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.
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
