Strictly speaking Lance Ulanoff's op-ed asks "Is Windows Phone the Best Mobile Platform You’re Not Using?", but it's still a fascinating read. Essentially it's a fresh look at Windows Phone, drawing direct comparisons to iOS and Android (what, no mention of Symbian? tsk tsk...), and Ulanoff comes to a solid conclusion on the state of Windows Phone. What do you think?

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Metro interface is a malleable tower of hubs that brings more sense to your mobile world than virtually any other platform. Yes, it looks good. Windows Phone 7 features one of my favorite mobile interface color palettes–second only to the iPhone’s gray, rain drop speckled backdrop and consistent, brightly colored app icons...

Windows Phone is full of sensible touches and navigation that should make sense to the both smartphone veterans and neophytes. You can swipe up and down to see all of your tiles (or hubs), and once you’re inside a hub, you’re usually scrolling left to right you see different facets of information for that hub. Yes, you can add and remove tiles. I added Gmail and Twitter.

There's some spirited debate in the comments as well, with a wide spread of opinions from fans of all the mobile platforms. The rise of articles taking another look at Windows Phone, especially now that Mango is here, is something that Microsoft should be proud of - by whatever means they have positioned Windows Phone as the third system, and as everyone looks for new stories in the mobile marketplace, the delight of having an underdog to champion against the established brands is far too good an angle to not exploit.

WebOS nearly managed to be that man, but didn't;t have the momentum to keep it up. It looks like Windows Phone has. How that translates to the 2011 Q4 (and more importantly, the Q1 2012 numbers) will be fun to watch.