Review: Living with Microsoft Windows Phone 7 - six weeks on from launch

by Pete Mason on 6 December 2010, 08:06 3.5

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Wrapping it up

The default apps

The default suite of apps – in which I include e-mail, messaging, the browser, maps, media player and Office - all give a pretty good user experience that does essentially what you expect it to without too many quirks. If you’ve used an Android or iOS device recently, you can expect the WP7 experience to deliver something that is at least on par in terms of performance and features. It’s not without its peculiarities, though.

The biggest issue that I found in the e-mail system was the frankly lacklustre Gmail support. While you can set a message as flagged, you don’t have the option of stars, archiving or labels, which makes it more like a dumb inbox than proper Gmail integration. This could easily be a deal-breaker for anyone who relies heavily on the service and something you might not realise until it was too late.

The way WP7 handles texts is also a bit limited. There’s no way to organise or search in the mailbox and all you get is a list of open conversations. After a few months of use, this could easily become a bit unwieldy, but unless you’re the sort of person who regularly dives back into old conversations, it might not be an issue. What’s more of a problem is the lack of an automatic resend when the phone doesn’t have signal. Having to manually click resend on each message is a pain and really seems like a silly oversight on an OS that tends to take care of all of the little things for you.

Multi-who? What-tasking?

One of the biggest problems that a lot of reviews had with the OS was the lack of proper multitasking, and while the limited ‘saved state’ multitasking is serviceable, it’s a far cry from a full implementation. In day-to-day use, one of the biggest problems isn’t the inability to easily switch between apps, or even the fact that third-party apps can’t run in the background, but resuming something in case you accidently exit. Especially on devices with touch-sensitive buttons, it’s far too easy to hit the search button while frantically playing a game. When this happens, you have no choice but to wait 10-15 seconds while the game loads back up, only to be dumped back to the start of a level or main menu. I managed to do the same thing while listening to Last.FM – which can run behind the lock screen but not in the background, obviously – and it’s incredibly frustrating to have to restart the program and navigate back to where you were. Unfortunately, this happens a lot more often than it should.

Get used to loading screens like this

The problem is, it comes down to the individual implementation of each app. Facebook and Twitter, two of the flagship apps, jump back to exactly where you were in a second, whereas many other apps and most of the games – including those from Microsoft - don’t. It certainly doesn’t feel broken, but again, it can get quite frustrating.

Wrap Up

In writing this article I wanted to dispel some of the pedantic niggles that mean a lot to tech-journalists but sort of fade into insignificance when you start using the platform on a daily basis. In some ways, I feel like I’ve done this, but I also seem to have uncovered a few niggles of my own that are probably more detrimental to the experience.

At the end of the day, all I can really say is that WP7 has an awful lot of potential, and - as Parm rightly pointed out to me the other day - as a new platform it will only get better as time goes by and more updates are pushed to the phone. There’s no way that Microsoft will easily admit defeat, so if the pundits say that things need to be changed, I’m willing to put money on the fact that changes will be made. Just look at the speedy about-face on apps running in the background and copy-and-paste.

But should you put your hard-earned money behind WP7? At this point, I have no major reasons not to recommend Microsoft’s mobile OS. The platform is incredibly polished and the vast majority of the time it’s a joy to use. There are going to be things that will bother you more than others, but I challenge you to show me any platform that’s a perfect fit for everyone. It clearly isn’t quite as mature as iOS, but give it a little time and I think you’ll have no problem putting the two on the same footing. As for Android, I think Google really has to up its game as the go-to ‘non-Apple’ mobile OS. Froyo has a lot going for it, but WP7’s flair and panache just make Android look a little pedestrian - it really is that polished.

If you’re looking for a new smartphone, now, that is very capable and almost guaranteed to get better with time; you could do a lot worse than backing Microsoft. Just be prepared to forgive its little quirks – at least for the moment.

HEXUS Rating


Windows Phone 7 OS

 

The Good

Gorgeous UI
Smooth as silk
Mostly excellent integration of your accounts
Almost guaranteed to get updates

The Bad

Search needs to be much better thought out
Potential is no good for today
State resume needs to be much faster
Full multitasking can’t come quickly enough
Lacklustre Gmail support



HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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As someone who also jumped in (mostly because I can dev it in Silverlight, this is almost infinately nicer than ObjectiveC for apple, and much more advanced than Java which seems to have not evolved in the last 10 years).

Can I ask out of vulgar curisosity how much you pay for your 2 year? Been scared of commitment it might have jaded me, but one of the nice things about the WP7, is they have the price quite low, which is fair as its a very immature platform.

Xbox Live games thing drives me nuts too.

The search button, the guidlines, a game can not disable it. Hopefully they will realise the error of their ways with this.

Marketplace search, its crap. Its begging for a Metro UI style sliding view, one for apps, one for music etc.

But Bing search surprised me, I was expecting it to be a veritable nugget of medicoraty, its not. Its actually really good. Its easy to use, it breaks things down nicely between web and local. The only downside is I can't switch between say Images, Shopping, Videos.

So I'd agree with pretty much the whole review, its clearly a not fully featured platform, but has shown great pace of development.

Out of curiosity, have you tried Zune Pass? For me its the best thing about the WP7 when I'm wearing my consumer hat, but it seems missing in almost all reviews. There is a 14 day trial, but myself I think its absolutely the best music rental service!
Most of what you voiced in this article is what has me on the bench still. I have been due an upgrade about 2 months now and can not decided between iOS, Android or WP7.

Being a user a WinMob 6.5….I'm use to a phone falling flat, yet the little niggles in each OS and me being too picky is prolonging this decision.

The lack of automatic resend is a huge let down for me. My 6.5 phone drives me insane with the lack of it and being in my Uni flat were the walls might as well be lined with lead it is a must have.

I think I will be on the bench a little while longer at least till WP7 gets its first major update and hopefully address the issues putting me off.
after my hissyfit about it a few weeks ago (check threads started by me, too lazy to link :P) i decided to stick it out, i'd gotten used to it and remedied most the problems i had with apps from the app store.

a few notes for people - yes the facebook intergration isn't perfect but there's a free app for facebook which covers everything else you'd need to do, and if you get emails about your facebook you can jump into this app to check updates messages requests etc.

i don't bother trying to use the app store on the phone its far too annoying, i instead do it through zune with the phone connected its a dream doing it like that.

as for cost theanimus i pay £40 for 2 year contract, thats 600 mins unlimited text and..either 750mb or 1gb not sure which, and that's with O2. O and i pay £10 more for insurance.

I still have a few gripes with it; no xvid support, videos don't play full screen on youtube (insanely annoying, but i rarely youtube anyway) and zune support for VA albums is poop to say the least

o and if you set an alarm for it, your ringer volume is your alarm volume..
I've got a htc Mozart running wp7 having eagerly been awaiting its release for the past year or so. I'm not normally an early adopter but I have used ios and android and neither have totally won me over from my old blackberry, so I thought why not.

so far I'm not missing the cut & paste, the search button does annoy me though as i am constantly knocking it! I still haven't worked out how to get my group calender from exchange over either, but my colleague has the same problem with his iphone. The slickness is the best thing about it, and the back button is a total winner; just very easy to use!

I think that there is supposed to be a big update in Jan (cut and paste, turn by turn navi etc) so it may be that wp7 will be more aggressively marketed after extra functionality has been put in or tweaked.
I have been using the Dell Venue Pro since the U.S. launch on November 8th. It seems most of the articles criticizing WP7 are written by people who have never used it so it is refreshing to see a piece written by an actual user.

I am very impressed with what Microsoft has done. WP7 is easy to learn yet there is hidden depth and ease-of-use flourishes abound. The Marketplace is strong and the apps I have tried are generally very high quality.

I love my phone and can't wait to see what MS does with future patches.