Got WP7 - Neowin wants to hear from you!

[George P Global Moderator]

Do you think if I use the "Reset Device" feature from within the OS, it will initialize the microSD card?

UPDATE: Yes it does. Sweet. All's well here :)

I didn't read all of your posts, I thought you had already did a hard reset from the device. You HAVE to do that or it won't see or use the new card.

[Chsoriano]

I didn't read all of your posts, I thought you had already did a hard reset from the device. You HAVE to do that or it won't see or use the new card.

I know... but the "quick start guide" just says to turn insert the microSD card and re-initialize the device (the button combination) to turn the phone on. I thought that was supposed to be the hard reset.

Then I thought, why wouldn't the OS do it if I just do the OS reset... I guess I should have thought of it sooner though.

[George P Global Moderator]

I know... but the "quick start guide" just says to turn insert the microSD card and re-initialize the device (the button combination) to turn the phone on. I thought that was supposed to be the hard reset.

Then I thought, why wouldn't the OS do it if I just do the OS reset... I guess I should have thought of it sooner though.

Heh, ya, well everything is working good now so all is well. Can't wait to get my hands on my device too!!!!

[Calum Veteran]

1) What device did you get?

HTC Mozart

2) How long have you had it for?

Since October 22nd

3) What are your top 3 features/'hits'?

1) The Metro UI and the design of the operating system

2) The 'Start' screen and the live tiles

3) The deep Facebook integration

4) What are your top 3 'misses'?

1) The lack of support for subscribed calendars and the OS not supporting multiple calendars per account

2) The lack of support for Facebook Places

3) The fact I cannot seem to extend the storage; however, I'm not sure whether that is a Windows Phone 7 problem - I heard that they didn't include support for it, or something...(?)

5) Anything else you want to say?

Other than the above, there is nothing I dislike or miss with this operating system. I can't think of any other way it limits me. It's a shame Microsoft wouldn't let me convert my American account to an English account, but they have stated that is for licensing reasons - I can't argue with that; also, that isn't a Windows Phone 7 issue.

Windows Phone 7 is absolutely fantastic. I love the design and the 'Start' screen so much, as well as how all of the applications I've used conform to that similar design.

6) What app is your favo(u)rite so far?

So far, the Facebook application; however, I imagine I'll prefer another one when I start to download and use more applications. I tried MoBank last night and it looks like that is going to be useful.

[Chsoriano]

4) What are your top 3 'misses'?

1) The lack of support for subscribed calendars and the OS not supporting multiple calendars per account

2) The lack of support for Facebook Places

3) The fact I cannot seem to extend the storage; however, I'm not sure whether that is a Windows Phone 7 problem - I heard that they didn't include support for it, or something...(?)

Yeah, the lack of multiple calendar support is lame... I'm hoping that they address that in the update next year.... especially since WLCalendar supports multiple calendars. I'm sure Facebook Places will come eventually also.

Regarding the storage, I put a 32GB microSD card in my Focus (alright - it wasn't the easiest thing to do, for those of you that read my earlier posts :) )... I know some devices in Europe weren't going to have a microSD card slot, but it's not a limitation of the OS

[BajiRav]

Yeah, the lack of multiple calendar support is lame... I'm hoping that they address that in the update next year.... especially since WLCalendar supports multiple calendars. I'm sure Facebook Places will come eventually also.

Regarding the storage, I put a 32GB microSD card in my Focus (alright - it wasn't the easiest thing to do, for those of you that read my earlier posts :) )... I know some devices in Europe weren't going to have a microSD card slot, but it's not a limitation of the OS

wasn't the difficult part on the 32GB was not knowing that you had to reset the device? :p Although I guess not your fault but poor documentation.

[chrisl]

1) What device did you get? Samsung Omnia 7

2) How long have you had it for? 2 Weeks

3) What are your top 3 features/'hits'? Outlook integration, Office, So easy to use

4) What are your top 3 'misses'? No sat Nav, Copy and paste, (had both of these on my nokia 5800)

5) Anything else you wantto say? Definately glad i waited for this handset and OS to come out, i could've upgraded months ago but i really wanted the 'Business' features that come withthe OS

6) What app is your favo(u)rite so far? A very simple one called notepad

[Prince Charming]

Just as an FYI, Bing Maps does full walking/driving directions with GPS. It doesn't have turn by turn voice (although it's coming). Smart-links throughout the OS also reduce most need for copy & paste, but it's also coming :)

[Chsoriano]

wasn't the difficult part on the 32GB was not knowing that you had to reset the device? :p Although I guess not your fault but poor documentation.

Ha yeah... but I should have known to try that earlier instead of assuming that's what the "Download Mode" was doing. Hey - someone had to figure it out the hard way :)

[chrisl]

Just as an FYI, Bing Maps does full walking/driving directions with GPS. It doesn't have turn by turn voice (although it's coming). Smart-links throughout the OS also reduce most need for copy & paste, but it's also coming :)

Thanks :) guess i need to learn the OS a bit more! Looking forward to the turn by turn voice tho, more useful when your on the move in your car.

[~Johnny]

As a small extra, it would be nice if the small text on the month view of the Calendar actually represented you're appointment for that day. For example, I make an appointment that says "Make Toast", go into month view and it puts some random text like "Hello from Seattle", or "Lorem Ipsum" or some other random latin text, of lengths that aren't particularly representative of you're appointment. One of the things I liked about Zune HD was that all the tiny text that was too small to be normally readable, was actually text representing your content properly, I.E a list of songs in the album next to the full sized Album Art work. Here they're just chucking in random words and hoping your don't care. It's a small thing, but small touches can make all the difference :)

[Timan Veteran]

Is there supposed to be a "Bing" search app or something?

Also please tell me someone figured out how to "not" have your msn contacts on the phone.

[George P Global Moderator]

It seems MS is working pretty hard on WP7 even now. Without being told any details I was told that internal WP7 builds are up into the 7500's. The version shipping on phones now is 7003 or 7004, I don't remember. This should give people a idea of how much work they've done since the RTM back in Sept.

[Timan Veteran]

They need to get an update out before christmas then.

Also anyone having problems where "marquee" text is showing up everywhere in apps (at the top, where the section title should be).?

[Brody McKee]

Some great responses here guys, it's interesting reading your thoughts and experiences! I'll leave it until this time tomorrow (to give a few North Americans a chance to jump on board) and then I'll do a tally/writeup on all of these great responses!

[Captain Noodles]

1) What device did you get? HTC Trophy

2) How long have you had it for? almost 3 weeks

3) What are your top 3 features/'hits'? Speed and responsiveness, concept and implementation of Metro UI, fast and easy application development

4) What are your top 3 'misses'? only one global volume control (no differentiation between media, notifications and ringer), no timer (only alarms), no images in appointments

5) Anything else you want to say? Microsoft definitely needs to extend the SDK to cover all the controls used in the Metro UI to give all applications a more similar look and feel. At the moment some of them are only available through additional libraries and they are a reimplementation in silverlight

6) What app is your favo(u)rite so far? the official Twitter app

[Prince Charming]

Is there supposed to be a "Bing" search app or something?

Also please tell me someone figured out how to "not" have your msn contacts on the phone.

The big search button on the front of your phone, one of the three front-facing hardware buttons? Press it. On the homescreen or third party apps, it's a Bing search. In Outlook, it searches email. In Zune and Marketplace it's contextual as well.

[Timan Veteran]

The big search button on the front of your phone, one of the three front-facing hardware buttons? Press it. On the homescreen or third party apps, it's a Bing search. In Outlook, it searches email. In Zune and Marketplace it's contextual as well.

LOL fail, should still be a menu item.

[BajiRav]

Some great responses here guys, it's interesting reading your thoughts and experiences! I'll leave it until this time tomorrow (to give a few North Americans a chance to jump on board) and then I'll do a tally/writeup on all of these great responses!

I won't be getting mine until tomorrow (Focus!), it just came out yesterday in the US. Need moar time :p

LOL fail, should still be a menu item.

dedicated button is better/faster?

[Xav]

The big search button on the front of your phone, one of the three front-facing hardware buttons? Press it. On the homescreen or third party apps, it's a Bing search. In Outlook, it searches email. In Zune and Marketplace it's contextual as well.

And in IE it goes to the oh-so-fugly yahoo search.

Bing-powered or not, it looks quite out of place.

LOL fail, should still be a menu item.

Why waste the screen real estate in every app having a search button or bar, when one button takes you to a context-sensitive search suited to the current app/pane you're in? They're trying to define a quite sensible convention.

I found the deviation in the IMDB app to using a magnifier icon top-right for search quite unintuitive.

[~Johnny]

And in IE it goes to the oh-so-fugly yahoo search.

Bing-powered or not, it looks quite out of place.

That is a carrier customisation by O2, in vanilla Windows Phone 7 all browser searches go into the Bing app. In the US, atleast one of the carriers has customised it to go to Google instead (which I'd personally prefer on my phone, if only for the image search results)

I found the deviation in the IMDB app to using a magnifier icon top-right for search quite unintuitive.

Unfortunately Microsoft gives app developers no access or control over the hardware search button in their applications, ergo all third party apps have to use their own ways of launching their own searches. Only first party apps can respond contextually to a search button press :/

Also please tell me someone figured out how to "not" have your msn contacts on the phone.

It seems in the current build, it's just not possible, outside of unlinking your Windows Live account from your phone, which isn't really an option. It's a bit frustrating, hopefully they'll give us an option in a later build.

[Prince Charming]

Yeah, developer access to the search button is very strange, being that you can handle the back button. The Start button, understandably you can't do anything with, but back and search both should be developer accessible.

[~Johnny]

Yeah, developer access to the search button is very strange, being that you can handle the back button. The Start button, understandably you can't do anything with, but back and search both should be developer accessible.

I think I can understand a possible reasoning for it - with the back button, it does the same thing everywhere, it's more or less a universal thing, it goes back one step. Users can pretty much count on it doing that - going back. With the search button however, users won't know what hte search button would be going to do if they pressed it in an app. Is it going to open a context sensitive search for this page, is it going to open a universal search in this app, is it going to boot you to a separate page, or is it going to launch Bing? And if it does launch Bing, with the lack of multitasking, it's going to close your app and make you reload it when press back, coupled with the fact that now many developers have properly mastered proper tombstoning practices. And if the application developer did include search functionality in their program, on the search button, the user may not even be aware of it's existence. It's be a more fragmented and inconsistent experience than what you get with allowing developers access to the back button, and I presume that's why they don't let us use it.

Sure there's some holes in that explanation, but I'd expect their official reasoning would go something like that.

[Calum Veteran]

[...]

It seems in the current build, it's just not possible, outside of unlinking your Windows Live account from your phone, which isn't really an option. It's a bit frustrating, hopefully they'll give us an option in a later build.

I thought you don't have to do this?

When I first got my phone, 3G wasn't working (as I had to wait for it to be activated or something); due to that, I couldn't link my Windows Live account - I kept seeing an error message - so I just clicked 'skip' (or whatever the option was) and my phone worked fine.

[Owen W Veteran]

So, that's two counting it and WeatherBug? Live Tiles were one of the big pushes from MS, are there any a-list apps which support them?

You're suggesting that updating twitter is somehow more intensive than updating FaceBook? If it's going to 'rape battery and be annoying to update' why are MS talking about it as part of a future update?

They aren't making it as heavy of a part as Facebook. twitter is known to need updating far more often, thus draining the battery more.

But horribly inferior to the iPhone... for example:

- I can't sync ics sources, so things such as my RTM calendar are useless (I've had to use Spanning Sync to sync to a google calendar)

- I can't sync more than once calendar per mailbox - some of my accounts have three or four, all of which work fine on my iPhone 4. I can't choose which is synced either, it's up to which the phone decides is the default. Hard to understand how MS missed this one, it's been part of EAS since 2.0 (Exchange 2003 era).

Yeah, I see your frustration. I don't use this, so it doesn't bother me. It's a Version 1.0 product, I'd expect this in the next release.

I thought you don't have to do this?

When I first got my phone, 3G wasn't working (as I had to wait for it to be activated or something); due to that, I couldn't link my Windows Live account - I kept seeing an error message - so I just clicked 'skip' (or whatever the option was) and my phone worked fine.

Can you buy stuff from the marketplace?