One quick example is the mail client. You can only see about 5 messages at a time and that's with only a one line preview of the body. On iOS with a 1 line preview I see 8 messages and I can usually see the entire from/subject line. May seem like a minor gripe but it just adds extra steps to everything I want to do. Is there an option to reduce the font sizes? I couldn't find it last time I looked.

Getting all that information on an iPhone would involve individually opening and checking around 7 different apps

Depends what type of notifications you have setup. I can just look at my lock-screen or Notification Center for most of this. This morning when I picked up my phone I had a few CNN news alerts, a bunch of FaceBook notifications, some text messages, a game reminding me it was my turn, weather, calendar events, etc.