"When Nokia announced that it was going to partner with Microsoft and start using Windows Phone as the smartphone platform of choice (at least in the U.S.), I was floored, but I also knew that if Nokia was so confident in this platform, then I needed to get a Windows Phone device and start checking it out. I promptly picked up an HTC HD7.."
At first he was not too impressed with Window Phone as an operating system and went as far as to call it a "dumbphone". Than he got his hands on the Windows Phone "Mango" update he found himself using the Windows Phone more and more. ".. I’ve now been running Mango (in one form or another) for a few months, and I find myself coming back to the HD7 quite frequently.."
The reasons he gave for coming back to this device time and time again are pretty simple:
Windows Phone is freakin gorgeous. It’s easily one of the most aesthetically pleasing mobile operating systems out there, rivaling HP’s webOS in beauty. This is interesting because it’s really not very graphical, instead relying on beautiful typefaces and interesting fonts to really make itself stand out. It’s incredible, and it kind of sneaks up on you.
It syncs with nearly everything out of the box, and it does so really well. I really only need four accounts on my mobile device – Google, Exchange (for work), Facebook, and Twitter. Everything else is icing. Windows Phone handles all of these like a champ – especially the Exchange and Google support – it’s top notch, and more importantly, can sync both of them at the same time (Symbian cannot do this – not even in the upcoming Anna release). Repeat after me: I SHOULD NOT NEED TO CONNECT MY SMARTPHONE TO MY COMPUTER IN ORDER TO USE IT.
The Live Tiles are pretty sweet – so the main idea with the live tiles of Windows Phone is that you unlock your screen and can quickly glance at your phone to see all the important details. It even puts your next calendar appointment on the lockscreen, so you may not even need to unlock it. It’s brilliant and really works well – assuming the apps have a ‘live’ tile. Most don’t, and that’s a big problem.
The System-wide speech features are awesome. Speech-to-text, being able to talk to your phone and have it do things, works brilliantly. Text-to-speech, having your phone read stuff to you, is also great. If you get a Mango handset, connect a Bluetooth headset and have someone give you a call or send you an SMS. It’s just plain awesome, and most importantly – easy to use.
He also had a list of short comings for Windows Phones:
Customizations – you can change the ‘wallpaper’, but that’s only the photo that shows on the lockscreen. Your actual phone’s background can only be two colors – white or black. That’s it. You can, thankfully, change the colors of the live tiles and most app icons (depending on how the developer set it up). Unfortunately, you’re stuck with about 8 preset colors, and they’re the most drab versions of those colors that you could possibly have imagined. I was hoping that Mango would bring forth a way to choose *any* color (either via a color wheel or even better, letting me use the phone’s camera to ‘scan’ a color). Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I can ‘hack’ my phone and tweak some registry settings, but it’s surprisingly difficult to unlock your phone to allow this, and the registry *definitely* isn’t the kind of place you should be poking around. Not having custom accent colors is most certainly a missed opportunity in Mango. ( I agree 100% on this BTW Nokia needs to "Symbianfy" this part of Windows Phone)
Twitter notifications – The official Mango release includes Twitter support baked right into the ‘People’ hub (basically the contacts app). Like HTC’s Sense UI Twitter integration, it’s great if you follow less than ~100 people. I follow 500+, and it’s a nightmare to deal with. Plus, it doesn’t notify you of new mentions or direct messages, which means it’s basically useless. The official Twitter app also doesn’t support notifications, nor does it have a live tile (though I’m told by the dev team that they’re working on that). Seesmic has a Windows Phone app, and it also doesn’t support notifications or live tiles. I was able to purchase an app, Rowi, that supports both, but for a phone that has Twitter baked right in to not offer notifications and force the user to pay for an app that does just seems messed up.
Windows Phone Marketplace – it sucked before, and while the search is improved (it now separates out music from apps), it still sucks. Mainly because it doesn’t tell you if you already have an app installed when you’re browsing. So, if you’re perusing the top free apps, they just all say ‘Free’ – none say ‘Installed’ or ‘You’ve Already Got This One’ or anything. With Mango RTM, they’ve fixed this once you click on the app title to see the app’s main page, but that’s still 2 clicks (one to see it, one to back out). It’s also just not fun to browse.
Xbox Live – it’s a start, but none of the games that I bought for my Xbox came with a ‘mobile’ sub-game, and I still can’t really do anything with my avatar on it. Essentially, it’s a gaming-centric messaging service. Yes, you can purchase games for the phone through it, and yes, they have achievements, but as I’ve mentioned before, it would be so epic if I could work on my golf swing on the way to a buddy’s house, where my player on the Xbox would reflect the improvements.
Internet Explorer still kinda sucks. Then again, it’s Internet Explorer, so you kind of expect it to.
But in the end he had this to say:
"The thing is, if I could put Mango on my Nokia N8, I’d probably forget about the G2 and the HD7 within a week. In any case, if you think Windows Phone is a DOA platform with no hope, you’ve obviously not used Mango, and let’s face it, you probably won’t. But you’re missing out. Just remember how lame iOS was on the first iPhone….."
Via rickycadden
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