengthen the device in a single direction to be able to see everything at once). Somehow this type of scrolling doesn't cause the same "looking through a keyhole" response in me. Many of Palm's advertisements for webOS portray a similar effect (screens tapering into offside infinity on either side of the device) which seems to me likewise unattractive and poorly considered, though the actual experience of the device doesn't appear to be like that, and certainly isn't designed around it as a feature like WP7S is. Regardless, the ads emphasize complexity and overwhelming amounts of data -- to their unfortunate detriment, I expect.