Engadget Reviews Windows 7 Phone In Great Detail

[No Limit]

I was worried that if I got the Evo last month I would miss out on the windows phone when that came out since to be honest I've always been a bit of a microsoft fanboy. But reading the detailed review I'm not impressed at all, actually quite disappointed:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/windows-phone-7-in-depth-preview/

- No multitasking (wtf?)
- No facebook app, all the contacts get imported automatically to your phone, so if you have a crap load of "friends" they will spam your phone with information you don't need.
- No copy/paste

It does sound like the email application is much better than the android one (check boxes mainly) and the media player is probably much better since it's based on zune (never used zune but I assume its good). But that's really the only good features they seem to have came up with. Kind of glad I didn't wait around for this.

 

[Bakurei]

You're doing it wrong. You need to think it like an iFag! They've made huge optimizations and clever ways on how to save battery life, by removing multitasking! You don't need copy/paste in an 800$ phone, dumb ass!

Didn't they enforce some hardware restrictions on W7 phones? Minimum screen size, CPU clock speed etc. HW restriction could create a very interesting phone base. Maybe the missing, one would say basic, features are because they actually changed the kernel this time?

 

[Dynasty]

Is this the point where I jump in?

 

[VirusType2]

Looks really slick in the videos, but looks like it needs quite a bit of refinement. Maybe once a year, like Apple?

 

[Dynasty]

 

[Dinnesch]

Spoiler

Seriously, this OS looks so user-unfriendly. IMHO(and not in most others' I know) the old Windows Mobile interface was decent.

 

[PvtRyan]

I think that it won't be the best mobile OS when it releases, but can definitely become it after another iteration where it adds some missing features. The issues that it has all seem easy enough to solve. It does have multi-tasking like the iOS 4, in the sense that switching apps doesn't kill your app, but suspends it. The difference is that iOS 4 has a limited interface for your app that allows it to keep doing some stuff in the background. Add that and a task manager to WP7, and it will be fine. Copy-paste can be added and they need to switch the browser to IE9 when it becomes available. Another thing they probably need to add is a native development kit, to selected partners. While the current SDK with Silverlight and XNA is awesome, there are also a lot of existing applications that would work well on WP7, but that the supplier would never rewrite just to be able to run on it (think of Firefox).

I think the hubs have great potential, especially when extensible by custom apps. I think the interface looks great and will be absolutely gorgeous on an OLED screen with all that text on a black background. Not to mention battery-friendly, too.