Full review of the prototype of Windows Phone 7
On July 19, 2010, Microsoft began sending prototypes of Windows Phone 7 phones to third-party developers. The same samples got to some online publications. I bring to your attention a free translation of the WP7 review from Engadget.com, supplemented with images from the emulator.
It was a long journey, right? Although, in a sense, this is not the case - in fact, about 2 years have passed since the beginning of the development of Windows Phone 7. If you think this product will replace Windows Mobile 6.5, then this is true. Even the latest versions of WinMo 6.5 were based on the same things as version 5.0 from the distant 2005 year. At that time, WVGA displays for phones were science fiction, names with more than 2G were incomprehensible to most people, and there was no Habrahabr. Now a lot has changed: 8-year-olds have access to e-mail through their phones, and Apple and Google’s mobile devices dominate the market, with which Microsoft handed over the palm on a silver platter. No one, either inside or outside Redmond, claims that these changes took place too quickly, because it is no longer enough to dominate only the desktop market.
In light of this, you can say that Widows Phone 7 is a desperate attempt to become competitive in the mobile market again. Call it whatever you like, but regardless of this, brand loyalty will no longer help this operating system — it must itself be worthy. Moreover, WP7 should be almost flawless in a market with iOS 4. Microsoft has several months before it launches the first wave of phones on the market, but we recently received a Samsung prototype, codenamed "Taylor", based on i8910HD. Does he look like a killer of iPhones and androids? Read in this review.
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As before, the WP7 interface is made in the style of “Metro”, which means the presence of a large number of 2D elements and rectangular blocks with text filled with color. In fact, 2D is not quite right - the interface consists of several layers on each page, so even when scrolling, there is even a Parallax effect , like on Dandy. This effect works very well: it gives a sense of depth and detail, but does not distract from the content. Nowhere is the controversial clipping point for the end of the headers, but it looks beautiful. Although there are places where such clipping works quite funny, for example, in the Office hub: instead of “PowerPoint”, read “PowerPoir”.
We were very surprised and amazed at the responsiveness of the interface. This is perhaps the most accurate and subtle reaction of the display on this side of iOS4 barricades. It's amazing how much work Microsoft has done on the user interface since we first saw it - now everything looks like a single whole. We did not see significant lags when using the phone, and the quick transitions between applications and web pages create a very pleasant impression.
The whole OS comes down to three main sections:
WP7 notifies the user of a new SMS message with a pop-up window, like Android, so Microsoft is already ahead of Apple. And if the background music is playing, the playback can be controlled after pressing the volume button:
It is strange that the top panel, which is used to display information about the signal level, battery charge and WiFi, is shown only after touching the top of the screen. And in some applications (for example, photos) this panel is not shown at all. We do not know why Microsoft did this, but it takes extra movement to bring up this panel. And yes, guys, please add the battery level in percent.
Another nice innovation in the interface is the animation in the form of a series of small dots at the top of the screen, when something is loaded or synchronized. A trifle, but it's nice to know what the phone is thinking or working. The interface does not have a large abundance of controls or options. Only you and your content ... and it works.
In our opinion, there are still 2 big omissions: the device does not support copy / paste and multitasking in third-party applications. Even though we heard about it even on MIX10, now this is no better. Microsoft made a good selection and editing of the text (at least in Word), and it seems that it takes quite a bit to add a contextual pop-up window for the copy / paste function. And the lack of multitasking is almost inexcusable in our time, because even Apple (which was catching up in this area) now supports multitasking. We hope that in some magical way these two problems will be solved before launching the platform ...
I must say in advance: the on-screen keyboard in WP7 is very, very good. It can be said that it is almost as good as the keyboard on the iPhone, and certainly better than the keyboard on Android. This is one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards that we used across platforms - and that says a lot. The prototype we tested has a rather narrow screen, despite its size (3.7 inches) and resolution (480 Ă— 800, standard for WP7). Therefore, during typing, it was sometimes a little crowded horizontally, but this did not bring serious problems.
The keyboard looks simple and clean, like everything else in the OS. Monochrome keys (white characters on a black background or vice versa, depending on the application) and pop-up panels above them when pressed:
The keys are in the usual order, plus a button to switch to the emoticon layout is added:
Microsoft acted smartly: a comma and a dot are always at hand, and to access infrequently used symbols and punctuation, you need to hold the corresponding key (as on the iPhone):
We were surprised by the sophistication of the keyboard - after all, when we saw it on WMC and MIX10, it was not at all in such a successful form.
WP7 does not have a contact list as such. There is an application "People", but it is completely different. WP7 is a completely social platform, and there is no differentiation between people, whether it is the interlocutor by phone, sms or e-mail. As soon as you add your Windows Live, Exchange or Facebook accounts, the phone loads all contacts related to you, and the content of the phone changes completely - you can do nothing about it. This means that, for example, the Photos application will have a bunch of pictures of your new aunt's former boyfriend, and to fix this, you can only delete your Facebook account from your phone.
With Exchange, this strategy probably works well - contact synchronization is one of the main reasons for using Exchange. But Facebook is another matter. If you have many friends on Facebook, the application displays them all and becomes useless, in the sense of a traditional contact list. Microsoft recommends searching for contacts by typing, pinning the most important contacts on the home screen and using the list of recently used contacts.
We believe that there is a much easier solution: to allocate Facebook in a kind of sandbox. It would be best if Microsoft followed the Android philosophy, which allows the user to choose whether to import all of their Facebook contacts to their contact list, and where there is a special Facebook application that has a complete list of friends. There is currently no standard Facebook application in WP7, so your Facebook friends simply have nowhere to live, except in the main contact list. And you can do as in Motorola Blur - import all, but give the ability to filter by type of contact.
But the strangest thing is that WP7, with all its desire to be social, does not have integration with Twitter. For some, Twitter is just as important as Facebook (and maybe even more), and it seems like a glaring omission. Add integration with Twitter could be quite easy, because the People application allows you to see both the shared feed of social network friends (Windows Live and Facebook), and the feeds for individual contacts. Twitter would fit perfectly, they just have to do it.
As in most modern smartphones, WP7 has fairly simple and automated E-mail settings. When you first turn on the phone, you will be asked to provide Windows Live ID, although it is not necessary to use it. On the email setup screen, you can connect accounts for Live, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. Of course, there is the possibility of manual configuration of POP or IMAP mailboxes. There is a choice of the method and frequency of synchronization: push, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour and manual checking of mail.
The “Email” app is, on the whole, amazing, providing a clean, clear interface and easy access to the most frequently used functions. On the standard inbox page, you will receive email in the form of a message feed. You can flip the page to the right or left to sort by unread, by flag or by priority. Managing message groups is better than in most mail applications that we used — all you have to do is click the checkbox to the left of the message. This greatly simplifies the removal and movement of messages. In addition, it was nice that when you delete a letter, you are transferred to the inbox, and not to the next message. Along the bottom of the screen you have icons for creating a new message, browsing folders, updating and managing groups of messages.
By clicking on the hardware search button, you will get a pretty powerful search that analyzes topics, message content, senders and recipients at the same time. With this search, it is surprisingly easy to find what you are looking for. But, unfortunately, it searches only among the messages downloaded to the device. So, if you are looking for something that has long been lost on the server, you are not lucky ...
Also in WP7 there are no combined mailboxes. Each box is a kind of separate application, and when you create a new box, a new item is added to the list of applications. To secure this box on the home screen, you must pin this application there. We would like to see the possibility of placing several items inside one tile (like new folders in iOS4) where all mailboxes could be placed. Although, of course, it is preferable to just have a combined box.
Overall, mail in WP7 is good, but not the best. There are many things that deserve praise, but a lot and not enough. We would really like Microsoft to do conversations, merged mailboxes, and search through messages on the server. We think that many want it.
The application for working with SMS / MMS in WP7 looks good. But we want the company to differentiate the messages of the sender and the recipient by color (at least in shades of the same color).
Creating and sending messages is quite simple. A long press on individual messages gives you the opportunity to delete or forward them, and clicking on the conversation list gives you the opportunity to delete the entire conversation.
There were problems - in some cases, the text goes beyond the boundaries of the blocks. We know that the software is not yet complete, but it seems that now is not the time for such bugs.
Since quite a lot of bad things get in IE’s address, we have to say that using WP7’s web browser is very nice.
Downloading the desktop version of the Engadget site went a bit slower than on the iPhone 4. Scaling, which is done, of course, with the help of gestures, goes smoothly like clockwork.
We appreciated the possibility of pinning web pages to the home screen (of course, there are regular bookmarks).
Tabs are supported, there are a maximum of 6 on our device, and we think that this is true for all WP7 phones. Let's be honest - probably you don’t need more than 6 simultaneously open pages on your phone. Tabs can be loaded in parallel, regardless of whether they are active or not, and this does not adversely affect the overall performance of the browser.
Neither Flash nor Silverlight are supported in the browser. But those familiar with the iPhone can confirm that this is usually not a problem. But the lack of support for HTML5 makes the situation with the browser somewhat painful ... There is not even a separate application for YouTube on the phone!
Another thing that interested us is the number of sites that identified the iPhone and Android devices to show the mobile version, but did not identify WP7. A key example is Gmail, which shows the nasty WAP version of the site. But we think that a large number of sites will make the necessary changes if the platform becomes popular.
If you are already familiar with the Zune player, then there will not be many surprises. Integration with Zune in WP7 is pretty seamless, allows you to view and play elements of your library, synchronize music and video with a computer, and if you have a subscription, you can download anything (well, almost) from the Internet to your phone. In general, we liked the combo of the phone and the player, but sometimes the Zune interface seemed a bit confusing.
We liked the almost unlimited access to new music on the phone via the Zune Pass for $ 14.95. Something tells us that when the phones hit the market, the number of Zune Pass users will increase dramatically.
An important aspect about Zune on WP7 is the extremely interconnectedness of the phone with the desktop PC. Not only do you use Zune software to synchronize music and videos, you have the opportunity to buy applications on your computer and sync photos. This is very similar to the iPhone and Itunes, and quite unlike ActiveSync from the heyday of Windows Mobile.
We heard that one of the main goals of WP7 was excellent camera work, not only in terms of image size and quality, but also in terms of speed. In the end, if your camera turns on too long, or if you wait 5 seconds between shots, it becomes quite inconvenient to use the phone to capture the interesting moments of life. Fortunately, it seems that Microsoft fulfilled its promise - it took us about4 seconds to turn on the camera, and about 2 seconds between shots . We do not appreciate the quality of photos or videos, as we are dealing with equipment that will never be released.
As soon as you take a picture, a very cool thing happens: the picture leaves to the left, as if you are looking at a roll of photographic film. You can view recently taken pictures by simply sliding this “film” to the right, and return to the viewfinder by scrolling back to the left. This is very intuitive, and we suspect that novice users will be easy.
Phone manufacturers can embed additional camera features, but by default this list is quite impressive: custom white balance, graphic effects (shades of gray, sepia, etc.), saturation, ISO, shutter speed, and even metering. Most of these features are available even when shooting video. Naturally, you can set the flash mode: automatically, always, or never.
The phone can be configured so that, immediately after taking a photo, it uploads the captured image to your Windows Live SkyDrive account in the background. In the "Images" application you can upload photos and on Facebook, but in the settings you have to choose between "upload to SkyDrive" and "upload to Facebook" - at the same time it is impossible. But you can scroll through the menu, why not?
The application "Images" is a universal tool for working with photos on your phone. Here and your pictures (local and online), and pictures of your friends. In this application, you can view and send photos, change the background of the lock screen and, because This is an expandable hub, use the services of third parties You can change the background of this hub by long pressing the header. And, as we said, on the “What's New” page you will receive an infinite number of updates to your Facebook friends' photos that you barely know. We would like to be able to select a specific list of friends to display here.
Microsoft has already started handing out prototype phones (the same as in this review) to developers, and it will continue to do so. On the side of the box it is even written: “developers. Developers! DEVELOPERS !! ” So yes, we can say that Redmond understands how important it is to have third-party applications for the success (or failure) of the platform. Applications are ultimately downloaded via the Marketplace. This is not at all like Windows Mobile 6.5, but it looks like Apple and Google offer us, but with some special features.
The first thing you will notice when you open the Marketplace is that you have the “Music” category, while iOS allocates music to a separate iTunes application, and Android relies on third-party vendors such as Amazon. But it’s not as integrated as you think - by clicking on the music, you will simply go to the Zune Marketplace, which is good. In addition, selecting the category "Games", you go to the Xbox Marketplace, which, unfortunately, is not yet available for testing. Scrolling to the left, you will be taken to the “Recommended” page, where both music and applications are mixed in a single look.
Go to the last category - "Applications". Although at the moment there are only a small number of demo applications on the market, they were enough to get an idea of ​​the buying process. Applications are divided typically: the newest, the most popular and recommended. You can use the search by clicking on the appropriate hardware button.
If you are just browsing apps, you can scroll through the entire list or narrow it down into categories: Tools, Lifestyle, News & Weather, and Business Center. We would not be surprised if there are more categories in the future. The list shows the application icon, name, rating on a5-star scale and a brief description of the application (after all, not all applications have a descriptive name). After selecting the application, you will see an information page with the following information: price, detailed description, screenshots, reviews, version number, language support and a list of phone services that the application needs access to.
After you decide to buy something, the whole process takes place in the background, and after a few minutes, you can find this application on the phone list. We would like some unobtrusive notification when the application is installed, because now it seems to be a guessing game.
Thin integration with Office may be the most important difference WP7 - a function, only because of one of which, this phone can not be ignored by serious business users.
Although Word seems to render the pages well on a small display, its editing capabilities are very weak — you cannot change the fonts and you can select only one of four text colors: orange, green, red, and black. There is a spell checker (familiar red wavy lines), but there is no copy / paste function. Excel has a similar story, although it has a fairly good set of built-in functions.
But PowerPoint documents in general can not be created on the phone. The main thing in PowerPoint for WP7 is probably the ability to display a slide show - especially for devices with a TV-out to show the finished presentations from the phone.
WP7 supports interaction with SharePoint servers, which certainly will be useful for some business users. There is also OneNote, which in many ways is just Word under a different name. It can attach photos and voice recordings to the note, which should be in Word, but it is not. You can set up OneNote to automatically synchronize with your Windows Live SkyDrive account, which means that your notes will be available on any computer connected to the Internet. “Cloud” is a thing, magic!
As we noted above, while integration with Xbox Live is not ready. You can only add a Live-account and get an avatar on the phone. We hope that Microsoft will soon demonstrate what these devices will be capable of.
Bing cards are implemented in WP7 quite well. You have access to maps, satellite imagery and traffic information in real time. Changing the location is displayed quickly, but we found that it is usually a little less accurate than Google (indoors and without GPS). Map scaling is fast and smooth.
Since this is a client for Bing Maps, you can count on the same database of places as in Bing for a desktop computer. You can search for places using text or speech (more on this later), and matches will be displayed on the map. As you would expect, by clicking on the place icon, a page of information will appear, where you can find a phone number, URL, rating and even a timetable - very convenient for restaurants. You can also see user reviews from the Citysearch and JudysBook sites.
Our favorite part of the map is a list of directions when navigating to a destination. This is not a voice accompaniment - the application divides the screen into two parts: a map and a list of control points. There are both pedestrian and road modes, but there is no public transport mode.
Like maps, the search in WP7 uses, of course, Bing. Microsoft made a neat Bing search page for a small screen, similar to the page from the site. On the right side of the input field there is a microphone enable icon for voice search. It really works if you do not want to find something with a strange name. After starting the search, in addition to the list of web pages, you get a list of news and search results of places.
Search is, in fact, a large application that can be accessed by pressing the hardware search button. But not always - applications during their work can replace this search (for example, "People", "Maps", "Marketplace").
What we were shown does not look like a complete mobile operating system yet. Some parts of the system are more like some kind of frame - an example of how the platform of new generation phones should look like. This is both good and bad.On the one hand, we are still very pleased with the viability of the Metro interface and some smart solutions in WP7. On the other hand, in just a few months Microsoft should turn this into a viable product that can endure the fiercest competition, and there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. Honestly, it's a little scary.
If the WP7 team adds a clipboard and some elements of multitasking, Microsoft can get a pretty good debut version of WP7, especially in combination with a fierce propaganda campaign for developers.
Of course, this is a big “if” - time is passing, and the market has already proved that it will not wait for the company to play catch-up. And the speech at the moment is not about winning, but about participating in the race, and if Microsoft doesn't know this, then it may be too late.
It was a long journey, right? Although, in a sense, this is not the case - in fact, about In light of this, you can say that Widows Phone 7 is a desperate attempt to become competitive in the mobile market again. Call it whatever you like, but regardless of this, brand loyalty will no longer help this operating system — it must itself be worthy. Moreover, WP7 should be almost flawless in a market with iOS 4. Microsoft has several months before it launches the first wave of phones on the market, but we recently received a Samsung prototype, codenamed "Taylor", based on i8910HD. Does he look like a killer of iPhones and androids? Read in this review.
')
Appearance
As before, the WP7 interface is made in the style of “Metro”, which means the presence of a large number of 2D elements and rectangular blocks with text filled with color. In fact, 2D is not quite right - the interface consists of several layers on each page, so even when scrolling, there is even a Parallax effect , like on Dandy. This effect works very well: it gives a sense of depth and detail, but does not distract from the content. Nowhere is the controversial clipping point for the end of the headers, but it looks beautiful. Although there are places where such clipping works quite funny, for example, in the Office hub: instead of “PowerPoint”, read “PowerPoir”.
We were very surprised and amazed at the responsiveness of the interface. This is perhaps the most accurate and subtle reaction of the display on this side of iOS4 barricades. It's amazing how much work Microsoft has done on the user interface since we first saw it - now everything looks like a single whole. We did not see significant lags when using the phone, and the quick transitions between applications and web pages create a very pleasant impression.
The whole OS comes down to three main sections:
- Tiles on the main page (tiles) (favorite applications, people and web pages)
- List of applications (alphabetical list of all applications)
- Hubs (a cross between apps and menus)
WP7 notifies the user of a new SMS message with a pop-up window, like Android, so Microsoft is already ahead of Apple. And if the background music is playing, the playback can be controlled after pressing the volume button:
It is strange that the top panel, which is used to display information about the signal level, battery charge and WiFi, is shown only after touching the top of the screen. And in some applications (for example, photos) this panel is not shown at all. We do not know why Microsoft did this, but it takes extra movement to bring up this panel. And yes, guys, please add the battery level in percent.
Another nice innovation in the interface is the animation in the form of a series of small dots at the top of the screen, when something is loaded or synchronized. A trifle, but it's nice to know what the phone is thinking or working. The interface does not have a large abundance of controls or options. Only you and your content ... and it works.
In our opinion, there are still 2 big omissions: the device does not support copy / paste and multitasking in third-party applications. Even though we heard about it even on MIX10, now this is no better. Microsoft made a good selection and editing of the text (at least in Word), and it seems that it takes quite a bit to add a contextual pop-up window for the copy / paste function. And the lack of multitasking is almost inexcusable in our time, because even Apple (which was catching up in this area) now supports multitasking. We hope that in some magical way these two problems will be solved before launching the platform ...
Keyboard
I must say in advance: the on-screen keyboard in WP7 is very, very good. It can be said that it is almost as good as the keyboard on the iPhone, and certainly better than the keyboard on Android. This is one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards that we used across platforms - and that says a lot. The prototype we tested has a rather narrow screen, despite its size (3.7 inches) and resolution (480 Ă— 800, standard for WP7). Therefore, during typing, it was sometimes a little crowded horizontally, but this did not bring serious problems.
The keyboard looks simple and clean, like everything else in the OS. Monochrome keys (white characters on a black background or vice versa, depending on the application) and pop-up panels above them when pressed:
The keys are in the usual order, plus a button to switch to the emoticon layout is added:
Microsoft acted smartly: a comma and a dot are always at hand, and to access infrequently used symbols and punctuation, you need to hold the corresponding key (as on the iPhone):
We were surprised by the sophistication of the keyboard - after all, when we saw it on WMC and MIX10, it was not at all in such a successful form.
Contacts and social networks
WP7 does not have a contact list as such. There is an application "People", but it is completely different. WP7 is a completely social platform, and there is no differentiation between people, whether it is the interlocutor by phone, sms or e-mail. As soon as you add your Windows Live, Exchange or Facebook accounts, the phone loads all contacts related to you, and the content of the phone changes completely - you can do nothing about it. This means that, for example, the Photos application will have a bunch of pictures of your new aunt's former boyfriend, and to fix this, you can only delete your Facebook account from your phone.
With Exchange, this strategy probably works well - contact synchronization is one of the main reasons for using Exchange. But Facebook is another matter. If you have many friends on Facebook, the application displays them all and becomes useless, in the sense of a traditional contact list. Microsoft recommends searching for contacts by typing, pinning the most important contacts on the home screen and using the list of recently used contacts.
We believe that there is a much easier solution: to allocate Facebook in a kind of sandbox. It would be best if Microsoft followed the Android philosophy, which allows the user to choose whether to import all of their Facebook contacts to their contact list, and where there is a special Facebook application that has a complete list of friends. There is currently no standard Facebook application in WP7, so your Facebook friends simply have nowhere to live, except in the main contact list. And you can do as in Motorola Blur - import all, but give the ability to filter by type of contact.
But the strangest thing is that WP7, with all its desire to be social, does not have integration with Twitter. For some, Twitter is just as important as Facebook (and maybe even more), and it seems like a glaring omission. Add integration with Twitter could be quite easy, because the People application allows you to see both the shared feed of social network friends (Windows Live and Facebook), and the feeds for individual contacts. Twitter would fit perfectly, they just have to do it.
Email and messages
As in most modern smartphones, WP7 has fairly simple and automated E-mail settings. When you first turn on the phone, you will be asked to provide Windows Live ID, although it is not necessary to use it. On the email setup screen, you can connect accounts for Live, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. Of course, there is the possibility of manual configuration of POP or IMAP mailboxes. There is a choice of the method and frequency of synchronization: push, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour and manual checking of mail.
The “Email” app is, on the whole, amazing, providing a clean, clear interface and easy access to the most frequently used functions. On the standard inbox page, you will receive email in the form of a message feed. You can flip the page to the right or left to sort by unread, by flag or by priority. Managing message groups is better than in most mail applications that we used — all you have to do is click the checkbox to the left of the message. This greatly simplifies the removal and movement of messages. In addition, it was nice that when you delete a letter, you are transferred to the inbox, and not to the next message. Along the bottom of the screen you have icons for creating a new message, browsing folders, updating and managing groups of messages.
By clicking on the hardware search button, you will get a pretty powerful search that analyzes topics, message content, senders and recipients at the same time. With this search, it is surprisingly easy to find what you are looking for. But, unfortunately, it searches only among the messages downloaded to the device. So, if you are looking for something that has long been lost on the server, you are not lucky ...
Also in WP7 there are no combined mailboxes. Each box is a kind of separate application, and when you create a new box, a new item is added to the list of applications. To secure this box on the home screen, you must pin this application there. We would like to see the possibility of placing several items inside one tile (like new folders in iOS4) where all mailboxes could be placed. Although, of course, it is preferable to just have a combined box.
Overall, mail in WP7 is good, but not the best. There are many things that deserve praise, but a lot and not enough. We would really like Microsoft to do conversations, merged mailboxes, and search through messages on the server. We think that many want it.
SMS
The application for working with SMS / MMS in WP7 looks good. But we want the company to differentiate the messages of the sender and the recipient by color (at least in shades of the same color).
Creating and sending messages is quite simple. A long press on individual messages gives you the opportunity to delete or forward them, and clicking on the conversation list gives you the opportunity to delete the entire conversation.
There were problems - in some cases, the text goes beyond the boundaries of the blocks. We know that the software is not yet complete, but it seems that now is not the time for such bugs.
Browser
Since quite a lot of bad things get in IE’s address, we have to say that using WP7’s web browser is very nice.
Downloading the desktop version of the Engadget site went a bit slower than on the iPhone 4. Scaling, which is done, of course, with the help of gestures, goes smoothly like clockwork.
We appreciated the possibility of pinning web pages to the home screen (of course, there are regular bookmarks).
Tabs are supported, there are a maximum of 6 on our device, and we think that this is true for all WP7 phones. Let's be honest - probably you don’t need more than 6 simultaneously open pages on your phone. Tabs can be loaded in parallel, regardless of whether they are active or not, and this does not adversely affect the overall performance of the browser.
Neither Flash nor Silverlight are supported in the browser. But those familiar with the iPhone can confirm that this is usually not a problem. But the lack of support for HTML5 makes the situation with the browser somewhat painful ... There is not even a separate application for YouTube on the phone!
Another thing that interested us is the number of sites that identified the iPhone and Android devices to show the mobile version, but did not identify WP7. A key example is Gmail, which shows the nasty WAP version of the site. But we think that a large number of sites will make the necessary changes if the platform becomes popular.
Zune
If you are already familiar with the Zune player, then there will not be many surprises. Integration with Zune in WP7 is pretty seamless, allows you to view and play elements of your library, synchronize music and video with a computer, and if you have a subscription, you can download anything (well, almost) from the Internet to your phone. In general, we liked the combo of the phone and the player, but sometimes the Zune interface seemed a bit confusing.
We liked the almost unlimited access to new music on the phone via the Zune Pass for $ 14.95. Something tells us that when the phones hit the market, the number of Zune Pass users will increase dramatically.
An important aspect about Zune on WP7 is the extremely interconnectedness of the phone with the desktop PC. Not only do you use Zune software to synchronize music and videos, you have the opportunity to buy applications on your computer and sync photos. This is very similar to the iPhone and Itunes, and quite unlike ActiveSync from the heyday of Windows Mobile.
Camera and photo management
We heard that one of the main goals of WP7 was excellent camera work, not only in terms of image size and quality, but also in terms of speed. In the end, if your camera turns on too long, or if you wait 5 seconds between shots, it becomes quite inconvenient to use the phone to capture the interesting moments of life. Fortunately, it seems that Microsoft fulfilled its promise - it took us about
As soon as you take a picture, a very cool thing happens: the picture leaves to the left, as if you are looking at a roll of photographic film. You can view recently taken pictures by simply sliding this “film” to the right, and return to the viewfinder by scrolling back to the left. This is very intuitive, and we suspect that novice users will be easy.
Phone manufacturers can embed additional camera features, but by default this list is quite impressive: custom white balance, graphic effects (shades of gray, sepia, etc.), saturation, ISO, shutter speed, and even metering. Most of these features are available even when shooting video. Naturally, you can set the flash mode: automatically, always, or never.
The phone can be configured so that, immediately after taking a photo, it uploads the captured image to your Windows Live SkyDrive account in the background. In the "Images" application you can upload photos and on Facebook, but in the settings you have to choose between "upload to SkyDrive" and "upload to Facebook" - at the same time it is impossible. But you can scroll through the menu, why not?
The application "Images" is a universal tool for working with photos on your phone. Here and your pictures (local and online), and pictures of your friends. In this application, you can view and send photos, change the background of the lock screen and, because This is an expandable hub, use the services of third parties You can change the background of this hub by long pressing the header. And, as we said, on the “What's New” page you will receive an infinite number of updates to your Facebook friends' photos that you barely know. We would like to be able to select a specific list of friends to display here.
Marketplace
Microsoft has already started handing out prototype phones (the same as in this review) to developers, and it will continue to do so. On the side of the box it is even written: “developers. Developers! DEVELOPERS !! ” So yes, we can say that Redmond understands how important it is to have third-party applications for the success (or failure) of the platform. Applications are ultimately downloaded via the Marketplace. This is not at all like Windows Mobile 6.5, but it looks like Apple and Google offer us, but with some special features.
The first thing you will notice when you open the Marketplace is that you have the “Music” category, while iOS allocates music to a separate iTunes application, and Android relies on third-party vendors such as Amazon. But it’s not as integrated as you think - by clicking on the music, you will simply go to the Zune Marketplace, which is good. In addition, selecting the category "Games", you go to the Xbox Marketplace, which, unfortunately, is not yet available for testing. Scrolling to the left, you will be taken to the “Recommended” page, where both music and applications are mixed in a single look.
Go to the last category - "Applications". Although at the moment there are only a small number of demo applications on the market, they were enough to get an idea of ​​the buying process. Applications are divided typically: the newest, the most popular and recommended. You can use the search by clicking on the appropriate hardware button.
If you are just browsing apps, you can scroll through the entire list or narrow it down into categories: Tools, Lifestyle, News & Weather, and Business Center. We would not be surprised if there are more categories in the future. The list shows the application icon, name, rating on a
After you decide to buy something, the whole process takes place in the background, and after a few minutes, you can find this application on the phone list. We would like some unobtrusive notification when the application is installed, because now it seems to be a guessing game.
Office
Thin integration with Office may be the most important difference WP7 - a function, only because of one of which, this phone can not be ignored by serious business users.
Although Word seems to render the pages well on a small display, its editing capabilities are very weak — you cannot change the fonts and you can select only one of four text colors: orange, green, red, and black. There is a spell checker (familiar red wavy lines), but there is no copy / paste function. Excel has a similar story, although it has a fairly good set of built-in functions.
But PowerPoint documents in general can not be created on the phone. The main thing in PowerPoint for WP7 is probably the ability to display a slide show - especially for devices with a TV-out to show the finished presentations from the phone.
WP7 supports interaction with SharePoint servers, which certainly will be useful for some business users. There is also OneNote, which in many ways is just Word under a different name. It can attach photos and voice recordings to the note, which should be in Word, but it is not. You can set up OneNote to automatically synchronize with your Windows Live SkyDrive account, which means that your notes will be available on any computer connected to the Internet. “Cloud” is a thing, magic!
Xbox live
As we noted above, while integration with Xbox Live is not ready. You can only add a Live-account and get an avatar on the phone. We hope that Microsoft will soon demonstrate what these devices will be capable of.
Cards
Bing cards are implemented in WP7 quite well. You have access to maps, satellite imagery and traffic information in real time. Changing the location is displayed quickly, but we found that it is usually a little less accurate than Google (indoors and without GPS). Map scaling is fast and smooth.
Since this is a client for Bing Maps, you can count on the same database of places as in Bing for a desktop computer. You can search for places using text or speech (more on this later), and matches will be displayed on the map. As you would expect, by clicking on the place icon, a page of information will appear, where you can find a phone number, URL, rating and even a timetable - very convenient for restaurants. You can also see user reviews from the Citysearch and JudysBook sites.
Our favorite part of the map is a list of directions when navigating to a destination. This is not a voice accompaniment - the application divides the screen into two parts: a map and a list of control points. There are both pedestrian and road modes, but there is no public transport mode.
Search
Like maps, the search in WP7 uses, of course, Bing. Microsoft made a neat Bing search page for a small screen, similar to the page from the site. On the right side of the input field there is a microphone enable icon for voice search. It really works if you do not want to find something with a strange name. After starting the search, in addition to the list of web pages, you get a list of news and search results of places.
Search is, in fact, a large application that can be accessed by pressing the hardware search button. But not always - applications during their work can replace this search (for example, "People", "Maps", "Marketplace").
Results
What we were shown does not look like a complete mobile operating system yet. Some parts of the system are more like some kind of frame - an example of how the platform of new generation phones should look like. This is both good and bad.On the one hand, we are still very pleased with the viability of the Metro interface and some smart solutions in WP7. On the other hand, in just a few months Microsoft should turn this into a viable product that can endure the fiercest competition, and there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. Honestly, it's a little scary.
If the WP7 team adds a clipboard and some elements of multitasking, Microsoft can get a pretty good debut version of WP7, especially in combination with a fierce propaganda campaign for developers.
Of course, this is a big “if” - time is passing, and the market has already proved that it will not wait for the company to play catch-up. And the speech at the moment is not about winning, but about participating in the race, and if Microsoft doesn't know this, then it may be too late.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99555/
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