I've used a N900 and I don't see what massive difference there is between its resistive touchscreen and a capacitive touchscreen when it comes to user experience. The N900 achieved good feedback using the vibration motor and extremely basic animations. I don't think you realistically need more than what the Hildon UI gave you when it comes to a good user experience. The Hildon UI targeted much older hardware (albeit with proprietary graphics drivers). It should be possible to replicate the performance of the Hildon UI with the lima drivers if an explicit focus was placed on ensuring that above-all the UI was responsive rather than being pretty.