MVC PHP Frameworks Evaluated

PHP frameworks are my current focus, particularly CodeIgniter. I have extensive experience with AS MVC frameworks, e.g. Cairngorm, RobotLegs, and Mate. Following a recent project, my thoughts on PHP frameworks are starting to crystallize. Here incidentally is IMO one of the best summaries on CI from the community at large, reposted courtesy of Action on this stackoverflow post :

CodeIgniter is, without a doubt, the most well-documented and approachable PHP MVC framework out there. CakePHP's documentation is also very good, but the learning curve is slightly higher.

• CodeIgniter's models are optional and serve no function other than code separation. There's no integrated CRUD and its "Active Record" class is really just an alternative SQL syntax. It also doesn't support table associations. So, you will be building many large queries essentially from scratch. CakePHP's models are far more advanced and similar to those in Ruby on Rails. It supports table associations, has integrated CRUD, and behaviors. In addition, CakePHP has command line tools (Bake) that allow you to generate all the code for basic CRUD operations. Tweak a few things here and there and you've got a working prototype in minutes.
• CodeIgniter lacks some essential libraries that are needed in most applications (i.e. Authentication and ACL). You will need to rely on 3rd party libraries in many of your applications. CakePHP has integrated Auth and ACL, but both frameworks integrate with 3rd party libraries easily.
• Since CodeIgniter lacks much of the automation that CakePHP brings, there are no strict conventions to follow (this can be viewed as good or bad). This makes CodeIgniter a more flexible framework. Furthermore, its lack of features and automation do give it an advantage when it comes to speed. CodeIgniter is one of the fastest PHP MVC frameworks out there. That said, the framework is rarely the bottleneck in your in application...and you should be choosing a framework based on productivity, not its execution speed.
• Both frameworks have large and helpful communities. CodeIgniter has their official forums and an IRC channel. CakePHP has a google group and an active IRC channel. CakePHP is currently the most popular PHP MVC framework with the largest community behind it.

In conclusion, if you want a fast, flexible, well-documented framework, and don't mind writing extra code and relying on 3rd party libraries, go with CodeIgniter. If you want a powerful, feature-rich framework that does most of the heavy lifting through automation, and you don't mind having to follow strict conventions, go with CakePHP.

As you can see, it is a comparison of CI with another framework, CakePHP, which is now on my shortlist to test out. Here is a Google Trends search of the relative trendiness of these two open-source frameworks (update: now three OS frameworks with symfony).

http://www.google.com/trends?q=codeigniter%2C+cakephp%2C+symfony&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

CakePHP has an earlier footprint. Next, I will examine CakePHP support of php5. I'm curious to know of any more advanced, more OO and generally more hurricane-nestled-in-a-typhoon-wrapped-in-a-tornado PHP frameworks out there. I would prefer a stricter MVC pattern with a higher degree of decoupling.