HTC HD7: Now With NoDo

Conclusion

This is a multipart conclusion, so let's start with the HD7. I've long felt that with the Venue Pro and the HD7, T-Mobile ended up with the two best WP7 launch devices, at least in the US. AT&T's range includes the Surround and it's pointless speaker, the Quantum and it's overall lack of desirability, and the Focus, which is thus far the most popular WP7 device. I'm not the biggest fan of the Focus; the SAMOLED screen is needlessly oversaturated and it tends to hurt battery life if you do a lot of messaging or email, mostly because WP7 has a lot of white-themed UI elements. But it's well placed to be the most popular WP7 handset in the US market, and it's designed and built well, so I can't fault them too much. 

The Venue Pro was a fun one for me, but the sheer bulk of a 4"+ slider is a little much for most people, especially with a design that doesn't try to hide the size in any way. The HD7 is much easier for carrying, because it's still relatively thin. But the screen is still an issue—for a high-end smartphone, the 4.3" LCD panel that HTC is still using will just not cut it anymore. HTC recognizes this, which is where the HD7S comes in. Basically the same as the HD7, except with an Super LCD screen and AT&T 3G bands, it fixes my chief complaint with the current HD7. But really, as long as you avoid the Quantum and the Surround, almost all of the WP7 handsets are good bets. Pick the design you like best and go from there, because on a hardware level, you're basically splitting hairs. One has a slightly larger battery, one has a slightly better camera, one has slightly better built quality, one has a slightly better screen, but all four have a QSD8250, 512MB memory, 8GB flash storage, and an identical OS. There's too little hardware diversity in Windows handsets right now to say anything different, and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. I think after the next wave of hardware releases comes with Mango in tow, we'll be able to say something more meaningful than the technological equivalent of "everyone played hard."

Now for the more difficult part of the conclusion. Although I'm a fan of Windows Phone 7, I have to say that it's a flawed platform at present. The main issues right now form a laundry list of things that the platform is sorely lacking. Chief amongst them are 3rd party multitasking, decent JavaScript performance, Silverlight, Flash, USB mass storage support, some decent form of IM support, VoIP and video calling, tethering or WiFi hotspot support, file transfers via Bluetooth, and custom ringtones. This is 2011 guys, let us add our own damn ringtones.

I'm just getting started, too. Wikipedia has an awesome list of stuff that WinMo had that WP7 no longer does, it's kind of funny to read; I just listed the stuff I've been annoyed about in the last few months of using WP7 phones. Mango will bring a lot of that with it—multitasking, JS, Sliverlight, and Twitter. The rest? God knows. And that's a big problem, because that's what Microsoft needs to catch up TODAY. Five months from now when Mango actually hits devices, the list will be longer. 

But what about NoDo? At launch, WP7 was comparable to iOS 3.0, minus the copy/paste support. Post-NoDo, it’s right around 3.1—there have been some tweaks, but it’s overall not that different.

And that’s my problem with NoDo. I want an earth shattering update, and WP7 really needs one if it wants to be competitive with the iOSes and Androids of the world. NoDo, in and of itself, is a good update, but it's late. This update should have been out in January, with Mango following in the ides of summer. To catch up, Microsoft needs to be very aggressive with its updates, almost to a Google level.

Google, for the record, went from Cupcake at the end of April 2009 to Donut (September 13, 2009) to Eclair (2.0 on October 26, 2009, 2.1 on January 12, 2010) to Froyo (May 20, 2010) to Gingerbread (December 6, 2010). In 18 months, they had five major revisions to the platform, turning it from something with a lot of good ideas and not much execution to a legitimately well rounded and well executed platform. I don't think Microsoft, as a company, has the kind of mobility necessary to match that release schedule, but I'd like to see a major update every six, maybe nine months at most. Matching Apple's one year release cycle isn't a good strategy, unless they're willing to pack two or three times the amount of development into the same timeframe.

Microsoft got all the big things right (or will add them with Mango), and that's very good, because it means they're now in the conversation. The deal with Nokia got them to the number three spot almost by default—we're still waiting to see how the HP devices turn out, Nokia just took themselves out of the smartphone platform race, and for a company called Research in Motion, RIM as a company is pretty much standing still. The promising QNX OS made its highly anticipated debut on the PlayBook, but all signs point to BB 6/7 staying on handsets for at least another year. 

So Microsoft is a pretty clear (but distant) number three right now, and not in any danger of losing that, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done if they want to catch Apple and Google. The jump from "in the conversation" to "legitimate contender" is defined by the small things, and that's what Microsoft really needs to get on. A lot will be fixed by the Live Marketplace gaining more maturity and more headline apps—people need to go from "developing for Android and iOS" to "developing for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone". But it couldn't hurt Microsoft to include a first-party Live Messenger client and maybe toss a decent Gmail client on there in the mean time. And the ringtone thing. Really, 2011 guys. Custom ringtones aren't that hard; just toss another pane into the Zune desktop client and let us add them. Simple. It's the little things.