I love my Windows Phone 7

There’s really no other way to say it, I love my Windows Phone 7 (WP7) after a week of solid use. Is everything about it perfect? Absolutely not… there are still places that need to be, and I trust will be, improved upon. But as it stands now, it’s a dang impressive 1.0 for a brand new approach to the phone. First a little context… my comments are based on my experience using the Samsung Focus on AT&T after two weeks. I was formerly an iPhone 3G (who “downgraded” to iOS 4.x) user on AT&T and over the years have had the iPhone, Windows Mobile 6, Treo and Palm. One phone I have zero experience with is any of the Android-based phones.

After a few days of use what really stood out is how fresh the user experience is. There are things I can see that Microsoft copied from some of the other leaders out there such as how to arrange the homepage by pressing and holding the screen. But what’s cool is how some things are very different and new... and they nailed it. For instance, I love how the notifications (either from apps or text messages) are displayed at the top in a very non-intrusive way unlike how the iPhone hijacks whatever you are working on. The live tiles looked like a gimic to me, but I find them to be very nice and true to the whole “glance & go” theme the WP7 ads. I also love how Facebook is integrated right into the What’s New pivot on the People hub as well as on a specific contact.

I also absolutely love the search button and back button. It is taking some getting used to, but the back button is awesome. It eliminates the need for a lot of cancel buttons, like when you’re starting to draft an email or moving through different apps. As for search, I love how fast it is and how it’s context aware. For instance, if I’m in the people hub, it searches only people. If I am in my calendar, it searches my calendar. If I’m on the home page of the phone, it searches the whole phone.

The concept of hubs is also very welcomed. You don’t realize how much you went in and out of apps on the iPhone until you move into the People hub or Pictures hub. All my contacts from Exchange, Windows Live and Facebook are all integrated into one place: the People hub. I do wish it allowed me to link to the person’s Twitter identity though. It is nice though to click on a contact (either via search or via a live tile or via the Recent contact list… another nice innovation) and be able to text/email/call/map to an address on that card. I love going into the Pictures hub and immediately seeing all my albums from Facebook & Windows Live without having to load a ton of family pictures into my phone.

When I first saw the screenshots and demos for the email and calendar I have to say I was honestly very disappointed. It looked way too simplistic to me. But now, I love the simplicity. First, moving around in my email & calendar is VERY fast. I love how I can flag certain folders to be synchronized on the phone without having to drill down into folders each time I need to find something. For instance, I have a folder for each class I teach like Inbox \ CriticalPathTraining \ Classes \ 2010 \ 2010.12.13 – Boston GSA2010. Scrolling on the iPhone to that folder was a PITA… esp. because it expanded all folders by default. Now that I sync that folder, it shows up when I tap the folder icon in my email and it’s in my list of sync’d folders. Very nice! I also love how fast the email auto-complete is… VERY slick! It works like Outlook… as you type it changes. On my iPhone, you’d type and wait… sometimes up to 10s for it to find a contact.

Another neat innovation is the autocorrect/autocomplete/type-ahead experience. On the iPhone this worked fine for me, but now I hate it after seeing the WP7 implementation. As I type it doesn’t mess with what I’m typing, it instead displays a horizontal list of word suggestions that I can pick from or just ignore.

The Office hub, specifically OneNote, is *long* overdue. I’m a big OneNote fan and use it on my laptops, keeping notes in sync using Windows Live Mesh (part of Windows Live Essentials). Now, I can have a note that lives in my SkyDrive and have it sync’d between my phone & my desktop. FINALLY! The only thing I’d want more: a way to share specific pages in that notebook with other people, like my wife.

Samsung Focus:

What a great phone! I was sold on the HTC Surround, not because of the speakers but because it looked like a more solid phone. After reading a ton of reviews I turned into a lemming and went with the same thing everyone else was going with: the Samsung Focus. WOW… what an amazing screen! I love how light and slim this phone is. The button arrangement is also great… turn it on its side to take a picture or video and guess where the camera button is: right where your finger would be on a digital camera.

The battery is better than my iPhone 3G (which was only 6mo old after having to get a replacement due to a 15mo baby dropping it in the grocery store one day). The speaker on the phone is amazing too… amazed how loud and clear it is. The phone is also lightning fast. I am looking forward to the certified microSD cards so I can bump this phone from 8GB to 40GB and load it up with more music.

Apps & Zune Marketplace:

The only downside to being an early adopted is people are still catching up to the competition. This is definitely true for the number of apps available in the marketplace. I’ve found quite a few I like (DirecTV, Facebook, Fandago, Netflix, OpenTable, Seesmic, Twitter, WeatherBug, Unit Converter, etc)… some need to be improved. For instance, the Facebook app is SLOW… it is in bad need of some perf & responsiveness improvements. It also doesn’t have the ability to check-in using Facebook places.

The Twitter app is buggy (I can draft a tweet, but the send button doesn’t respond at times) and lacks things like “reply all” or “mention all”. The Seesmic app feels slow… but I have faith in these guys as they are quick to update their desktop apps.

There are a few apps I really am missing though. I want eWallet (a password minder app), some sports apps that show live scores, stats, odds, box scores and play-by-play (what I really want is Sportacular). I’m also missing my travel apps like TripIt and FlightTrackPro. What’s really disappointing is I contacted TripIt’s customer service who said they did not have plans for a WP7 app, but would re-evaluate based on customer feedback. So send feedback!!! Otherwise, if you have an app you use to track your trips like TripIt, could you recommend one? I tried Wipolo, but it wasn’t full-featured enough and is heavily slanted towards Europe.

However I expect this to get resolved over time. There are over 15,000 registered developer accounts for the WP7 and after only two weeks in the market there are over 3,000 apps in the marketplace.

As for games, there is a huge collection that is pretty impressive. Ilomilo, The Harvest, Flight Control, Max and the Magic Marker, Popper 2… all great games.

What Needs Improvement:

As with anything new, there are bound to be some things that aren’t perfect and need to be improved so here’s my list of things that have been disappointing & I hope to see improved in no particular order:

Zune Marketplace (both on the desktop & on the phone) – for a company so focused on search, I’m floored the marketplace search experience on the phone sucks as bad as it does. Everywhere else in the phone it is context aware. But even if I’m in the apps section of the marketplace, if I search it searches the whole marketplace including artists, albums, songs, podcasts and videos. I just want to search for apps! The experience in the Zune desktop app isn’t much better. However I do like that there are categories and subcategories.
Browser based search for apps – Apple really sucks at this for the App Store… I had hoped Microsoft would have nailed this out of the box. Seems they are playing catch up with things like Bing Visual Search, which is quite nice.
Tasks – I don’t get this… Exchange provides email, contacts, calendar and tasks. The first three are on the phone, but not tasks. I use tasks religiously… and so desperately need it on the phone. I’m not sure if this is because Exchange Active Sync (EAS) doesn’t include tasks or what… but it really is needed.
SharePoint Workspace – Huge disappointment. This was only designed to work inside the firewall, not for internet accessible SharePoint sites. This makes it useless to consumers... absolutely useless. Only the enterprise customers can use this who are rolling out phones inside their organizations. Come on… please address this MSFT. For now, I’m stuck to the browser.
Bluetooth stack – It’s becoming apparent there’s an issue with the Bluetooth stack in the OS. I’ve seen numerous reports across the different phones & carriers of people having issues. I paired my phone with my car, but my wife (who also got a Samsung Focus) can’t pair hers with her car. I also can’t get it to pair with my 1yr old Jabra headset. When it is in use, I can hear just fine, but others have said when I talk it cuts in and out.

Overall I *love* the phone… best phone experience, best phone (Samsung Focus), and best phone OS I’ve ever used. Great work Microsoft… I’m looking forward to seeing the future improvements and updates!

Technorati Tags: windows phone,windows phone 7,wp7

posted on Saturday, November 27, 2010 7:51 AM

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# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/27/2010 8:13 AM stacyDraper

Can you share more about working with lists and workspaces? Say a user at ACME gets a phone, with all the help in the world from it they won't be able to hook up?
Also curious about the custom list experience? There are a wealth of videos out there on a variety of different documents but nothing about managing metadata.
That you for writing this article it is outstanding!

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/27/2010 9:29 AM Des

At the moment I'm stuck with a iPhone through work. However, I got my wife a HTC Surround and this is the first smartphone she has used. She used my iPhone a couple of times when traveling and she didn't like it. However, she really likes her new Windows Phone 7. The interface is what has sold her on it - its simple and straightforward.

A couple of things that are frustrating us though...
1 - it will not connect to a wireless that does not broadcast the SID. That makes it really difficult to convince my boss to let me switch over as the company network is non-broadcasting.
2 - my wife uses a POP3 email account through our ISP. I connected to it without a problem. However that leaves everything she has in Outlook - calendar and tasks - out in the cold. Unless I am missing a way to sync her Outlook to the phone.

Overall, very happy with the new phone particularly as my wife has been very pleased with its ease of use.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/27/2010 12:31 PM Matt Ranlett

Right on and I totally agree with pretty much everything you said.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/27/2010 1:11 PM AC [MVP SharePoint]

@Stacy - I'm assuming you're asking about the SharePoint Workspace integration. The way I explain it is how it works... only designed to work over an intra, not inter. But you've always got the browser & mobile UI.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/27/2010 1:48 PM JD

@Des - I had the same problem, but there is a sort of work around. If you setup a Windows Live Account with your ISP email, you can then install the Outlook Connector and get your Calendar and Contacts data onto Windows Live which will synch with the phone.

I have NO IDEA why they aren't allowing a synch connection with Outlook on the PC unless you are using exchange.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/28/2010 8:30 AM Des

@JD - Thanks for that. I did a little digging and found a KB article detailing the process. Given that you can sync an iPhone with Outlook it doesn't make much sense that Microsoft didn't include that ability - maybe its due to Zune needing a more indepth rewrite to include that.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/28/2010 10:07 AM Sam

I really need to play with one of these. I'm still going to be hard pressed to leave Android, but if the company wants to get a demo unit for me to play with, I'm not going to complain.

That being said, Android does have a non-intrusive notification bar at the top of the screen. Slide the bar down and you get a list of the various notifications.

Android also has contact sync between Exchange, GMail, Twitter, and Facebook.

I do wish we would get Netflix, but they've said that Android is too fragmented to provide a complete solution, so it'll be created on a phone-by-phone basis. That's one downside to the open-source thing.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/28/2010 4:14 PM VG

The Facebook app was perf tested by the WP7 team themselves and they couldn't recommend additional tweaks other than what had already been done.

The underlying problem is that the Silverlight runtime on the phone needs a lot of optimization; and some controls need to be tossed and rewritten.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/29/2010 4:18 AM John

I switched from the iphone a couple of weeks ago and it really took some getting used to the windows interface but I have to say now I'm into it I find I'm doing everyday tasks like emailing far quicker. Have hit a few bugs though

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/29/2010 5:42 AM AC [MVP SharePoint]

@VG - Sorry but I don't accept that. There are plenty of over SL apps that do similar things (and more advanced things) such as the Twitter apps that perform much better than the FB app. Tapping on a link to see a response or a status does nothing while it loads it. Provide feedback that you're loading or something like that. Add support for checking into places.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 11/29/2010 11:11 AM VG

@AC Long lists with multiple rich visual controls are like kryptonite for the SL runtime on WP7. A tweet is a pretty simple entity, but think of all the stuff you see in a Facebook news feed, e.g. a status update, a photo album or picture, a link, etc. These are all different enough to be different XAML control templates, so there's a lot of complex binding going on. You'd be surprised at how much binding in XAML slows things down on the phone.

I'm sure performance will improve as the developers learn how to build more performant applications for the phone and get their hands on the profiling tools, but I've seen first hand that the implementation of the SL runtime is at least partially to blame.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 12/9/2010 10:45 AM Chris Johnson

My Trips for Windows Phone 7 out now! TriptIt data on your phone! Offline sync etc...

Marketplace link: social.zune.net/redirect

Screenshots and writeup here: http://acewidgets.com/my-trips/

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 12/10/2010 4:16 AM shenzhen2112

I absolutely agree. Simply put I LOVE my HD7 WP7 device. I'm fond of iOS and Android both but I also find I zip in and out of daily phone tasks much quicker on WP7.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 12/20/2010 12:17 PM mar

I love this phone as well. But I am having problems with missing apps. I'll install an app, then go to use it, and it's not on my list of downloaded apps. I have went to the app again just to be sure it installed, and it only gives me the option to share the app. So it has obviously been installed. I have even turned the phone off and back on in case it needed to "refresh". Still nothing. Any suggestions?

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 1/19/2011 4:17 PM jeedel

I really LOVE my my Focus WP7. It is about time someone designed a user friendly phone. The interface on this phone is a human factors accomplishment. It is making my life easier.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 3/22/2011 3:46 PM Brian

Windows phone 7 is amazing i have the Dell venue pro version. I have used both android and Apple Os as well as blackberry, windows 7 beats them all its the most responsive phone ive ever used and it gets you in and out right away very simple. The dell venue pro is the best designed version so far of windows 7 its an amazing looking phone its very exclusive its only available on T- mobile online not in stores and fron Dell themselves as well as microsoft. Great job with WP7 microsoft

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 5/22/2011 8:17 AM Nasher

I am glad I found this article. I bought the HTC Surround and I love it!!! It is one solid phone, not as sexy as other WM7 phones, but its a beast! Even after dropping it a couple times, I just brush the dirt off and its good to go, and I LOVE WM7!! I have used both Android and IOS, but I will not switch back from WM7.

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 6/13/2011 5:03 AM Kee

Im thinking about switching from blackberry but im not sure if windows 7 phone can provide the email as well as the blackberry can

# re: I love my Windows Phone 7 10/22/2011 12:37 PM bassman00420

Wp7 handles email better than any phone I've ever had. I love my focus alot. I'm wp7 for life now. Keep up the good work Microsoft.

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