The Windows Phone 7 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on October 20, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Windows Phone 7
- Microsoft
- Mobile
Themes
Despite Microsoft’s strict UI policies within Windows Phone, you can tweak two parameters to customize your phone: the background color and the theme color. You can choose white or black for the background color, although I’d recommend against white if you have an AMOLED or Super AMOLED phone as it can significantly reduce battery life.
The theme color controls things like the color of your tiles, color of links and even the color of progress bars in IE. The color options are all either bold or vibrant or a little of both, and they dramatically change the look of the device.
I’d say Microsoft got the personalization down just right. You can change the photos on your lock screen but everywhere else the background is either black, white or a picture automatically selected based on the content you’re viewing.
The theme colors are consistent once applied and refreshing to switch between. It’s like getting a case for the inside of your phone.
The UI customizations preserve a standard experience across all Windows Phone devices. Microsoft definitely learned from Windows Mobile.
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wharris1 - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Web site is great; now I need to read articledeputc26 - Thursday, October 21, 2010 - link
Where are the actual load times (in seconds) for web pages? Synthetics never tell the whole picture... seems like you might be embarrassed for WP7 on this front ;)GoSharks - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Are there supposed to be images in this article?jimhsu - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Article seems to be half done as Anand makes a huge number of edits. Guess that's normal.SelesGames - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
I see images just fine.Btw, I don't know whether any app reviews will be done, but for anyone who has access to a phone, check out some of our apps. Search for "Seles Games" to see all our apps, or check out any of the apps we have demoed here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/aemami99
Mumrik - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
So you decided to advertise in the Anandtech comments... Classy move.Termie - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
The HTC Surround page seems to be missing, or at least it's not coming up when I click on the link to that page.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Images are incoming, please bare with us :)atmartens - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
"please bare with us :)"Skinny dipping? Or just streaking?
Zstream - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Do you know what the talk time is for the LG? It's not showing on the graph.