First Day with Windows Phone 7

I've now had a Windows Phone 7 device (Samsung Focus/At&T) for 24 hours and thought I'd share some of my thoughts. Note that this is replacing my iPhone 3G.

I've been looking forward to using the new phone for a while now. Certainly, working in Bing Mobile has brought me pretty close to plenty of the excitement around the new product, but Microsoft's generous offer of a free phone pretty much sealed the deal. The first hurdle was getting the device. The AT&T store was sold out and it had to be ordered and delivered. Once in my hands I was immediately frustrated by AT&T's activation mechanics. I had to take three different paths before finally getting the thing up and running. However, that frustration quickly dissolved as I started setting up and playing with the new phone.

When using a piece of technology that takes a completely new approach to an existing problem, one has to bear in mind that things that seem initially awkward are really just reminders of how one has become trained to use the previous stuff - it is a relative measure of difference, not an absolute measure of design. The biggest difference between the Windows Phone 7 UI and the iPhone is that, from an engineering perspective, it is closer to an object oriented metaphor. The tiles that one can place on the home screen are really references to objects of a variety of types. I can place a location resulting from a local search right on the home surface for easy reference. I can place a person on the home screen for quick calling and email. Each of these differently typed objects is associated with different types of actions (one can ask for directions to a location, or for the contact information for a person). Getting this is key to getting the most out of the Windows Phone 7 experience. Personally, I think this metaphor can go even further, with a more comprehensive exposure to the various types of objects.

The first app that I loaded was OneBusAway - a must for any serious public transport commuter in the Seattle area. Initially, I was disappointed with this version of the application. I think it is going to take some time getting used to, but I'd like to see some improvements. Note that, as I mentioned earlier, this is also a reminder that my first experience with the iPhone version of this app was also confusing and it took time to figure out the sweet spot in its interactions to get what I wanted out of it.

Next up I started playing with the browser. All in all I found it to be pretty snappy and a reasonably rounded implementation. Surprisingly, the dynamics of the mobile version of techmeme didn't work. Hitting the 'more' and 'new' tabs don't appear to load any additional content. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a limitation in the javascript (note that with javascript, optimization for the peculiarities of non-standard browser - i.e. all browsers - can impact the use of other browsers, so this may be an issue that techmeme can fix independently of any issues present in the phone browser).

I've played with most of the functionality offered by the phone and have really learned to enjoy the experience. The calendar is great - I much prefer it to the iPhone version from a design point of view; opening Microsoft Office documents is a very smooth experience; the Facebook integration can clearly drive more use of the social networking sites features, and I really liked the idea of linking profiles across different contexts.

However, the biggest surprise to me was the Zune functionality. This really impressed me. I found the experience of playing music on the device quite delightful and the desktop Zune product is also a very well designed and engaging system. I was also very happy with the way in which the phone integrates data with the cloud, including pictures and OneNote documents.

There is one feature that I wish existed - a simple way to transfer my contacts from the iPhone to the Windows Phone. I've read various summaries on how to do this - it is possible - but it should be far easier.

Comments

[Wayne Schulz]

Interesting update - I'm in a similar boat (bought the Samsung Focus although it replaced my BlackBerry 9700). I'm still using my iPhone/Droid X as well.

I agree with your observations on the phone -- overall quality and smoothness of navigation (and stability) was quite frankly a shocking upside surprise. It's quite good.

Where I think things really fall down for this OS is in the applications (depth and breadth). The eco-system will get a 6 month pass during which I think people will allow that it's new and don't judge it by lack of quality apps (I think the Palm Pre got a similar ride).

After 6 months there need to be some improvements to OS or this platform is going to be one that only is attractive to people upgrading from "dumb" phones.

Here's my consolidated observation list of things that are lacking (and I freely admit this is a 1.0 effort and they were lacking on iPhone 1.0 as well -- though I do think any manufacturer should be able to do better on launch than just a 1.0 product since they have the benefit of three years' of experience with observing the market and the apps):

- Notifications - meh

- Multi-tasking - this should have launched with the product. I don't much care that iPhone 1 didn't have it either. That was back years ago and all modern OS have multi-tasking.

- Live tiles -- look cool. Please explain to me what all the flashing pictures on the people tile really do. So far as I can tell they're completely random. Most of the other tiles don't work or appear useful (save for Weather Channel which seems to show current weather). If MSFT was going to launch them as only half working -- well maybe they should have advertised that ... ;-)

- Browser - I observed the same thing with techmeme. Doesn't anyone technical test these things? It's not like browser usability is a "hardly ever used feature" that Microsoft can lay back and fix sometime in the next three years.

- The must have applications - Facebook, Twitter - are embarrassing. You can't view lists of other users in Twitter. The Facebook app supports the feature set that Facebook offered about three years ago. No, these two alone are just embarrassing. Remember we're not talking about the crew who bootstrapped the ill-fated Joo-Joo tablet -- this is Microsoft behind the OS. The mightiest (arguably) company in the tech world. And they can't get mobile any more right than "good enough" applications?

I don't mention lack of applications or the fact that the integration of applications (sharing via Twitter for example) is substandard because hopefully those are more technical things that can improve.

I'm rooting for Microsoft to land this OS in the top three of popular smartphone devices in the US -- and to do so I think we'll have to see rapid, massive improvements over the course of the coming year to both the OS and the application infrastructure.

[Account Deleted]

Java and to some degree .Net are the main choices because they have been consistently pegged as the “safe” choice to go with for mid-level project managers in the corporate world. No one was ever fired for choosing Java or Microsoft.

However, there are many large distributed applications these days that run primarily with technologies like Python, PHP, et al. Even companies like Google and Yahoo are heavily invested in these technologies. Java may be the main choice for enterprise development now, but it’s days are numbered as the only stalwart option to go with.

Let’s face it, many of these so called “enterprise applications” could easily have been written much faster and with less overhead using technologies like Python, PHP, et al.

ruby training

[Saptak]

It is not too hard to move your contacts to WP7 from iPhone:
1. Use itunes to sync your iPhone contacts with Windows Address Book
2. Run wab.exe and export the contacts to a csv file
3. Import the csv file to your live.com account for your phone from http://contacts.live.com

Voila!