2 ms·

I had the chance to use a reference WP7 device last week, and walked away almost entirely unimpressed. I had my doubts about its chances of success already; thi

I had the chance to use a reference WP7 device last week, and walked away almost entirely unimpressed. I had my doubts about its chances of success already; this news doesn't bode well at all for Microsoft.

endtime 16y ago
>walked away almost entirely unimpressed I'd be curious to hear why - most of the feedback has been good so far. I haven't had a chance to play with one myself.
- commandar 16y ago
  The simplest answer is style over substance. The UI looked nice enough, but I wasn't that impressed with the way it actually worked. One of the central UI paradigms seems to be a carousel interface, that loops upon itself. Personally, I feel like a more linear interface that has bounds at each end is easier to navigate. There's also no clear way to navigate between applications. If I started a song playing in the music player then played with maps, there wasn't any easy way to jump back to the media player app to skip songs, etc. There's basically no paradigm for moving between apps other than dropping all the way back to the home screen and digging for the app you want. I'm an Android early adopter, so that may color my opinion some. The guy who had the device for me to look at is a hardcore iPhone guy. I think his description is probably best -- "it feels like iPhone 1.5." That may have been passable in 2007, but not now. I guess the bottom line is I came away feeling like Android, iOS, and even Blackberry's OS were far better, and I'm not a fan of the latter two. There's just absolutely nothing compelling about WP7 that makes me feel like I'd want a handset running it. It's a far better system than WM6, but that's a rather low bar, IMO.
  - endtime 16y ago
    >"it feels like iPhone 1.5." This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me. That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core features that didn't make release.

endtime 16y ago

>walked away almost entirely unimpressed I'd be curious to hear why - most of the feedback has been good so far. I haven't had a chance to play with one myself.

commandar 16y ago
The simplest answer is style over substance. The UI looked nice enough, but I wasn't that impressed with the way it actually worked. One of the central UI paradigms seems to be a carousel interface, that loops upon itself. Personally, I feel like a more linear interface that has bounds at each end is easier to navigate. There's also no clear way to navigate between applications. If I started a song playing in the music player then played with maps, there wasn't any easy way to jump back to the media player app to skip songs, etc. There's basically no paradigm for moving between apps other than dropping all the way back to the home screen and digging for the app you want. I'm an Android early adopter, so that may color my opinion some. The guy who had the device for me to look at is a hardcore iPhone guy. I think his description is probably best -- "it feels like iPhone 1.5." That may have been passable in 2007, but not now. I guess the bottom line is I came away feeling like Android, iOS, and even Blackberry's OS were far better, and I'm not a fan of the latter two. There's just absolutely nothing compelling about WP7 that makes me feel like I'd want a handset running it. It's a far better system than WM6, but that's a rather low bar, IMO.
- endtime 16y ago
  >"it feels like iPhone 1.5." This part actually does match what I've seen. I know it's behind iOS 4. But if I could use iPhone 1.5 but ditch AT&T and use the Zune client instead of iTunes, well, that's actually interesting to me. That said, my iPhone contract lasts another year, and I am kind of hoping there will be a big 1.1 patch in sight by next summer, with some of the core features that didn't make release.