My Brief Affair with Windows Phone 7

[Sandvixito]

Well, my trusty E72 came back from Nokia, its D pad fixed. I was happily musing along with my children at an amusement park taking pictures, when my 4 year old, wanting to see a picture I had taken grabbed it from my daughters hand and in the struggle, off it went flying four stories down. Needless to say I had to find a new phone, 6 hours away from home and in the middle of the weekend.

We went to an AT&T store and, being my contract up for renewal, I got a new sim and decided to get a Samsung Focus with Windows 7 for free in order to test and see what the future has in store for us. I decided to use the phone for a couple of weeks and see how it would measure in my real world usage.

Needless to say, I was taken aback with the operating system's user interface and experience. The smoothness, the clarity, no lag, no stutter, clean design. It was not eye candy, it was more like hard eye drugs. It's so good. The email client is amazingly fast (I am used to the symbian "retrieving" notice taking ages, specially on my yahoo account). The battery life was much better than my N8, but nowhere near my E72. Call quality was Ok. Seems very solid. Lots of clean smooth interface and effects. Integration with Microsoft office is wonderful, the way it display word documents and the fact that you can sync one note notebooks across platforms and keep them in sync (with my desktop) was a big plus. The syncing of contacts and calendar with my google account through MFE, was instantaneous and very very smooth. On my E72 or N8, the initial sync of the contact takes ages. Email synced sent emails to the server on my IMAP4 accounts, Yeiiii, no more sending automatic bcc's!!! The web browsing seems to me that it is much better and faster, even than the iOs browser on my ipod touch.

However....

I am told you cannot put in microsd cards as the os will not recognize them. I could not find a sugarsync client in their marketplace store. Seems to me hat Ovi has, as of today, a better selection (at least for what I need). Music, I need to install Zune (which I have never used) on my pc so I can load music into the phone. Podcasts, well I could not try the application (if it comes bundled in the OS) because to get podcasts you need to get them through Zune (both are a no no as I travel extensively and my media PC with all music and other media stays at home). This is one of the reasons I am so disenchanted with the ipod touch. The keyboard seems fine, but actually I like the one on the N8 better!

Long story short, I already received my new E72 and the Focus will soon go on sale.

I liked the user interface and the experience. Now I know why the press calls symbian "archaic". However, from a usability standpoint, I can basically make calls, edit some documents, do email and perhaps listen to music and podcasts (if I were to do the Zune thing). But I rely on non existent software on that platform, as well as features: copy and paste, sugarsync, PDF+, total recall, the ability to download music and podcast on the go without the need of a pc, great battery life (I can go with 12 hours of heavy usage and still have one bar above the low battery warning), voip capability, advanced call manager, sms scheduler, skype, fring video calling, Ovi maps, joikuspot, among others.

Certainly a lot of these will come to WP7 in time, specially with the touted Mango update coming along. However for me is another year or two with the E72 (the E6 looks beautiful, but it does not have a working version of total recall nor does it have a printing subsystem set up which I actually use). I lust for the E7, but if the battery life is like the N8...