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
Apps
WP7 includes some preloaded productivity applications whose inclusion are just expected on any given modern platform. Things like a basic alarm, calendar, and calculator. It’s easy (and dangerous) to overlook just how critical things like these are. Alarm requires some background infrastructure to work that other applications don’t have yet, and calendar honestly makes or breaks a platform if you’re constantly running around trying to catch meetings or events. Thankfully the options on WP7 are pretty decent.
Alarm is basic and draws obvious inspiration from Apple. There’s a switch at the far right, and the time/date of the alarm at left. It even changes to things like ‘weekdays’ or ‘weekends’ like iOS did way back when everyone was easily amused. The alarm notification is basic as well, you get snooze or dismiss buttons that are surprisingly hard to hit early in the morning, but it works.
The time switcher is actually pretty novel. Tap on one of the fields, and you scroll up and down through all the possible entries. It clearly derives inspiration from iOS’s ring switcher for most things, but instead 2D and given the Metro style.
There’s a calculator too, as expected.
It’s simple in portrait mode, but becomes a basic scientific calculator in landscape:
WP7 (nor any smartphone) is close to replacing my Ti-89, but it’s there if you need it. There’s a second row with input history above the large results text, and it supports slightly more complicated syntax (with parenthesis) than other first party calculator apps I’ve seen. It would’ve been nice to see WP7 build a unit converter or some unit conversion into the calculator since Bing lacks it, but that’s for the future.
Finally we’ve got calendar, which has very obvious unique Metro styling. First up, the tile always shows your next upcoming calendar event, same as the lock screen. You get the name, location, and time all in the tile. There’s also the current date in the bottom right.
Portrait and landscape view initially give you a timeline view of the day with some color coding. Swiping left and right changes the view to an agenda with a simple list of what’s going on. Getting to the next day is a vertical swype away.
The three buttons at the bottom bring you to the today view, add an event, or month view. There’s no option to see a weekly timeline, which is a bit frustrating but not killer. The landscape view of the month makes it readily apparent that rendered inside each day in minuscule but still slightly readable text are that respective day’s events. Though it isn’t readable, you can still tell that something is going on based on how much text there is inside.
The current issue with WP7’s calendar is that there’s no obvious way right now to get google calendars working inside the calendar app. Anand had problems with ordinary google calendars, I had no luck with a Google Apps Premiere account using Exchange. To be clear, the main exchange calendar on my account appears just fine (that’s what you see in screenshots), but I can’t see other calendars I’ve been granted access to outside my domain. On other devices, you can view other calendars in a selection list somewhere or get to them through m.google.com/sync. This must be coming soon.
You can tap the options panel and calendars, but the only options are Windows Live and my exchange calendar:
Overall, WP7 delivers the right amount of out of box functionality that we’ve grown accustomed to from smartphones of every sort. No doubt they’ll flesh out with time, but they’re ample for right now and get the job done.
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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!