Windows Phone 7: The AnandTech Guide
by Brian Klug on March 21, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Windows Phone 7
- Mobile
Hands on With WP7S - Phone and SMS
This being a phone, it's surprising how little there is to talk about with regards to the dialer, phone, and messaging applications. I've been paying especially careful attention to what Microsoft is ready to show of the call in progress screens, incoming call dialogs, and the dialer. Of note is that all of the interface demos shown thus far completely circumnavigate the dialer; calls thus far have been entirely initiated from contacts, search, or contextually linked numbers in UI. The reason is that although the dialer is there, it isn't finished. You can't fault Microsoft for not showing something that isn't done yet. At the same time, it needs to get the same kind of re-thinking that the rest of the UI got between Windows Mobile and WP7S.
We've seen a handful of glances of the call in progress screen, but these vary from build to build. Notably, we can see the carrier string at the top right, although in one build it humorously shows "AT&T/Cingular Wireless," despite Cingular no longer existing under that name. On newer builds, it reads simply "AT&T."
This is blurry because it was up for all of 3 seconds
As far as the "text" SMS/MMS application goes, the interface in here is reasonably well fleshed out, but still not finished enough that Microsoft would let me get away with a photo or two of it. Our demo phone showed an interesting error message about failing to back data up to the cloud, but this was entirely because the phone hadn't had a SIM in it until 10 minutes prior. I did get a brief chance to play with the interface, and it has nice landscape to portrait transitions and the same sort of look as the rest of the interface, but I didn't get a chance to actually send or receieve messages.
These are the things that are likely going to be first on the list for WP7S Microsoft developers to tackle in the remaining months before launch. This basically wraps up the hands-on I had with the platform. You can check out the gallery below for all the photos we've got. Now let's dive into the rest of the details.
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PsychoPif - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
MS will push the upgrades, not the carriers.shady28 - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Wow, you know there are (were) really only 5 platforms in the smartphone space - Windows Mobile, Palm WebOS, Blackberry RIM, iPhone, and Android. All of them were unique in their own way and had their own 'fanbase'.
Now MS has removed their uniqueness. Rather than improving on WinMo, they've decided to try to go head to head against the iPhone by attempting to match up against the iPhone's strengths (ie, interface, ease of use, MP3 player integration, app store, etc).
Naturally they've failed to best the iPhone in those categories by a long shot. Instead they essentially have made a device that is 'less than an iPhone' rather than a better WinMO device. I'd say this is the move that will kill off WinMo.
Johnmcl7 - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Whatever you think of S60 and Maemo, Nokia still have a large share of the smartphone marketAzsen - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Does Microsoft seriously think that home screen user interface looks good? It looks flippen hideous!! Give me iPhone UI any day.straubs - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
No kiddding! Look at the Pre and then look at WP7S and tell me that doesn't look like something someone drew up in their basement in 1978. The single color and square corners are awful, not too mention huge amounts of wasted space everywhere.melgross - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
One thing that wasn't clear to me is whether or not music and books will be available without going through the marketplace. Apps can only be gotten there, so ok. The same thing is true for my iPhone. But I can get books, video and music onto the phone that weren't bought through the App Store or iTunes. Would that be possible here as well?The article didn't touch on that from what I saw. Anyone know?
nerdtalker - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
I touched on it, but only very briefly ;) partly because it's, you guessed it, not totally finalized. Microsoft wants everything to go through the marketplace, so that means yes, music, videos, and games are all marketplace purchases.A lot of developers were asking whether there was any API for them to do in-application commerce, and the answer was that this was still being worked on. Think the same way you can buy additional levels or addons in-game on the iPhone that are billed through the App Store. It isn't present in the builds of WP7S - yet.
It's another one of those things they haven't fully fleshed out yet, and haven't decided whether they can finish in time for release.
I didn't hear any mention of books at all, that's a great point. I'm not sure whether there's any strategy there.
Cheers,
Brian
CSMR - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
It looks like there is some complex sync process to transfer special types of file.You can't just plug in the phone, open it up as a storage device and drag files to and fro, as you can now.
Instead you probably need to install special sync software.
My advice: avoid and get a phone that is recognized as a storage device and has a usable file system.
MGSsancho - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Maybe it behaves like my ZuneHD. i just put music and audio books into my music folder and videos into my video folder. then it shows up in the Zune app. if i want to auto sync pics, vids, podcats and music it can or I can manually drag stuff the the ZuneHD device icon. oh you can either encode videos yourself or the app will do it for youMrPIppy - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
iPhone apps are sandboxed, but they are *not* managed code. Objective-C is compiled into ARM binaries, and garbage collection is not available on iPhone.