But basic UI evidently can't compete equally with a more stylized UI, as the iPhone shows pretty clearly
Support that. I can name several apps on my iPhone that are hardly high-style, yet useful and well received (Quickoffice, iFitness, Yelp!... just to name 3 on my home screen).
Larger than this. This is something that vector graphics solves extremely well. You want really nice images at multiple resolutions? Illustrator is your friend.
Highly styled apps have taken a while to arrive on Android, but they definitely are arriving. The new Twitter app for Android, for example, is might nice looking. (here's an article about it: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/twitter-for-android-robots-l... , and another here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/twitter-for-a.... One thing not readily apparent from the screenshots is the way the whole app is animated. The little bird and cloud backgrounds are animated and move on almost every screen.
Top 20 selling apps in the Apple store[1]. A quick perusal will convince most people. I didn't check all of them, but I saw ONE which used standard display components at all in the screenshots (the guitar one), and it only does so for setting preferences.
Support that. I can name several apps on my iPhone that are hardly high-style, yet useful and well received (Quickoffice, iFitness, Yelp!... just to name 3 on my home screen).
Larger than this. This is something that vector graphics solves extremely well. You want really nice images at multiple resolutions? Illustrator is your friend.