The Windows Phone 7.5 Review, A Month-Long Experience
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Page 1:More Than A Month With Windows Phone 7.5
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Page 2:History And Home Screen
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Page 3:The Basics: Navigation And Bing Searches
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Page 4:Bing Services: Local Scout, Music, Vision, Speech
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Page 5:Page Orientation: Portrait And Lanscape
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Page 6:Keyboard Layout And Text Input
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Page 7:Touch Gestures And Multitasking
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Page 8:Internet Explorer, Email, And Calendar
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Page 9:Maintaining Contacts, Calling, And Messaging
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Page 10:Multimedia: Music, Videos, And Pictures
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Page 11:Document Management In Mobile Office
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Page 12:Marketplace And Xbox Live
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Page 13: Syncing: Windows And Mac
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Page 14:Apps: Room To Grow, But Most Bases Covered
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Page 15:Windows Phone 7: A Solid Mobile Operating System
After a long string of clumsy mobile releases, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 strikes us as one of the better designs to pass through our labs. After more than a month of using the latest build on a Nokia Lumia 800, we think WP7 deserves consideration.
After several unsuccessful mobile offerings, Microsoft has released Windows Phone 7 (WP7). With 71% of smartphone owners using either an Android or iPhone device, according to Nielsen, it might not seem like Microsoft's new mobile operating system stands much of a chance. However, quite a few companies have announced their support for WP7, and we believe the WP7 is worth watching.
The name "Windows Phone 7" is somewhat misleading. Microsoft unveiled WP7 in 2010; in 2011, a massive update added a mobile version of IE9 supporting Web standards, Twitter integration, and multitasking. This update was called Windows Phone 7.5 (also referred to as Mango). However, the mobile operating system still goes by the name WP7. Specific references to version history usually make use of the code name.
For the folks considering a smartphone with WP7, accepting and growing accustomed to a very different Microsoft-driven ecosystem will probably represent the biggest change. Indeed, for most of the crew at Tom's Hardware, much experience with Android- and iOS-based devices has colored our expectations of mobility. Consequently, I made sure to take my time getting used to WP7 before writing this review, making Nokia's Lumia 800 my personal smartphone for the last month and a half. After acclimating to Windows Phone 7, I'm convinced that anyone shopping for a new phone should at least consider Microsoft's mobile operating system as a viable environment on the right piece of hardware.
Today, we take a closer look at the usability of WP7. And we can take our time. This wasn't forced under the constraint of a tight embargo, but rather allowed to emerge after a lot of real-world experience. This isn't just another gadget review; it's more than a month living with a new mobile device.
- More Than A Month With Windows Phone 7.5
- History And Home Screen
- The Basics: Navigation And Bing Searches
- Bing Services: Local Scout, Music, Vision, Speech
- Page Orientation: Portrait And Lanscape
- Keyboard Layout And Text Input
- Touch Gestures And Multitasking
- Internet Explorer, Email, And Calendar
- Maintaining Contacts, Calling, And Messaging
- Multimedia: Music, Videos, And Pictures
- Document Management In Mobile Office
- Marketplace And Xbox Live
- Syncing: Windows And Mac
- Apps: Room To Grow, But Most Bases Covered
- Windows Phone 7: A Solid Mobile Operating System
Not sure if trolling or plain stupid. Does ONE single employee's action represent the view of an entire organization?
I'll continue waiting until I can buy a phone with a complete, PC like OS on it.
As for Android, iOS, and WP7. I love Android with all the roms you can flash to, that's not for everyone and try new things. I think iOS has a huge platform, apps and all. It's reliable no doubt and it's simple for people who don't worry about roms and stuff like that. WP7 looks like it'll be a solid challenge. It's fast, simple and I'd expect it to grow even more.
Something like... "My brain sees the lil blue tiles and alot of them are missing!"
Search is also bad. Apart from being forced to use Bing instead of Google, it's difficult to search sub-areas of the phone. When you want to search for something on the phone, it keeps taking you back to Bing for a web-wide search.
While the Lumia 800 seemed to get out the door OK, the Lumia 900 launch seems like a disaster, with defective phones and people getting their data connections cutting in and out. Nokia's share price has just gone into freefall. Can it survive?
Windows Phone 8 is also soon to be released, and it won't work on current Lumias.
1) The ENG key on the keyboard will only appear if you have more than one language selected under the keyboard settings menu.
2) On the camera mode, you can scroll between the live camera feed and the last photos you took; in essence, you can have both on screen at the same time. I suspect this isn't just a Nokia thing.
3) If you tap the left-hand edge of an e-mail in the list, it will invoke the select function.
4) Office can explore Excel, Word and PowerPoint, however it cannot create documents for the latter.
5) I can't believe you missed this one, unless it's not an issue on your end... the Toms site glitches to hell and nearly crashes the phone!!! This was present on the 8500 update as well as on the current 12070 update on the Lumia 800; unsure if it's just a Nokia thing.
In response to beta tester, I wasn't aware of Apollo not being available on the 800/900. Ah well!
Correct and fast app switching is down to the app developer to implement correctly. This is because Mango introduced new features for app switching but many developers haven't updated their apps yet.
Any sub-areas of the phone that offer search capabilities will display a search icon. When WP7 was first launched, the hardware search button was context-aware. However, they changed this in Mango because of all the extra features integrated, such as local scout, barcode scanner, text scanner and translator, music ID service etc.
http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-challenge-but-lost-just-because/
Not sure if trolling or plain stupid. Does ONE single employee's action represent the view of an entire organization?
In general it works really well. But I've noticed the following shortcommings:
1) no access to the tcp stack for apps. Which means no citrix client or the like.
2) when on a foreign carrier, automatic update of time does not work, at least not when using vodafone as the foreign carrier.
3) being unable to turn off the mandatory bing search button is a huge minus. One often accidentally presses it, and we all know bing is useless.
4) Direct access to your phone data via usb (without zune) is only available when using registry hacks.
5) Having one of the earliest phones, I don't have access to other display languages than those initially released, and those vision and local scout apps don't exist for me. In english - even if you have the same build number as a newer hardware model, you don't have the samme features.
I 'personally' don't like the 'Metro' aka 'Ghetto' look of either the Phone or Windows 8. There's a slim to none chance I'm switching over. I also like my wife's Android which is nice as well, and much better then the early Droid Android phone.
Perhaps the WP7 (WP7.5) is better, but I have had such a bad and epic failures with'Windows Phones' I have no desire to go back -- it would require it to be a Holly S*** Phone!
Hasn't Microsoft figured-out yet Zune is dead!? Bing is worthless, heck even the vast majority of folks at Microsoft Google.
3. No, we don't all know that. Bing searches are the same as google plus the integration of image, music, and voice search with bing on WP is seamless. Shazam has no use on WP7 now. I now prefer Bing to Google on my desktop as well.
5. This is patently false. These are features of the mango update.
The troll is strong with this one. Windows Phone has absolutely nothing to do with Windows Mobile but you knew that already didn't you?
Although the music players are gone Zune is alive and well. The UI on the PC version blows iTunes away and always has. What good is a subscription service with free music if you don't know what to get? Mixview, subscriptions, smartDJs are powerful. (protip: click the top listener of a song you dig and see what else that user likes). The artist bio and relations are from Pandora. Video rentals are 1080p, 5.1 and stutter free. iTunes sucks but ignorance is bliss for it's users.
Bing? Sorry man but Bing rocks too. Do like this reviewer did. Flip over to Bing for a month. If your search doesn't come up on the first page check and see if it does over at google. The images are gorgeous and video day is always a treat. As for Microsoft people using Google? Pfft. I'm sure somebody somewhere does but you better source this "vast majority" tripe or I'm calling BS... FUD has to be believable for it to work you know.