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
Bing Search and Maps
Bing is tightly integrated into WP7. One needs to look no further than the inclusion of a dedicated (mandatory) button for search just to tell how serious Microsoft is about pushing Bing into the mobile search space with WP7.
I talked earlier about how entering a string into the URL bar in Internet Explorer takes you out of the browser, into search, and then back depending on whether you choose a web result or not. In almost every context (save the marketplace, here search searches the market), pressing the physical search button launches this unified search application.
Bing search and maps honestly hasn’t changed much since I saw it at MIX10, and it really didn’t need to as far as basic maps and search go. Hit the button, and you get a Bing homepage like screen with the daily wallpaper and factoid boxes.
Search terms still pop up differing levels of semantic data - type a company and “stock quote,” and it’ll probably bring that down. Type “pizza in” and a city name, and you’ll get location results. It’s nice to see some intelligence here with searching. You can pivot between web, local, and news. Hit a link on web, and you wind up in the browser. Hit one in local, and you’ll probably wind up in maps. Whether or not you like Bing, the execution here is pretty above average.
What’s lacking is the ability to search local stores like the SMS library or email accounts. It’s sort of ambiguous anymore on every platform what search really does. WebOS has type anywhere, iOS has a mobile spotlight type approach, and Android does a pretty good job searching everything tied to your google account and web.
For whatever reason, WP7 only seems to want to search web facing content most of the time. Hop into messaging, hit search, and you get taken to Bing. Hop into mail, search, and you’ll search email you’ve downloaded - not what’s up on your exchange or IMAP server. Hop into people, hit search, and you’ll search your contacts, but can also search your exchange contacts. The result is that finding stuff is relegated to specific areas rather than one unified place. Whether or not this is right is more of a philosophical argument, it just happens to work that way here.
Another huge omission is the ability to search for things like shipper tracking numbers or unit conversions in Bing. The Bing website allows you to type in a FedEx tracking number or a unit conversion (e.g. 40 pounds in kg), but the search app on Windows Phone won’t give you those results. Given the data already exists on Microsoft’s end, it’s something I’d expect to see down the road.
Microsoft does still have to worry about the bottom line and thus you’ll sometimes see a sponsored search result (similar to what you’d get on a web browser) above your actual results. Microsoft says that the sponsored results will always be limited to one at most.
There’s also voice search support from within Bing and the entire platform. You can tap the microphone icon in Bing, or hold down the Windows button for a few seconds anywhere from WP7. It truthfully works very well for calling contacts, searching simple things, but sadly can’t nail down ‘Anandtech.com’ - that results in ‘Manhunt Xbox Com.’
Finally there’s Bing maps. I had a bad experience with Bing maps on Android. It felt slow and clunky, and initially lacked multitouch support entirely. Thankfully Bing maps on WP7 and home turf is completely diffrerent. It’s fluid, packs multitouch support, and loads quickly.
I think WP7 takes a strong nod from iOS here, going the minimalist route with basic directions, locate me, and search support. Expand the options menu, and you can toggle aerial views and traffic, or clear everything from settings.
Directions works well and is a bit unique. There’s support for walking and driving navigation directions, sadly no public transport. There’s a top window that shows the map as you progress and scroll through the directions in the list box below. Finally at the destination you get Bing’s street view perspective of the destination.
Searching from Bing maps for a location does what you’d expect - flags drop down onto the map. Tapping on these brings up details such as phone, website, and hours if Bing has them. Reviews and nearby and related listings also populate the adjacent pivots.
This is as opportune a time as any to note that the location services on WP7 have continually brought down very speedy location fixes. It’s fast and definitely leverages a location services database like Skyhook or respective databases Apple and Google use. I’m not entirely certain what WP7 is using, or whether Microsoft is rolling its own, but so far I’ve yet to be not be located just as well as I otherwise would be on Android or iOS even inside buildings with no possible way of getting GPS.
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x0rg - Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - link
To me it looks like Microsoft just needed to release something ASAP. Later they can work on interface improvement, I mean fonts, sizes, blocks, text location, easy shortcut access, backups, etc. There are tons of things to improve.landswipe - Thursday, November 4, 2010 - link
"The downside to this layout is that every time you want to enter a different URL, you’ll have to rotate to portrait, enter it, and then swap back. Same if you want to change tabs or use a favorite. That can get a bit frustrating if you’re used to viewing pages in landscape, but not totally killer. There’s an impressively fluid rotation transition between portrait and landscape, however."Same theme through the whole article...
Little Upside... bit more downside... a little frustrated?... but HEY come on we are friends!!! there is some cool animation by our designers to make up for it all :D <cheesy grin>
It stinks of slight of hand, and overall sounds like an epic fail waiting to happen... This just won't compete.
As a developer, I don't think the apps/games produced are going to cut it... With Android and iPhone you can at least write cross platform opengl games in C++. dotNet is just pure lock-in.
I hope they sell just enough of these things to put an early end to it... I have a feeling a lot of people are going to get fooled.
jeans_xp - Sunday, November 7, 2010 - link
It's bad news for us, AMOLED is not used.www.mobilegoing.com
vhx - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Only problems I have are no custom ring tones (really now...). No messenger support yet. No clue about 3rd party apps, no one is talking about it. Will it be like Android or the tight control Apple has? I couldn't find any article talking about this.DKant - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
I got through 15 pages and that was it. I have already decided this is my next mobile-platform anyway (unless I start hearing rumors of a hologram-projecting iPhone 5), no point reading the remaining 200. I can't imagine the amount of patience it must have taken to WRITE this behemoth! :) Of course it's your job, you've been doing this forever etc, but still.Man, finally. A "proper" competitor to iOS, which was getting a little stale. And I have too many issues with Google's approach to consider any of the quadrillion models on offer.
Well. I do hope WP7 sells and lives longer than the Palm. :_(
(And I'd never imagined I'd finish a post with this..)
To Microsoft!!
CSMR - Saturday, November 13, 2010 - link
Very informative review, but shouldn't this site be serving people who are technically minded rather than the average consumer?There is no question WP7 has a lot of excellent points.
But I'm not sure how you can accept a system that does away with files, and uses a limited sync system to move content around in approved ways.
Or call software "The Best Smartphone for Music Lovers" when:
- it believes that music consists of "songs" written by "artists" and put into "albums", when only a minor part of the history of western music is of this form
- it does not allow a folder structure for navigation, only limited tags of the above form
- gapless playback is incomplete
Microsoft needs prodding to update the system in a way that retains the new features and GUI but also implements the basic features. If it doesn't get this from tech sites, where are we left? Perhaps Windows 8 will decide Turing completeness is no longer important, people just need to be able to do x, y, and z as simply as possible. I'm sure there are a lot of people at Microsoft who want WP7 to be a real OS - without changing usability. They just need a bit of support.
Millsington - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Excellent point about folder navigation, I had forgotten about that. It is sorely missed in modern music players.Sadly, I don't see the issues you raised being addressed for some time unless WP7 really takes off.
billybarker - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Check out these Windows Phone 7 Application Icons - there are 350 icons in the set. http://goo.gl/rMk08warden6 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I've had my HTC 7 Mozart for a fortnight. I like it. I like the big square icons on the Start screen (although I've toned down the colour as much as possible); I like the integration with Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar (yes it does work, set it up as an Exchange server); I like the threaded conversations for texts like the iPhone; the music player is good; oh, and it's not a bad phone either.There are some issues -- there's no Messenger client, gapless track playback is haphazard to say the least, there's a limited range of alerts/ringtones and you can't add more, and battery life is a bit short. Especially with push email. Hopefully some of those can be fixed, but they're definitely not deal-breakers for me.
What I can't figure out is how to do "Inverse" on the scientific view of the calculator. No inverse-sin, inverse-log, etc. That's not a deal-breaker either, I don't use those very often! But it's an odd omission.
anistoona - Sunday, November 21, 2010 - link
" but while home I don’t use those apps as much. Instead my smartphone behaves more like an SMS, phone, email, camera and web browsing device, and it’s in those areas that Windows Phone is easily just as good as the competition."With all my respect: If I need only the SmS, phone, email, Camera and web borwisng things form my handheld device, I would like to buy a 150$ Symbian phone, I don't need to buy an up to 700$ smartphone to do that things!!
WinMob 5, 6.x was the system which puts the definition of what " Smart Phones" should capable of, and disappointingly Microsoft chose to give up that system and replaced with a modified copy of Old, aged and discontinued competitors system ( I mean first generation of iOS ) ..
Really good choice Microsoft !