Preview: Putting Windows Phone 7 to the Test
Coming soon, courtesy of our sources at Microsoft, will be a shiny new Windows Phone 7 for my personal review. It’s a kind gesture and a bold move considering I’m an Apple iPhone fan. But don’t think I’m not going in with an open mind — I love playing with new gadgets more than I love Apple. Plus, I’m happy to review anything that seriously competes with Apple because it drives innovation. Read on for how I plan to test drive Windows Phone 7.
If you haven’t seen the commercials already, Windows Phone 7 is being billed as the “get in, get out” phone. That means the user spends as little time as possible with the phone thanks to some uber-convenient shortcuts to access information quickly and easily. It’s a dig at a lot of other phones that require the user to either open an app or load up something else altogether — which ends up sucking the user in. (To drive home the point, the commercials feature people unaware of their perilous surroundings as they focus all their attention on their non-Windows 7 smartphones.) You can be sure I’ll see how well WP7 lives up to the marketing hype.
I’ll also take a long, hard look at those apps that are analogous to the apps I use every day on my iPhone, both native and third party. Big ones for me will be:
- Wikipedia Reader
- RSS Feed Reader
- PDF/Book Reader
- DropBox Access
- Navigation Based App
I’ll also be testing out every specific feature unique to the WP7 phone — camera quality, speed, polish, usability, media capabilities, response time and, of course, web browsing. I’ll also be looking to see how it works with Google’s cloud resources, since that’s where all my work information lives.
Phones are extremely personal items and a good phone is important for reliable communication, work and play, while also serving as a constant productivity tool. But it has to provide the user with an exceptionally fluid way to do all this. The bar for a ‘smartphone’ is continually being set higher and higher. Windows Phone 7 has a lot to achieve.
It’s important to note that I won’t be judging the phone based on sales, but I will draw a correlation, if there is one, between the sales of the phone and my experience. To date, I’ve yet to see a Windows Phone 7 in real life. I’m going in without any preconceived notions and I’m excited.
What questions will you have about Windows Phone 7, and are you planning to get one? Let us know. And I’ll be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as I plan my review.
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The big question is not whether it looks good now (that’s a given), but whether it will still look good in a year’s time.
Competition in the Android market can only be described by one word—feverish. That’s what allowed it to get off to a mediocre start and surpass Apple’s Iphone in just a couple of years. Is it going to let up now? No.
But all the Windows Phone 7 vendors are crucially dependent on Microsoft to keep them competitive. And Microsoft is a company that, let’s face it, does not have a reputation for moving fast. So will it be able to keep up with Android?
Doesn’t seem likely, does it?