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Sunday, February 5, 2012
7:32PM

My Adventure Into Windows Phone 7 - The Review

Introduction

As an iPhone user, and someone who generally aligns with Apple’s design philosophies, I’ve always been intrigued by Windows Phone 7. Before last week, I had never spent any more than a few minutes in store playing around with it. I could easily tell it was pretty to look at, but I wasn’t sure if it could really stand up next to iOS. What most would consider, an industry leading, well designed piece of software. So for the past week, to get a better feel for Windows Phone, I’ve been carrying around a Samsung Focus S in place of my iPhone. I even had the SIM in my iPhone deactivated, forcing myself to get by with only Windows Phone.

Going into this adventure, I was much more interested in the software powering this Samsung phone than I am the actual device. (Sadly, I was unable to test one of those sexy new Nokia Lumias) However, I do have a few points I want to make about the hardware before we get into the OS. The one major flaw I see with the Focus S is it’s plastic build. I can easily tell it won’t look anywhere near as good as my (caseless) iPhone 4 does after more than a year and half of regular use. While the glass of the iPhone might be more fragile when dropped, it’s definitely more durable when it comes to daily wear and tear. The shiny plastic of the Focus S won’t look good for long unless it’s wrapped in a case. I’m sure that’s fine for most users, but not me.

Display

The other hardware points I want to make mostly have to do with the displays. First is size; a somewhat touchy subject when it comes to smartphone camps. Having only ever used an iPhone and its 3.5 inch screen, the 4.3 inch Focus S took some getting used to. One of the biggest complaints I hear from iPhone users is, “Phones aren’t supposed to be that big.” And while the larger screen does make the phone significantly bigger overall, I don’t notice a difference when in the pocket. The focus S is so thin it doesn’t feel like it takes up any more space than an iPhone.

The difference comes when in the hand. As I said in my first impressions, I only have normal sized hands, and this phone is simply too big for me. It forces me to change the way I hold a phone. With the iPhone, I cradle it in my fingers, leaving my palm open and my thumb hovering above the screen. With the Focus, I have to palm the middle of the device to get the extra reach needed for the corners of the screen.

The only reason I would ever want a screen this big is if I didn’t have a tablet. Before getting an iPad, I did a lot more web browsing, reading, and watching videos on my iPhone. I would have loved the bigger screen then. Now, not so much; I like that my iPhone is small and easy to hold. I can certainly see how some could love a 4.3 inch screen, and many do, it’s just not for me. Four inches is as big as I’d want to go, but am also perfectly fine with the iPhone staying right at 3.5.

The other point, and really the only thing I have to say about the Focus Flash, has to do with it’s Pentile Matrix display. In two words, it’s absolutely horrible. When held next to the Focus S, with it’s larger SuperAMOLED display, at the same resolution, the difference in quality becomes painfully obvious. With all the straight lines and sharp color changes of Windows Phone 7, edges look rough and jagged on the Flash. You can easily spot individual pixels in a way that’s not possible on the Focus S or iPhone. After looking the retina display for a year, switching to the Flash is like sandpaper in your eyes. (I do realize it’s a lower end model and isn’t fair to judge against something like the iPhone.)

Design

I can confidently say the Focus S was not designed with left handed people in mind. I lost count of how many times I accidentally activated the camera or locked the phone because my finger slipped or I squeezed too hard and hit a button. Designing a phone around right handed users just seems shortsighted and lazy.

The last point I have to make about the hardware isn’t a big deal, but sticks out like a sore thumb to an Apple user. There are three logos on the Focus S, four if you count the home button/Windows logo. (I don’t.) Two on the front faceplate in shiny silver lettering and a third on the back, informing you of the operating system. The camera also says 8MP, which seems only there to inform in-store shoppers, but could just as easily be done with a sticker. To me, its all junk you would never find on an Apple product.

After only a week, I can confidently say I don’t want to replace my iPhone with either the Focus Flash or Focus S, but that doesn’t mean it’s over for Windows Phone. The real story is in the software.

Software

Going into this, I thought of Windows as beautiful and well designed. From the typography to the animations, everything flows gracefully. This past week has only solidified those feelings. Everyone I showed the phone off to thought it looked great, but had also never seen Windows Phone before either, which I thought was just as telling. The OS is a joy to use and pretty to look at; a description usually reserved for Apple products.

You can definitely call me a fan of Metro, (Why not call it Metro 1.5?) I absolutely love the flat digital interface. Microsoft went with something totally unique and bold but blew it with the name; Windows Phone 7 doesn’t do it justice.

In my first impressions, I mentioned the bouncing at the end of lists wasn’t as natural as iOS, and while I still think that’s true, I wouldn’t call it bad, just different. There are animations and subtle touches throughout the OS that make all the difference in experience.

Some notable things I like about Windows Phone:

  • The big live tiles (blue is the only good color, but I only need one) and how it handles notifications.
  • The big typography and how it runs off the page.
  • When sliding between panels, the animation slows down before it stops, like it’s easing itself into place. A subtle touch that makes all the difference.
  • How multitasking shows big screenshots instead of App icons.
  • For the most part, I like having a back button. It can sometimes be confusing on where it takes you, but it’s handy for misstaps.
  • Having an alphabetic list of apps separate from the home screen tiles.
  • How the status bar hides itself and drops down only when you want.
  • The animations and how screens move in and out of view is a great touch.
  • The keyboard is every bit as good as the one on iOS. I like how suggestions and corrections appear.
  • The input changes to a keypad when entering in a phone number to text. How does iOS not do this yet?

Daily Use

Set up was fairly easy. After entering my email and password about 15 times, the People, Pictures, and Music hubs were all automagicly populated. I was surprised by how well Windows Phone integrates with the various social networks, and while I hardly use most of them, I do see how it can be useful. Getting music and photos sync’d from my Mac was also easy and intuitive, something iTunes often struggles with. For the most part, the whole process was as painless as something like that can be. 

After set up, I spent the next few hours digging though the Marketplace. While most of the flagship apps are present, the pickings are slim. In the App Store, it’s hard to pick apps because there are so many to choose from; in the Marketplace, it’s hard to pick apps because there are so few. After the first night of set up and installing apps, I was ready to run Windows Phone 7 through the paces.

Microsoft bills Windows Phone as getting you in, out and on your way. For the most part, I agree. The OS is designed around quick glanceable information. Your next calendar event is displayed on the lock screen, along with icons notifying you of any waiting emails, texts or phone calls. It’s all handled nicely, informing you while staying out of the way. The same goes for notifications, which pop up similar to iOS, but live in live tiles, instead of a centralized place like Notification Center. For someone like me, who only wants notifications from a handful of important apps, the system works great.

One thing I mentioned in my first impressions that only got worse was the sometimes hard to decipher iconography. Because of the minimalist UI, most smaller buttons aren’t labeled with anything other than an icon. It can often be hard to figure out exactly what some buttons do without taping them first. (You can sometimes tap the three dots to reveal text labels but it’s still frustrating.) One example of this is copy and paste. It took a couple tires to figure out exactly how it works with nothing more than a foreign looking icon for guidance. 

Battery Life

Battery life is a huge feature and sometimes an issue for smartphones. While I didn’t run any official tests, I was able to make it through the day on a single charge, and that is what’s important. It doesn’t matter what features it boasts, if a phone can’t last all day, it becomes useless. It’s is something I’m trained to not even think about with my iphone, I just expect it to last all day as long as it gets charged overnight.

On weekdays I leave for school at 8 a.m. and get home around 6 p.m., sometimes as late as 9 on days I have to work. One night, walking into my room around 9:30 I got a “Battery Critically Low” warning. That was 13 hours after I left that morning with some heavy usage in between. I can’t say if the battery lasts as long as the iPhone’s, but it’s certainly long enough to get though the day and that’s good enough for me.

Nitpicky Annoyances

Windows phone might be good, but it’s far from perfect, and while for the most part I like what I see, there are several funky behaviors.

Some annoyances that stuck out:

  • Not many custom fonts in Internet Explorer (this website looks horrible in the browser)
  • Lock screen is too hard or takes to long to swipe away if you don’t flick hard enough
  • Momentum scrolling and swiping can be funky. Sometimes it catches on your finger and the scrolling gets all jumpy. Also you can’t scroll super fast to quickly get to the bottom of a long list.
  • When it’s set to the dark theme, the email app still has a white background. I’m pretty sure it’s the only app that does that and I don’t know why.
  • I wish it let you set a wallpaper for the home tiles, the black reminds me of my old iPhone 3G. The Metro UI looks much better in hubs like Music, where there is a background photo (Album Art works perfectly for this) instead of just black. (Or worse, white.)
  • I don’t like how in the multitasking view, the same app can appear serveral times. I guess it’s more a view of your most recently viewed screens rather than your most recently used apps.
  • The phone conveniently comes loaded with the AT&T family of apps. (Several taps and they are uninstalled)

In the end, I recognize these are mostly nitpicky UI disagreements that don’t have much effect on daily use, but it does bring me to the one fatal flaw of Windows Phone 7.

The App Problem

There are far and away more things I like about Windows Phone than don’t, but the serious the lack of apps is something I can’t get past. This is the one and only thing holding Windows Phone back for me, and it sucks. There were a few apps I was able to find replacements for, but for several others, there was nothing that could match it’s iOS counterpart.

When I say replacements, I don’t just mean the same type of app, but rather one that I can confidently use in place of those I’ve become accustomed to on iOS. Because while there are plenty of RSS readers in the Windows Marketplace, there are none that even come close to the functionality and ease of use as Reeder.

Notable apps missing from the Marketplace that I use daily on my iPhone:

  • SquareSpace - What I use to post to my blog when on the go. I need this app, usually to fix typos.
  • Bank of Oklahoma - What I use to keep track of my bank account and find ATM’s. Admittedly a small bank, but they still have an iOS app.
  • Instagram - I use this to share pictures with my sisters, cousins and now my mom, who just got her first iPhone. I’ve been told the app is coming.
  • Instapaper - I will say on a phone it’s more important to be able to save things to Instapaper (which I could still do on WP7) than it is to read them, but it’s still nice to have the app.
  • Downcast/Instacast - Two amazing podcast apps for iOS that none of the one’s I tested could even come close to matching.
  • Reeder - To be fair, this is probably the best RSS app ever made.
  • Dropbox - Are you kidding me, how is an official Dropbox app not on WP7? Is it because of SkyDrive?

I don’t use a ton of services and I don’t need 500,000 apps, I only need about 10, and they have to be good. Sadly the Windows Phone Marketplace just doesn’t cut it. I’ll say again though, the few apps I did find replacements for were of high quality.

Microsoft has themselves a chicken and egg problem, compounded by the fact that so many new apps and services rely on a large user base to sell advertising to. The developers won’t build apps until the users come and the users won’t come because there aren’t enough apps. It’s a tough spot but WP7 isn’t going anywhere, as it gets better and more mature, developers will begin to support it.

Windows Phone a Viable Replacement?

Going into this having only used iOS, I was most interested to see if Windows Phone would be able to do everything I’ve come to rely on from my iPhone.

Besides the standard phone calls and texts, here’s a quick rundown of what I use my iPhone for: 

  • Reading RSS feeds and saving stuff to Instapaper
  • Keeping up with Twitter
  • Email and online banking
  • Posting/fixing typos/checking up on this website
  • Listening to podcasts
  • Alarms/Calendar/to-do’s for classes and assignments
  • Checking Reddit and other news aggregators
  • Keeping in touch with my sisters and family through various social networks and FaceTime (Yes, I actually use FaceTime)
  • Maps and searching for nearby businesses
  • Checking the weather before I leave for class

While Windows Phone works great for most everything I do, it’s missing several critical apps that make it impossible for me to consider leaving iOS. The operating system is every bit as easy and enjoyable to use as iOS, and in fact does some things better. The turn by turn navagation and maps app is much better than on iOS. However, Windows Phone still can’t do everything my iPhone can simply because of the lack of 3rd party apps. Stock Windows phone might be on par with stock iOS, but that’s not good enough to make me want to switch. It has to be better, and have all the apps to go along with it.

I could only recommend Windows Phone to those not interested to using the latest new services and apps, but still want the added benefits of a smartphone. It’s is a perfect fit for the older crowd, (think parents) who are finally adopting the smartphone. The only reason I went with an iPhone instead of a Windows Phone device for my Mom, is because she uses an iPad as her only computer, and the two work together seamlessly through iCloud.

Final Thoughts

The biggest question I have after my week with Windows Phone is why aren’t more people using this? The only explanation I can think of (besides all the market forces and being 2 years too late) is Android users want the ability to customize their phone to be as ugly as they want, and Windows Phone doesn’t cater to that. If the designers did their job, you shouldn’t have to customize anything. Both Windows Phone and iOS get this right. 

Even though Windows Phone did fail to replace iOS, I still think it’s a great piece of software with much promise. Besides the missing apps, I had no problem working it into my digital routine. I didn’t encounter a single crash, freeze or hiccup in the software during the entire week of testing. Still, I never did feel confident enough to leave the iPhone at home, and several times each day, I found myself pulling it out to do something with an app Windows Phone didn’t have. The up side is this problem can be fixed; eventually the apps will come, and Windows Phone will only get better. Especially when Windows 8 tablets finally hit the market.

However, I don’t buy or recommend anything based on what it could be at some point in the future. All that matters is what it is, and as of now, I’m sticking with the iPhone and will see how things play out from here. One thing I’ve learned from this first review experience is it’s going to take the total package to replace something as good as iOS.