Windows Phone 7

[Samwise]

Like it or not, Apple transformed the smartphone market — you can draw a line and the market radically changed afterwards. Android and Apple are the big players now, with their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, others are being left behind in the dust (including RIM and Nokia) in comparison to those two big players.

(edit)

Pretty long but thorough WP7 review up on Ars.

The summary at the end could have come straight from a 2007 iPhone review if you swap the brand names around:

The fact that most of the problems I have with the phone are things it doesn't do at all (but which can be added in software updates), rather than things it does do but does poorly, is I think an indication that Microsoft has ultimately succeeded in its goals for the first Windows Phone 7 release. The platform will not do well in checklist feature comparisons, but when it comes down to human interaction and using the thing, this software is a winner.

Seriously, if you're doomcasting the thing for lack of copy and paste support, you're on the same team as Maddox McNeckBeard up there in the spoiler saying how superior his Nokia was because he could use it to reboot his web server.  When Apple transformed the smartphone market, it also proved that feature checklists don't mean shit.  It's going to come down to how well the thing is marketed, how shiny it looks, and how easy it is to use for people who aren't already using smartphones.

[MisterNoisy]

Put my preorder in via Best Buy a couple of days ago - I find myself eagerly awaiting my new toy.  :)  Apparently MS has a long road ahead of them, though - the staff at BB told me that mine was the first WP7 handset preorder they'd taken, and based on how many people were consulted and long it took for them to do it, I thoroughly believe them.

[ghost]

I don't understand what the problem is.  The iPhone is a very good product that does a lot of things well.  It's not perfect, however any new product, e.g. A Windows 7 based phone, is going to have to compete with both the iPhone and android.  And me saying that not having cut and paste is fucking stupid is not doom casting.  The phones will probably do fine, once they add in all the shit that is missing.

This actually sounds like the comparison of WoW to any new MMO that is coming out  

[naum]

Like it or not, Apple transformed the smartphone market — you can draw a line and the market radically changed afterwards. Android and Apple are the big players now, with their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, others are being left behind in the dust (including RIM and Nokia) in comparison to those two big players.

…

Really?

Most all of those points are invalid now, or total rubbish even at inception — smudgy screen haha.

Just look at the market, post-iPhone, where all the makers transformed their products to be iPhone-like with equivalent touch UI (even RIM, unsuccessfully thus far).

And customers have overwhelmingly voted for iPhone and Android offerings.

[naum]

Some Windows 7 Phone Reviews:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39768813/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/20/5324739-microsoft-launches-windows-phone-7

Friendly reviews from MS friendly sites…

A more reliable reviewer:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2010/10/windows-phone-7-the-ars-review.ars

[Samwise]

Most all of those points are invalid now...

And customers have overwhelmingly voted for iPhone and Android offerings.

That's the point.   

[KallDrexx]

The point is that all reviews, even the negative ones (for the most part) all say the same thing.  The OS is polished and is a very very good base.  The OS has a lot going for it, and almost all the reviewer's gripes are with what the phone doesn't have rather while what the phone does have is extremely polished (except SMS really).  Yes, in it's current stage it may not be something that everyone ditches their Android or Iphones for but it has a lot of things going for it, and a great potential for the future with updates.

They don't need to change Iphone and Android users with the first release.  They just have to work on the 95% of the cell phone market that doesn't use smart phones yet, while building it up to where Iphone and Android users will be more likely to use it. 

[TripleDES]

Shut the fuck up about all your fucking iPhones. 

Also, overnight shipping here in Belgium means "leave it rot in the sorting hub for a whole day and whoops there's the weekend, we don't work then either". Otherwise I'd have my hands on a HTC Trophy today. 

[ghost]

If they're working on the people that don't already have smart phones they might want to lower their price point.  The pricing definitely scares some people off.  And Microsoft should definitely make sure their integration is as good for this as Apple. 

I'm intrigued by this OS and may actually try one out (once they have cut and paste  ).

[Chimpy]

How long are they going to keep this project at the forefront? I mean it took them less than 6 months to kill the Kin, another underfeatured, overpriced phone.

That is not to say that Win7 phone will fail. I could care less either way as I don't own a smartphone and at this point, still don't see a need for one for me. Just wondering.

[MisterNoisy]

How long are they going to keep this project at the forefront? I mean it took them less than 6 months to kill the Kin, another underfeatured, overpriced phone.

That is not to say that Win7 phone will fail. I could care less either way as I don't own a smartphone and at this point, still don't see a need for one for me. Just wondering.

From what I've read, Kin was a separate project run by part of the entertainment devices (XBox/Zune) team and J. Allard that largely was killed because of WP7.  I'd almost argue that MS killing Kin (And effectively lighting all that money on fire) is indicative of just how important WP7 is to them.

[TripleDES]

WP7 is a longterm project. Microsoft won't be killing it off anytime soon.

[Tarami]

And C&P is coming early next year, so stress less.

Besides, Silverlight and XNA, om-nom-nom.

[TripleDES]

That fangirl Thurrott's claiming that there's an update inbound this year already. Not including copypasta tho.

--edit: Also, install Shazam ASAFP, to get unlimited tags, before they revoke that offer and make you pay a sub for more than 5 tags a month.

[Kitsune]

Kin died because Verizon was run by greedy retarded people who tried to charge a full data plan for a phone meant for kids to post pictures on Facebook.  Nobody was gonna pay a hundred bucks a month for such a barebones phone, surprise surprise.

[TripleDES]

I've been using my HTC Trophy a while now. I really like WP7 and it's a joy to use. There is some minor functionality missing you might consider for granted if you're coming from the other two big mobile OSes, but the system's pretty solid and I'm sure it'll get up to snuff rather sooner than later.

Independently of that, even being the same Snapdragon as in my old Nexus, it's way smoother, has a better DAC with less noise apparently, as well having a SLCD screen which is sharper than AMOLED (with still sufficient black levels), which is kinda important, since it's so text heavy. So it was worth it.

[Tarami]

minor functionality missing

Elaborate, please? You can omit the omittance of C&P.

[TripleDES]

Things like no separate volume sliders for everything including media playback, no custom ringtones (except sold via on-device marketplace), no scrubbing in Zune player apart from FWD/RWD keys, no universal search, etc. That sort of small things. The first two I want definitely fixed, the rest doesn't matter that much.

Other than that, the back/Windows button navigation behavior is a little ass backwards. Hitting the back key on the first screen of the app quits it. Hitting the Windows key however sends it to sleep, first screen or not. If you try to go back to a suspended app via tile or app list, it restarts the application, where as hitting the back key resumes it. I figure that'll be changed, too.

Real multitasking beyond running behind lockscreen would be nice. Including some sort of service architecture, to run the core part of the application permanently and separate from the UI. Alone for being able to do live tiles without resorting to push server infrastructure.

[Baldrake]

...HTC Trophy...

They released so many of these phones...  How is the trophy different from the mozart?

[TripleDES]

- 3.8" screen instead of 3.7".
- 5mpix LED flash instead of 8mpix Xenon flash.
- Aluminum frame with plastic back instead of alu unibody.
- Way better external speaker.

That's about it. The rest of the hardware is identical. Also, it looks better in person than on the press pictures. The polished aluminum trim makes it look goofy in the pictures, but isn't on a real device.

[Baldrake]

Thanks, interesting. I keep going back and forth on whether to get a mozart or an omnia 7. It's all about AMOLED versus SLCD. You're the first person I've run into who is on the SLCD side, so that's interesting. I buy the argument that crisp text is important on a tiny device.

[Tarami]

Thanks for the coverage. I'll see if my budget can support getting a Trophy.

[TripleDES]

Thanks, interesting. I keep going back and forth on whether to get a mozart or an omnia 7. It's all about AMOLED versus SLCD. You're the first person I've run into who is on the SLCD side, so that's interesting. I buy the argument that crisp text is important on a tiny device.

Well, if you're going from regular LCD to AMOLED, you're like "whoa, everything's so fucking colorful" and like it for a while. Then when the honeymoon's over, you start noticing things like color fringing on text and start focusing on the pentile matrix. If you've still decent eye sight, you will notice some sort of grid on bright surfaces. All thanks to half resolution on red and blue subpixels.

Going from there to SLCD, you've like "whoa, the colors are so much better (i.e. realistic and not in your face vibrant) and the text's fucking sharp". We'll see in a while, but I like this so much more.

Obviously, black on AMOLED works wonders when it's really dark, you have zero light bleeding. On the other hand, SLCD is so much better than regular LCD, light bleeding is barely noticable even when it's dark. Viewing angles are also much better.

Example AMOLED vs SLCD from Engadget. Shows my point about text (there should be an image, if my server doesn't act funnily):

[Quinton]

The experience varies from person to person.

Some people just cannot see the pentile patterning on amoled displays and they're totally happy.

Other people (I'm one of them) find it incredibly annoying.  The red/blue fringing drives me nuts.

You should definitely take a look at one before you buy, just in case.

[KallDrexx]

FYI, from Microsoft

Critics have commented on the lack of specific features like copy & paste and lack of 100s of thousands of applications. And while both are true, copy & paste will be available as an update in a matter of weeks (early 2011) and as for applications, it’s just a matter of time.

[TripleDES]

Anyone wants a MCP style Lights Off clone? I was bored. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OjR5JgTAx0

[NiX]

Cut out iPhone arguments.  Shouldn't have commented on the topic. Go me.

[Kitsune]

I played with one of these at an AT&T store for a bit.  It was definitely slick, but gave me a vaguely creepy 'but how do I use it as a PHONE?' feel.  To be fair, all touchscreen-only phones do that to me; my smartphone's an older one with actual buttons for making calls.  Having to actually look at the screen to make and answer calls doesn't feel right.  The phones apparently have great voice dialing built in, though, so maybe I can just circumvent the issue entirely using a headset.

[bhodi]

So, putting a micro-SD card in the phone permanently invalidates it for use in any other device, including your computer or camera? Well, that's nice. Now that's the Microsoft I know and love.

[NiX]

So, putting a micro-SD card in the phone permanently invalidates it for use in any other device, including your computer or camera? Well, that's nice. Now that's the Microsoft I know and love.

I would care if it weren't for the fact that the reason for this is that the phone is integrating the SD card into its normal operation and not just as "Do you want to save this picture on..." and Memory Card is an option.

[MisterNoisy]

I've been using the HTC Surround for a little over a week now, and I love this thing, despite the kinda chunky form factor.  The integration of all my contacts (Facebook, Google, Windows Live, etc) into one place is great, and the UI as a whole is (as noted elsewhere) extremely slick and snappy.  Live tiles are nice when they're available, and there really seems to be a lot of thought into what information is exposed at high levels and accessed via swiping left/right, while more detail or actual actions are accessed via presses.  I'd worry about the top-level app list getting too big if they didn't cordon off games into their own tile - as it is, it's fine.

My biggest gripe is that I have no browser buttons or address bar aside from the hardware 'back' button in landscape mode, and that the browser loads pages somewhat slowly, though once they're loaded, everything is super responsive.  Also, while it's functionally similar, the use of a low-res version of the page instead of the checkerboards I got used to on my iPhone when scrolling quickly just 'feels' better for some reason.

Also:  Achievements earned via phone.   

[Quinton]

So, putting a micro-SD card in the phone permanently invalidates it for use in any other device, including your computer or camera? Well, that's nice. Now that's the Microsoft I know and love.

Sounds like it's more an issue that very few devices make use of the "password" feature of sdcards, and thus the "low level erase to restore to factory state" option isn't available readily.  I saw one of the techblogs mention that some Nokia phones have an option for this.  No reason it shouldn't also be doable with a desktop PC... just a simple matter of software...

[KallDrexx]

Engadget has a good writeup here about what's causing it.

[KallDrexx]

FYI: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/06/windows-phone-7-shown-copying-and-pasting-on-video/

[TripleDES]

Like it would have taken so much more effort trying to highlight like a whole paragraph. It's like these guys aren't even trying.