BGR and cnet: Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Preview

[Tech Star]

Once at the top of the smartphone pack, Microsoft?s current mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, has quickly fallen from grace. Luckily the juggernaut in Redmond, WA decided finally to do something about that. You call it whatever you?d like ? a restart, a do over ? but Microsoft has entirely changed course with Windows Phone 7, and they have broke most everything in the process. That means old Windows Mobile applications won?t work, the entire OS has been redone, and practically nothing from the user?s perspective has been carried over. A good thing when you?re now playing in a world of Androids and iPhones. We have been testing out a non-final, never ever going to be released to market Samsung prototype Windows Phone 7 device for a week, and we?re excited to let you know what we think of the operating system.

Hardware

We?re not going to review the actual hardware we received since it will never see the light of day, but we can talk about the hardware requirements and what that means for the platform. Microsoft has a reportedly over 200 page document that details what?s required of the hardware powering Windows Phone 7. Some of that includes a minimum of a 3.7″ 4-point capacitive multi touch display, 5 megapixel camera, 1GHz CPU, all memory must be built-in (it can be microSD, just not user accessible), dedicated graphics chip, and three hardware buttons on the front. That would be the back, Start, and search buttons.

That baseline is pretty high end, and other chassis specifications will be a little more relaxed. Chassis 2 will apparently support other hardware configurations like slide-out keyboards, and we assume chassis 3 might allow for lower-to-mid specs, but the last part is just our assumption. Having a baseline requirement is a great thing and it?s nice to see Microsoft taking more a stance with this new platform. We all can remember the mess that Windows Mobile became (we?re talking hardware).

User Interface

If you were to call Microsoft?s Windows Phone 7 OS UI minimalistic, you?d be right. Even if our sentence wasn?t. The thing is, sometimes when using Windows Phone, things are so minimalistic, that it actually feels a bit too lonely and open. Don?t get us wrong, it?s nice to feel like you?re not constrained to a certain window or foreground app, but at the same time, we can?t help but feel that there could have been so much more done.

At the bottom of every application are Microsoft?s action buttons. These are contextual buttons that offer added actions in almost every application on the phone. The thing is, they?re pretty standard, and not that user friendly. At least not for us. We?re not sure why Microsoft decided to implement and design something that actually gets in the way instead of helping. For starters, we found them to be tiny and poorly placed. Unlike Android where you have a menu key and a nice big popup of additional actions, Microsoft?s approach is to have a tiny, tiny area reserved for these buttons at all times, wasting screen real estate while also cluttering up the view with pointless circles that are almost laughably small. The one saving grace is the ability to expand this action button view, but we can?t but feel like it would have been better all around to move all the action buttons over, and let the user expand / close it when necessary.

Let?s take the homescreen for instance? Apple?s homescreen is pretty straightforward. You have app icons and you have folders which contain apps and they are all the same size, and that?s about it. Android has the same basic logic, except you can add widgets, add shortcuts to different menus or applications, and even add live moving wallpapers among other things. Microsoft basically reinvents the mobile phone homescreen, and we?re not sure we?re in love with it.

Other annoyances with the UI? The scrolling. There?s a very slight rubber-banding effect, but what happens is, when you get to the bottom or top of a scrollable list, the scrolling stops short and the content then sort of mashes up slightly. It?s not that elegant, and especially on this not-amazing prototype phone, it looks pretty bad and pixelated.

Something else would be the fact that threaded text message conversations are all the same color. So, your messages and the other party?s messages are all the same color which makes things a bit difficult to tell apart. We also can?t stand the fact that the top upper status bar which contains the time, battery level, signal strength and other status icons, is basically hidden from view for the most part. You can have these icons show at will by tapping the always-present time in the upper right corner, but it?s not that reassuring having this stuff hidden by default for freaks like us.

Full Article: BGR

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Another article with a video demo at cnet: http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20010780-85.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0

Doesn't sound too good for WP7. :/ I was excited for it and holding out with my Sprint HTC Mogul to get it, but now I don't know. Hopefully by its release they fix it and when I play with it, it will be better.

[Raa]

I wasn't excited for it before, and i'm still not. Think i'll be jumping ship to Android it seems.

I'll wait for the final product before I make my decision though.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

I'm waiting for the final product to decide, but I'm not impressed at all. It will be crazy when I jump ship though. I have been a Windows Mobile user for all of my Smartphone life...

[Digitalx]

metroui was a bad choice plain and simple really. Trying to take a minimalist approach to a device which is about jamming as much content in a nice form on a small screen just doesn't make sense.

[tomwarren Veteran]

Not sure what people were expecting. This thing sucked as soon as they showed it off earlier in the year. The UI is ugly, swiping back and forth is irritating and there's just nothing "wow" about it yet. Give them time and I'm sure most of this will be fixed but Microsoft don't have time if they want to compete.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Not sure what people were expecting. This thing sucked as soon as they showed it off earlier in the year. The UI is ugly, swiping back and forth is irritating and there's just nothing "wow" about it yet. Give them time and I'm sure most of this will be fixed but Microsoft don't have time if they want to compete.

My thoughts exactly. It will not be a major consumer device with no "wow" factor. Thinking anything else is just insanity.

[Growled Member]

The more I read on this, the less excited I get.

[Bengal34]

The BGR preview was pretty poorly written and negatively biased. I think the engadget review was more on the level. Sure it has it's problems but it isn't as bad as BGR is reporting. I'm personally excited about the phones. Specifically for the zune and xbox integration.

[Calum Veteran]

Not sure what people were expecting. This thing sucked as soon as they showed it off earlier in the year. The UI is ugly, swiping back and forth is irritating and there's just nothing "wow" about it yet. Give them time and I'm sure most of this will be fixed but Microsoft don't have time if they want to compete.

I'm just wondering, how much you've used a Zune HD or Windows Phone 7? :) I don't find the swiping back and forth to be irritating at all; I find the whole user experience of the Zune HD to be very enjoyable and we all know this is going to be very similar to the Zune HD so I can't imagine why this wouldn't be as much of a joy to use.

I don't find the UI ugly - I find it a refreshing change.