Windows Phone 7 Review: Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have Ourselves a Race
Let's just get it out of the way: Windows Phone 7 is the most exciting thing to happen to phones in a long time.
There's a million reasons why Windows Phone 7 matters. It's the most important PC company in the world, battered, bruised and badly lagging, coming back to the next generation of PCs, after crashing on a bunch of rocks and abandoning ship. It's potentially the most tectonic shift in mobile since the launch of iPhone and Android. It's Microsoft starting over and betting massively on its future. It's a very different kind of Microsoft product. It could be the beginning of something truly great.
Windows Phone 7 is the most aggressively different, fresh approach to a phone interface since the iPhone. Everything is superflat and two dimensional. Ultra-basic squares, primary colors and lists. Fonts are gigantic and clean, white text on an almost universally black void. It's fluid. This spartan nature is emblematic of the entire OS, for better and for worse. You don't get a lot of choices; there are no custom ringtones, for instance. It just is how it is. And while it looks and feels very different in some regards, it's still uncanny just how deeply inspired Windows Phone is by the iPhone in its philosophy, versus anything else Microsoft or anybody else has made.
The interface is oriented around three core concepts:
• Hubs Essentially panoramic apps that span multiple screens. Ironically, what really proves the Hub concept works are the third-party apps that use it. It works perfectly with Twitter, Netflix, Foursquare and Facebook, swiping over a screen to get to mentions, or to see your friends checkins.
• Live Tiles These are the home screen's icons, and they update with fresh info like email counts. But the Tiles don't do quite enough to function as full-fledged widgets—the weather Tile, for instance, doesn't show the weather.
• The App Bar a semi-persistent menu/taskbar that hides deeper actions—like starting a new email or switching tabs in Internet Explorer. It's a necessarily evil, given how radically Microsoft has reduced the onscreen UI.Windows Phone strikes the best balance of any smartphone between web-oriented and local storage, using the cloud for info like contacts and apps, tying itself to a PC (or Mac, with a basic client) only for big updates, music and video syncing. Contacts from Facebook and Google beam in, sync and integrate perfectly. Finding your lost phone, photo uploading and note syncing is built-in, automatic and free.
The core OS is very, very good, if embryonic in some ways, much like the original iPhone. It's really up to the apps to make Windows Phone usable. Microsoft won't have 250,000 at launch, but true to their word, it seems like they'll have a lot of what's needed, with the early launch apps feeling great. That said, it's still way too tricky to find things, especially given there ain't that much in the store yet. It could be the best platform launch yet.
The most polished UI this side of the iPhone: It just feels great, even if it is missing some things like copy and paste (coming next year, supposedly). A nearly perfect melange of Microsoft services—Bing, Zune, Xbox, Office—in a cohesive, logical and typically beautiful way. (Though the more tied into Microsoft you are, the better experience you'll have, like Google and Android.) Native apps are almost gratutiously tasty eye candy. Outlook mail app looks and works fantastically. Even IE doesn't suck, though anything that renders poorly in desktop IE will also do so on the phone. Find my phone is free, along with 5GB of syncable cloud storage.
Remember how iTunes wasn't so bad, and then Apple kept pinning on feature after feature, bloating it into a massive, disgusting corpus? Yeah, well, the Zune desktop client is slowly meeting the same fate now that's it used to sync your phone and as the browser for the app marketplace.
And in pursuit of a stark aesthetic, there's a radical reduction of elements on a WP7 screen: The home screen, for example, only fits eight tiles at once. So to get to something else, you've gotta swipe a mile or two. (The iPhone gives you access to 20 items; Android 2.2, up to 19.) No universal search to call up apps. No singular email app: Every email account creates its own tile, which sucks when real estate is so valuable. Browsing for apps is the single most painful experience of Windows Phone. Stumbling upon Netflix felt like a happy accident after 10 minutes of flipping through apps to see what was new. Loading app lists takes forever, and it's the one time the phone ever becomes totally nonresponsive. Grabbing an app requires confirming and reconfirming like 6,000 times. Annoying "Resuming..." screen pops up any time you lock the phone with an app open and then turn the screen back on. It's highly annoying. No multi-tasking.
Windows Phone 7 is really great. A lot of that greatness is potential. But if anybody can follow through on their platform it is Microsoft. Should you buy this instead of an iPhone or Android phone though? In six months, after the ecosystem has filled out, the answer will be more clear. But right now, Window Phone is definitely an option. Considering where Microsoft was just a year ago, that's saying a hell of a lot.
Send an email to matt buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.
Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.The browser doesn't even support HTML5 (nor Flash). At least the iPhone has full HTML5 support. Reply
It sounds like a giant step back for phones, even if it's a bit of a step forward for Microsoft.Total lack of customizability is a very strange thing for a phone made in 2010. Reply
Man, every time I read something about this phone OS my opinion on it changes. I know myself, the things that Matt lists as missing would drive me bat shit. I was the kid you couldn't keep from picking at his scabs. (Nice analogy, right?)I am a ZunePass subscriber and that factors heavily into my still being somewhat interested in WP7. I'm currently using an aging Imagio that's running a custom rom that really taxes the underpowered hardware. Sadly I have so much more control over my experience on this weak little WinMo than it sounds like I would on a WP7 device.
I'm not due to upgrade till May Microsoft. You (or more likely XDA-Devs) have till then to patch the glaring holes or it's Gingerbread all the way. But don't fix it for me MS, think of the children! Reply
I don't really get the hype. I mean, there are a couple of good ideas here, and they managed to come up with a graphic design that is not an iPhone rip-off (although to be honest, I don't care for what they came up with). And competition is good. But if the future is 2D, non-customizable look and feel (and sound), no multitasking... that's just kind of sad. Will be interesting to see where it stands in a few years. Reply
The more I look the interface the more I really, really like it. I want to like the whole thing, but I just can't love anything with IE on it. Sorry. As a web developer for many years, it would be like going back to an abusive mate.If some webkit variant came stock on this phone I'd be much more excited.
Seriously, fuck IE. Reply
Looks great and once my Evo contract is up i'm getting one. I like that I have to wait so they can update the software to run better and do the more basic functions that it's missing. Reply
Just went in to the Vodafone store next door to play with one, but the manager told me that he hasn't even heard about it! wtf!
And i was hoping i could pick two of em! Reply
Say what you want about what it is lacking; it is evident that this is a big thing for Microsoft. I'm a huge Apple fanboy, but even I can see that this would have been a hard step for Microsoft to take, and I think they've pulled it off with aplomb. It's smart, it's good looking, it's relatively smooth, it's beautifully unique and it looks like it integrates well with Microsoft's other enterprises, like Zune and Xbox etc.It's different.
Sure it's missing a few things that any phone in this day and age should have, C&P, Multitasking etc, but as a first rendition of a new era, I am really, very excited. Reply
Grabbing an app requires confirming and reconfirming like 6,000 times.I'm having flashbacks to UAC. I don't like being back in this place, it's terrifying. Reply
Animal_Chin promoted this comment
Am I alone in thinking the big unicolor squares are ugly? How does this thing not even copy and paste?? even apple caved into that fight Years ago, and Microsoft has been the dominant document editor since, well, wordperfect. This whole things seems terrible to me.That dog just won't hunt (or make calls, for me at least) Reply
"Let's just get it out of the way: Windows Phone 7 is the most exciting thing to happen to phones in a long time."Microsoft has some of the deepest pockets around! Let the advertising wars (and ad revenue to Gizmodo) begin!!! Reply
I liken this to the slick, barebones experience that Apple first released in iOS 1.0 back in 2007, except with apps. Most of us have moved beyond that limited functionality and won't turn back, but I bet most of us are still intrigued by the potential of this (I sure am). A small percentage of people will find this new experience refreshing, and will jump on board right away. Many will hold out a few generations and then jump on.I do believe this has the potential to be the most serious competitor to iPhone in 2-3 years, leapfrogging Android. We'll see. Reply
I am really really jealous of the sexiness of the UI, which I see is Android's biggest shortcoming. Android is a phone made for nerds, by nerds.In pursuit to have their open source code perfectly formatted and perfectly formed to be the most efficient to the many eyes that have combed through it since its release, they have skimped on design.
I hope Gingerbread changes this, or else it looks like WP7 might just get my vote next time I'm in the market, ~june 2011 - right when sprint's baby is coming out! Reply
Microsoft is rapidly gaining market in every field they entered late to the party.Bing managed to impress with numbers even still being the underdog. The Xbox 360 is a prodigy and this Windows phone looks very promising.
The ideal thing though would be if MS could spot the trends on the fly instead of spending billions to regain the time they lost on each and every market.
Cloud computing is not the only thing that matters, Ballmer. Reply
What engine does the browser use? A modified IE engine? Web Kit? Replymatt buchanan promoted this comment
All that matters is the price point. I think Microsoft will be willing to take a loss to get market share, as they did when they launched the Xbox 360. ReplyiDon't even promoted this comment
I like how after almost every Apple keynote, there's something about the Windows 7 Phone, and only one article, not a whole book of articles.This review is so short compared to the iPhone 4 review. And there wasn't much to review on the iPhone 4, because it's not like it's a completely different phone, it does the same stuff and a few extras, not a completely new phone or OS (Like this)
"Find my phone is free" Apple must be so pissed that they didn't patent a phone locating service.
I wanna know what Office looks like compared to my iOS version called DocumentsToGo.
The "No Like" section really tells me the phone must suck. Yeah, of course I'm an Apple fanboy, but reading that just makes me think that it can't do better than my iPhone, and maybe I shouldn't bother going to a store to try it out. You know, I was actually considering it until I came to that part of the review. It just tells me it's a glitch in your hand. Reply
I love this new review format you guys are doing. It's skim-able, doesn't screw up the writer's individual style all that much, and the best part is the 'Seal of Approval' at the very bottom.(Though I do miss the +/- 's at the bottom.) Reply
It's very pretty, and I like it. But there are some parts that don't work, like the image behind the music list made the text unreadable since the text is pure white with no drop shadow (that i could see) and I know there are a lot of spots in the apps that look like that.Its also unacceptable in late 2010 to have feature parity with the iPhone of 2007. The itself iPhone was actually lacking in 2007, but at least it was something totally new. Win 7 is just another touch screen OS and its well behind its competitors. Reply
I'll stick to the Iphone. This have the same thing I hate about android, a lot of devices. Pretty much having to read reviews on what's the best WP7, check on what is on the horizon to weight in my purchase etc reminds me of the rather complicated PC/Windows world.I rather just have one hardware and having the developers optimize stuff with a single device in mind rather than make stuff compatible for several devices. Just like how first party video games tend to look better than multiplatform releases. nothxbye. Reply
Settings promoted this comment
They should make the icons smaller so that they can fit at least 15 tiles. 8 tiles feels a little claustrophobic.I don't have a smartphone, never had one and never plan to get one. But if/when Feature and Multimedia phones go extinct, I'll have my eye on the WP7.
Btw I like the review layout, would like to see it more in future articles. Reply
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Thursday, 21 October 2010
Windows Phone 7 Review: Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have Ourselves a Race
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