Hey, judging by the video I don't agree that your app is 'very well polished'. Check out Cut the Rope, that's the kind of polish that is expected from an App Store game.
Suggestions:
- Add a tweening for picking up and dropping letters
- centering of the board should happen automatically
- put the restart button somewhere else. It looks weird when you drop a letter on top of it and it appears behind it (e.g. the 'm' in 'seem')
- can't really tell from the video whether you already did this, but implement iPhone-like scrolling w/ momentum and bouncy behavior
I think the app is indeed polished. It looks really good. But you do have a point in that users, specially iOS users, expect a lot of feedback from the app in the form of animations. I remember reading the guys from @mikamobile talking about how they even added a little bounce animation to the characters of Battleheart (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battleheart/id394057299?mt=8) when the user selects them with a tap. That's something you barely see because the character is under your finger, but it speaks for the amount of animation feedback necessary for a game to look "amazing" in the eyes of a current iOS user.
Suggestions:
- Add a tweening for picking up and dropping letters
- centering of the board should happen automatically
- put the restart button somewhere else. It looks weird when you drop a letter on top of it and it appears behind it (e.g. the 'm' in 'seem')
- can't really tell from the video whether you already did this, but implement iPhone-like scrolling w/ momentum and bouncy behavior