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
Xbox Live
The hub that probably saves the most space in the UI is the Xbox Live/Games hub. All of your games go here regardless of whether they are Xbox Live titles or regular Windows Phone games.
There are two categories of games on Windows Phone 7: Xbox Live titles and standard games. The latter are similar to games developed for iOS or Android, anyone can develop for them you just need to spring for the $99 account to get them published. These games can be developed in either Silverlight or using the XNA framework and can leverage the GPU.
Xbox Live titles are supposed to be more polished and come with a stricter set of requirements. All XBL titles must support a try before you buy demo mode (it’s optional for regular games), they all support achievements and they can support turn based multiplayer (real time is out of the cards for now, we need better mobile bandwidth for that).
The regular games on Windows Phone aren’t all that impressive, they’re not terrible either. But we’re missing titles like Angry Birds (heh) and Plants vs. Zombies. I suspect over time we’ll see these in the marketplace, the phones just need to start shipping first.
With the original Xbox Microsoft had Halo, and what it’s desperately missing from Windows Phone 7 is a Halo equivalent. Not necessarily a first person shooter, but a game that’s so enjoyable that it alone is justification to buy into the platform.
The Xbox Live titles aren’t half bad, but so far they aren’t an order of magnitude better than what you get on an iPhone. They are pricey too. The titles range from $0.99 all the way up to $6.99, and in the long run I expect these prices to follow an upward trend. Games will get deeper, art/development budgets go up and the end user will foot a higher bill. I think the ultimate goal for smartphone gaming is for it to replace handhelds like the PSP or Nintendo DS. I would expect AAA smartphone game prices to be in the same range as games for those devices eventually. Without the need for the traditional publishing model the final price may be a bit lower, but that remains to be seen. It may take a few years but that’s where things are headed.
If your Live id is tied to your Xbox Live Gamertag then you’ll immediately get your avatar and gamer score imported into the Xbox Live hub. Any gamer score accrued in playing on your phone gets added to your total.
Through the free Xbox Live Extras app you can edit your avatar as well as interact with your XBL friends. This app is one of the slowest on the phone however, switching between tabs is choppy and it’s the only app that seems to consistently have problems.
Within the extras app you can view all of your achievements (both in XBL phone games and in 360 titles). You can also view your XBL friends list to see who’s online and even send them messages.
I see the messaging/friends list management as the killer feature for WP7’s Xbox Live integration. Typing messages via an Xbox 360 controller is a pain and the chatpad accessory is a silly thing to buy when you’ve got a fully functional smartphone. If you do a lot of communicating on Xbox Live, Windows Phone 7 has the potential to make things easier. The main problem is the performance of the Extras app, it’s just unacceptable. It’s laggy and crashes a lot - perhaps a rushed attempt to meet the European launch tomorrow, but it needs to be fixed asap.
The XBL Extras app is currently in a state of disarray
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Shadowmaster625 - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
It cant play avi files? What do you call a $500 device that cant play avi files? FAIL.beefnot - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I'm so sick of seeing "fail" in user comments. 99% of the time, it follows a point or points being made that wouldn't have swayed them to deem it worthy anyway. YAWN.mutatio - Friday, October 22, 2010 - link
I'm glad you guys found it to be as smooth and useful as you did. Based on what you described and the corresponding pictures, however, I'm having a hard time understanding something "just works" when the UI looks like a crap sandwich and almost makes my eyes bleed. "No, we don't use those oh-so-80's icons that graphically represent what the App does. We're much too posh for that, minimalist traffic signs for everything! Brilliant!" Maybe it'll be different with hands on, but it looks like MS went out of their way to try and make this thing look clever and almost abstract. Think myspace made into a smartphone, and if you're like me and think that myspace pages more often look like pop culture chewed up, swallowed, and thrown up onto a web page, then you get where I'm coming from. If that is the case when I get my hands on one of these, I can't see how MS can get any significant traction in the smartphone market. They might get some young emo hipsters who dig the abstract layout, but the appeal thus far of iOS and Android is the overall ease of use. My impression from your review, despite your reassurances, is that MS has again made a product much more complicated than it needs to be. I hope for MS' sake that is not the case when actually using the phone.MacGyver85 - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
You'll just have to try it to appreciate it I guess.I can understand people when they say the interface looks bland or overly simplistic based on "screenshots" of the UI. But when you see it in person it's so much better. Really.
Likewise with how you navigate around it. It's just so intuitive you don't for a second have to think how to do something. Every time someone asks me if what it's like I always respond that they'll have to use it themselves. And everyone that does loves it. Seriously :)
Dare I use it but what the hell: it just works!
DJJoeJoe - Saturday, October 23, 2010 - link
I don't think any OS at this point can grab a drastic number of market share like we see in the phone space obviously, or even the slightly slower moving browser space. Modern Operating Systems are so mature at this point that there is really little you can do, both Win7 and Snow Leopard were just small refinements to their previous versions.I think it's doubtful that even something as force-ably drastic as Chrome OS will do anything to the landscape either, even if Google bucketed down and really nailed it. Sadly the market share is ruled by the people going to costco and grabbing up a pre made pc, or large corps running xp, and I can't see something drastic being sold to either groups in the next handful of years.
tis all in the phones these days, and I wish I had a time machine so I could get the second wave of hopefully nicer wp7 handsets and maybe a good update to the os itself. Don't got the money to spend on a 'amazing start'.
Sabresiberian - Monday, October 25, 2010 - link
Looks to me like Vista's bad press helped Apple reach 9% market share, but that's as far as they've moved up. Win 7 is sweet and everyone knows it so Apple is no longer making headway.I don't want Microsoft execs to think that way though - like was written in the article, I think Microsoft performs better as an underdog, and if they think more in terms of being threatened by Apple or someone else then perhaps they'll be more inclined to put a shining example of what they can do out on the market.
Glad to see Microsoft did produce a product with some shine.
;)
dotroy - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Windows 7 phone is good ...umm ..some things not as good ..but win7 phone is good, there are somethings done better by others OS but win 7 phone is good. I never felt like this before. This is a paid advertising. Anand is making good money.pete2s - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Will Windows 7 Phone store apps on the ROM partition? If so, this severely limits the number and size of apps as well as their quality.Although Android is evolving past this limitation, Android, Blackberry and Palm phones store the OS and all apps on an encrypted partition referred to in the specs as the ROM. Usually, this ROM is 512MB. After the OS is installed, the phone has less than 300MB for apps.
Initially, I thought Windows 7 Phone would not store apps on the ROM because of its unified storage system that creates a single volume. If this were the case, however, there'd be no point in having a larger ROM because the ROM would only be holding the OS + the 60MB limit of pre-installed software. Some phones, like the Samsung Focus, do have larger ROMs though (1GB compared to 512MB). The only point of having a larger ROM would be to store more apps because apps are installed to the ROM.
If the above is true, Windows 7 Phone will be severely limited in app size and thus development.
drwho9437 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
"It’s almost as if Microsoft is taking Apple’s approach and simply letting everyone build iPhones."Exactly and it is genius, it means the cost margin will vanish and the experience will still be as the software people want, people won't think poorly of these phones just because of a few badly designed devices they used. Let's hope it works out.
owbert - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
best review of win7 phone amongst others. great work!