7 ms·

Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview

65 points by ssclafani 16y ago

watmough 16y ago
There's some unfinished, but clear documentation on this page: http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/ http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/ In particular, this PDF gives a great flavor of designing for Windows Phone 7: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Overall, I'm quite impressed. They've aimed at a similar target as Apple did with the original iPhone. Make it fast, clean and strip away as many features as you dare.
- hop 16y ago
  That would all be impressive if this was 2006, unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. It is symptomatic of bigger problems in Microsoft's innovation lag.
  - aik 16y ago
    Both the IPhone and Android are far from perfect devices. If MS can pull off an OS as responsive as IOS, be intuitive and simple, I could see many preferring it or at least considering it over other devices, despite less functionality. I'm not hugely familiar with the UI, but I do believe there are significant differences in the UI other than a different overlay. Also, the fact that they haven't already packed a billion features into the phone is a BIG plus in my opinion (as long as they have the essentials). Simplicity and ease-of-use have become key in today's world.
  - gizmomagico 16y ago
    > unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. Doesn't the same apply to Android as well?
pavs 16y ago
I don't know... Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS. There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
- endtime 16y ago
  >There is nothing intuitive about the OS Could you elaborate on this?
  - fungi 16y ago
    when you are a few layers deep i'm thinking you would be pretty lost. nice if you could zoom out. but its not that bad reminds me of sony's PS nav.
    - byoung2 16y ago
      nice if you could zoom out. That's exactly what I was thinking...something like Android 2.1's pinch to zoom out on the home screen which brings up miniature versions of the 7 screens you could get to by scrolling left/right.
  - pavs 16y ago
    Sure. The UI doesn't follow a conventional way how people use UI in any form of mobile devices. There are differences in IOS, Android, Blackberry and PalmOS but those differences aren't huge. If you use either of those devices/OS who should be able to pickup any of the other devices relatively easily. At least this has been my personal experience with Android, IOS and WebOS. What Windows Mobile 7 is doing is a fundamentally different way of how you use a mobile device. You could argue that when IOS was first introduced it was also a different way of how people uses mobile phones. But it was different in the sense that it was not confusing, it was very intuitive. In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor. Who thought big blocks of animated tiles taking up huge screen real-state to be a good idea? I think this is also a good example of different design philosophy with MSFT and Apple. IOS with its new update introduced folder with the goal of giving you more screen real-state so that if you have a lot of apps you don't have to keep sliding and MSFT adds huge block of tiles (and animated!) that will require you to slide around to find what you need. It would have made an interesting showcase for concept design that car manufacturers always make, but I don't see this being much practical at all.
ttrashh 16y ago
I wonder how the apps are going to play out. XNA is used for the games and there are plenty of shops out there creating for xbox. It looks like porting existing XNA games to the phone will be fairly straightforward. I'm expecting Windows Phone 7 to be a big player in handheld gaming because of XNA/Xbox. I'm primarily a .Net/Silverlight dev myself so I'm biased but the core development experience is better than Apple/Google IMHO. They do need to get off their asses and release more controls (like the pivot) or they aren't going to have standardized UI across apps.
- rodh257 16y ago
  This is where MS can get the upper hand. If they are open enough with their app store, they can get developers there as the developer experience is going to be very good. Its a chicken and egg thing though, most serious developers won't code for it until there is a market. Though they will get a fair few .NET developers who haven't done any Android or Objective-C iPhone stuff.
  - trezor 16y ago
    This is where MS can get the upper hand. Yes and no. I have to admit I hoped for the ability to install any app you like (like in former versions of WinMo). Sadly that is no longer the case. Silverlight/XNA development is fully OK for me, but it seems a tad restricted. Especially without the ability to run Silverlight in the browser, something which really, really surprised me when I heard it (at least that's what I got told on the Windows Phone 7 developer session).
hop 16y ago
Is it a surprise to anyone there is nothing awesome or especially compelling about the Win7 phone?
potatolicious 16y ago
Interesting - I wonder why the difference exists; Engadget seems to like Win7 (though they are not ecstatic), whereas other sources seem to despise it. I wonder where the difference lies. I do hope MS the best - the more competition we have in this sphere the better, and if the responsiveness/performance of the OS is as good as Engadget says, there will finally be some hard competition for the iPhone (Android is great, but I've yet to use one where the UI isn't sluggish, and it really detracts from the experience).
- ttrashh 16y ago
  I've seen mostly favorable opinions. Gizmodo's preview was about the same as Engadget.
barrettcolin 16y ago
Does the color scheme (of things like the SMS app and menus) remind anyone else of CGA? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard_graphics_modes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard...
- tfh 16y ago
  Yes. And coincidentally it's the same colors as the engadget color scheme.
confuzatron 16y ago
I don't object to minimalism, but I think that in some places this UI is straying into 8-bit retro brutalism, for want of a better phrase. But maybe an ultra-stripped-down UI is a good choice for the first iteration, when you have a lot of stuff to implement.
macrael 16y ago
I'm looking forward to seeing how these devices play in real world usage. The two things that jump out at me immediately. 1. Most important: On a device with a small screen pixels should be precious. It worries me that many of the built in apps use a significant and unchanging amount of the screen to tell you what app you are in. I don't know if it will really impact usability, maybe there is enough screen real estate to go around, but it seems wasteful. Perhaps the fact that many of the different app's UIs (especially the list UI and the list of tiles UI) look very very similar makes it necessary for you to have a 1/5 screen reminder that you are in the photos app and not the marketplace? 2. The multiple message selection is the best example of this, but there are others: many of the possible interactions with on screen elements are completely hidden and non-obvious. It would be difficult to discover that you can manage multiple messages by tapping on the far left hand side of a message. Contrast this with the iPhone, where you tap edit or whatever, and the message management UI comes on screen. It reminds me a little of the Anti-Mac interface (http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html) in that it is actually faster (you don't have to go and hit a button that takes up space on the screen in order to start moving messages around) but at the price of discoverability. Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users?
- wallflower 16y ago
  > Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users? To use Windows Mobile, you had to deal with ActiveSync. To use ActiveSync, you have to be fairly tolerant and technically proficient. For example, when upgrading the OS, you have the responsibility(1) of manually backing up all your contacts, data, apps. Contrast this with iTunes (yes, iTunes isn't elegant) - when iOS 4 came out - it downloaded it and asked if you wanted to upgrade your phone and did so without losing settings, data, apps. Now, Android supposedly can do OTA updates. The point here is if WinMo7 requires ActiveSync - it is severely behind the times. I'm hoping WinMo7 won't require a user to use ActiveSync and it is all stored securely in the Windows Live cloud. I usually used lots of colorful adjectives when dealing with ActiveSync. I had a boss who was convinced to get a WinMo device by a co-worker; she lasted only about a month (ActiveSync). (1) http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownload.aspx?p_id=59&cat=2&dl_id=113 http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownload.aspx?p_id=59&cat=...
saint-loup 16y ago
Oh god the turquoise-ish hue of the tiles is so ugly. Overall the UI experience seems neat but this color...
- fname 16y ago
  What makes you think the color can't be changed? There are some other pictures of it being pink -- which makes me think the color is customizeable by the user.
  - desigooner 16y ago
    there are various color options for fonts/tiles/etc (green, orange, cyan, pink, red i believe and maybe 1 more) but the background is either black or white.
clark-kent 16y ago
The 2D UI is a big risk considering the competition. iPhone 1.0 had a nice 3D feel to it. The WP7 OS seems very responsive and snappy. But the lack of wow factor might be because of the 2D UI and monochrome color scheme. It lacks depth and looks plain.
- pavlov 16y ago
  Even though the graphic elements are strictly 2D, the interaction can have a depth component that's not obvious in screenshots. 2D layers can be animated in 3D space, and distorted to break the flatness. The Engadget review mentions that the WP7 UI makes efficient use of a parallax effect where overlapping layers scroll at a different pace. That's a good example of a "2.5D" depth effect.
- GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
  3d is a little overrated. The most recent Ubuntu has gone with a very plain 2d look for icons and it looks very clean and polished.
  - nooneelse 16y ago
    And with "do this for me now" use cases, quite common for phones (such as "did someone just tell me something relevant in that message I just got" or "what was that building number again?" while walking down a street thinking about some larger goal), I find visual clarity all the more appealing. So "plain" might be just what the use cases call for. Several icons or buttons all made to be 3-d and pretty with candy-round edges and bright colors, each wanting to impress me with slickness or compete to stick in my memory better are just more distraction from that one shape or word my visual cortex is primed by the task to find.
JulianMorrison 16y ago
I actually rather like that flat, fluid look. Well done Microsoft.
- andrewdavey 16y ago
  I get the impression it will look and feel even better in person, rather than on video.
jteo 16y ago
I'm kinda enamored of the UI design and all that. The question is: how does one get one hands on a developer phone?
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Go to the Windows Phone developer blog(http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2010/07/12/windows-phone-developer-tools-beta-released.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/201...) and read all about it. They are releasing a LOT of information on this stuff.
emehrkay 16y ago
I have to actually play with the phone to get a clear understanding of how it works, but now it seems difficult to tell buttons from regular text

65 points by ssclafani 16y ago

There's some unfinished, but clear documentation on this page: http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/ http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/ In particular, this PDF gives a great flavor of designing for Windows Phone 7: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Overall, I'm quite impressed. They've aimed at a similar target as Apple did with the original iPhone. Make it fast, clean and strip away as many features as you dare.

hop 16y ago
That would all be impressive if this was 2006, unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. It is symptomatic of bigger problems in Microsoft's innovation lag.
- aik 16y ago
  Both the IPhone and Android are far from perfect devices. If MS can pull off an OS as responsive as IOS, be intuitive and simple, I could see many preferring it or at least considering it over other devices, despite less functionality. I'm not hugely familiar with the UI, but I do believe there are significant differences in the UI other than a different overlay. Also, the fact that they haven't already packed a billion features into the phone is a BIG plus in my opinion (as long as they have the essentials). Simplicity and ease-of-use have become key in today's world.
- gizmomagico 16y ago
  > unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. Doesn't the same apply to Android as well?

pavs 16y ago

I don't know... Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS. There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.

endtime 16y ago
>There is nothing intuitive about the OS Could you elaborate on this?
- fungi 16y ago
  when you are a few layers deep i'm thinking you would be pretty lost. nice if you could zoom out. but its not that bad reminds me of sony's PS nav.
  - byoung2 16y ago
    nice if you could zoom out. That's exactly what I was thinking...something like Android 2.1's pinch to zoom out on the home screen which brings up miniature versions of the 7 screens you could get to by scrolling left/right.
- pavs 16y ago
  Sure. The UI doesn't follow a conventional way how people use UI in any form of mobile devices. There are differences in IOS, Android, Blackberry and PalmOS but those differences aren't huge. If you use either of those devices/OS who should be able to pickup any of the other devices relatively easily. At least this has been my personal experience with Android, IOS and WebOS. What Windows Mobile 7 is doing is a fundamentally different way of how you use a mobile device. You could argue that when IOS was first introduced it was also a different way of how people uses mobile phones. But it was different in the sense that it was not confusing, it was very intuitive. In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor. Who thought big blocks of animated tiles taking up huge screen real-state to be a good idea? I think this is also a good example of different design philosophy with MSFT and Apple. IOS with its new update introduced folder with the goal of giving you more screen real-state so that if you have a lot of apps you don't have to keep sliding and MSFT adds huge block of tiles (and animated!) that will require you to slide around to find what you need. It would have made an interesting showcase for concept design that car manufacturers always make, but I don't see this being much practical at all.

ttrashh 16y ago

I wonder how the apps are going to play out. XNA is used for the games and there are plenty of shops out there creating for xbox. It looks like porting existing XNA games to the phone will be fairly straightforward. I'm expecting Windows Phone 7 to be a big player in handheld gaming because of XNA/Xbox. I'm primarily a .Net/Silverlight dev myself so I'm biased but the core development experience is better than Apple/Google IMHO. They do need to get off their asses and release more controls (like the pivot) or they aren't going to have standardized UI across apps.

rodh257 16y ago
This is where MS can get the upper hand. If they are open enough with their app store, they can get developers there as the developer experience is going to be very good. Its a chicken and egg thing though, most serious developers won't code for it until there is a market. Though they will get a fair few .NET developers who haven't done any Android or Objective-C iPhone stuff.
- trezor 16y ago
  This is where MS can get the upper hand. Yes and no. I have to admit I hoped for the ability to install any app you like (like in former versions of WinMo). Sadly that is no longer the case. Silverlight/XNA development is fully OK for me, but it seems a tad restricted. Especially without the ability to run Silverlight in the browser, something which really, really surprised me when I heard it (at least that's what I got told on the Windows Phone 7 developer session).

hop 16y ago

Is it a surprise to anyone there is nothing awesome or especially compelling about the Win7 phone?

potatolicious 16y ago

Interesting - I wonder why the difference exists; Engadget seems to like Win7 (though they are not ecstatic), whereas other sources seem to despise it. I wonder where the difference lies. I do hope MS the best - the more competition we have in this sphere the better, and if the responsiveness/performance of the OS is as good as Engadget says, there will finally be some hard competition for the iPhone (Android is great, but I've yet to use one where the UI isn't sluggish, and it really detracts from the experience).

ttrashh 16y ago
I've seen mostly favorable opinions. Gizmodo's preview was about the same as Engadget.

barrettcolin 16y ago

Does the color scheme (of things like the SMS app and menus) remind anyone else of CGA? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard_graphics_modes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Standard...

tfh 16y ago
Yes. And coincidentally it's the same colors as the engadget color scheme.

confuzatron 16y ago

I don't object to minimalism, but I think that in some places this UI is straying into 8-bit retro brutalism, for want of a better phrase. But maybe an ultra-stripped-down UI is a good choice for the first iteration, when you have a lot of stuff to implement.

macrael 16y ago

I'm looking forward to seeing how these devices play in real world usage. The two things that jump out at me immediately. 1. Most important: On a device with a small screen pixels should be precious. It worries me that many of the built in apps use a significant and unchanging amount of the screen to tell you what app you are in. I don't know if it will really impact usability, maybe there is enough screen real estate to go around, but it seems wasteful. Perhaps the fact that many of the different app's UIs (especially the list UI and the list of tiles UI) look very very similar makes it necessary for you to have a 1/5 screen reminder that you are in the photos app and not the marketplace? 2. The multiple message selection is the best example of this, but there are others: many of the possible interactions with on screen elements are completely hidden and non-obvious. It would be difficult to discover that you can manage multiple messages by tapping on the far left hand side of a message. Contrast this with the iPhone, where you tap edit or whatever, and the message management UI comes on screen. It reminds me a little of the Anti-Mac interface (http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html) in that it is actually faster (you don't have to go and hit a button that takes up space on the screen in order to start moving messages around) but at the price of discoverability. Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users?

wallflower 16y ago
> Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users? To use Windows Mobile, you had to deal with ActiveSync. To use ActiveSync, you have to be fairly tolerant and technically proficient. For example, when upgrading the OS, you have the responsibility(1) of manually backing up all your contacts, data, apps. Contrast this with iTunes (yes, iTunes isn't elegant) - when iOS 4 came out - it downloaded it and asked if you wanted to upgrade your phone and did so without losing settings, data, apps. Now, Android supposedly can do OTA updates. The point here is if WinMo7 requires ActiveSync - it is severely behind the times. I'm hoping WinMo7 won't require a user to use ActiveSync and it is all stored securely in the Windows Live cloud. I usually used lots of colorful adjectives when dealing with ActiveSync. I had a boss who was convinced to get a WinMo device by a co-worker; she lasted only about a month (ActiveSync). (1) http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownload.aspx?p_id=59&cat=2&dl_id=113 http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownload.aspx?p_id=59&cat=...

saint-loup 16y ago

Oh god the turquoise-ish hue of the tiles is so ugly. Overall the UI experience seems neat but this color...

fname 16y ago
What makes you think the color can't be changed? There are some other pictures of it being pink -- which makes me think the color is customizeable by the user.
- desigooner 16y ago
  there are various color options for fonts/tiles/etc (green, orange, cyan, pink, red i believe and maybe 1 more) but the background is either black or white.

clark-kent 16y ago

The 2D UI is a big risk considering the competition. iPhone 1.0 had a nice 3D feel to it. The WP7 OS seems very responsive and snappy. But the lack of wow factor might be because of the 2D UI and monochrome color scheme. It lacks depth and looks plain.

pavlov 16y ago
Even though the graphic elements are strictly 2D, the interaction can have a depth component that's not obvious in screenshots. 2D layers can be animated in 3D space, and distorted to break the flatness. The Engadget review mentions that the WP7 UI makes efficient use of a parallax effect where overlapping layers scroll at a different pace. That's a good example of a "2.5D" depth effect.
GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
3d is a little overrated. The most recent Ubuntu has gone with a very plain 2d look for icons and it looks very clean and polished.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  And with "do this for me now" use cases, quite common for phones (such as "did someone just tell me something relevant in that message I just got" or "what was that building number again?" while walking down a street thinking about some larger goal), I find visual clarity all the more appealing. So "plain" might be just what the use cases call for. Several icons or buttons all made to be 3-d and pretty with candy-round edges and bright colors, each wanting to impress me with slickness or compete to stick in my memory better are just more distraction from that one shape or word my visual cortex is primed by the task to find.

JulianMorrison 16y ago

I actually rather like that flat, fluid look. Well done Microsoft.

andrewdavey 16y ago
I get the impression it will look and feel even better in person, rather than on video.

jteo 16y ago

I'm kinda enamored of the UI design and all that. The question is: how does one get one hands on a developer phone?

jasonlotito 16y ago
Go to the Windows Phone developer blog(http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2010/07/12/windows-phone-developer-tools-beta-released.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/201...) and read all about it. They are releasing a LOT of information on this stuff.

emehrkay 16y ago

I have to actually play with the phone to get a clear understanding of how it works, but now it seems difficult to tell buttons from regular text