Seven days with a new Windows Phone 7.
It’s a very interesting time in terms of competition in the world of smartphones. First despite the amount of hype and how everybody in California owns one, the smartphone market globally still barely represent a quarter of phone sales (20% of global sales mid 2010). It’s still the beginning. But the growth is on.
// Before
I used an Android Phone for a year. I had fun with it except that my HTC Hero had some issues with AES Wi-Fi encryption, making it kind of useless when it cannot connect correctly to the free wireless… I don’t know if I’m the only one but from my light usage (email/twitter/fb/sms/reading/maps) I can say that:
- I’ve pretty much never used the “killer feature” called copy&paste. I retype, save the link or use the “send by email”.
- I don’t play games or music because it ruins battery life. It’s a communication device for me first.
- What multitasking? I use an app. I quit. I launch another one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
- Also, if I use six or seven apps very regularly, it’s a maximum.
- The free app with banner ads in your face model is getting annoying really fast.
- The Gmail app is plain sad.
Then the update mess. Holy shit it’s a mess. I started with the 1.6, missing a lot of good stuff. Then last summer I finally got the 2.1 update which I already had tried with a custom ROM (I don’t want to do that kind of shit again, ever). Then nothing, change your phone. The 2.2 update brought speed improvements with JIT optimization and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering and Adobe Flash support. Flash that I had partially from the start with my phone but don’t care about (watching videos on a tiny screen? Really?). My HTC Hero could have used this update but no, I have to get a new Android phone so I can have the last updates and last apps. Or go through XDA.
So I said no thanks. Here’s the carrier update coming and I’m going to get this Samsung Omnia 7. BAM!
Nifty
// UI-UX
I was really interested into the new Metro UI. Now that I’m playing with it, I can tell that it’s fucking delicious, butter smooth and all. At first you think that it’s gadget, you think that it’s too edgy and unnecessary but everything makes sense after a while: all these words become data and you end up manipulating data instead of representation of data (icons and “app body”). With an accent on natural motion with less clicks and trees and sub-menus and dialog boxes, everything seems more… Relaxing and focused even if it sounds weird. And what I see works perfectly for business or personal use. Grids of icons don’t look mature or efficient anymore. Navigating on Windows Phone 7 feels like a background process more than any other UI I experienced before. You have to try it for a while to understand. It’s awesome.
Index to swipe. Thumb to get back. For everything.
It’s fast, integrated, minimalist, well done, data-driven: you don’t launch your sms app to type a text message, you swipe to your contact list where you can sms/email/facebook wall them in one click from the home screen if you pinned her/him. I could do that on my Android but it was so clunky and confusing. The button just for the camera –love it-, the left or right landscape mode with symbols within icons moving accordingly… They polished the shit out of their new platform. And Microsoft really has nailed and deeply thought something here with this fancy 2D layout. It’s so satisfying.
Now about the stuff lacking. Like being unable to update a status on FB/Twitter/SomeTrendySocialNetwork directly from the Me Tile. Everything is pretty perfect and they miss that for launch? Unbelievable. Or is it to favorite developers to sell apps? Or because –for example- the Twitter API is god-awful to deal with so that engineers pushed to wait before it’s sold to Facebook or Google? I guess it weighs in too. Microsoft took the liberty to create the little apps that count like the weather, translator or unit converter. They’re as polished as the OS. They didn’t want to allow the light smartphone user like me having to deal with shitty third-party apps for basics like that. It’s smart because it ruined my Android experience.
Bad: give me a tool-shortcut to take screenshots of this beautiful UI on my phone please. Let people spread the word MS.
// Marketplace
I think the trial mode –not really available on other mobile platforms- is a really good choice for both users and developers. It’s known that while Android is full of apps, nobody is making money. The growth in competition between developers is not going to ease this as we can see on the iPhone where a few make a lot and everybody else pretty much nothing.
For users on Android you have fugly apps with G banner ads everywhere. You don’t want to pay when it’s free and that well, it gets the job done. But you have to deal with all this web intrusion. On iPhone it’s hit or miss: you buy you’re happy, great. Otherwise you’re screwed and try to not tell anyone that you paid that corny Mahjong game five bucks.
Now on Windows Phone everybody’s happy in theory. I’m trying Wonder Reader these days and it works well. I’m willing to pay the developer for its work. I feel that it’s the most balanced relationship: trial without restrictions or ads, I like it I buy it, I don’t I uninstall.
There’s no “I’m trying to scam/spam you with a lite version and really try hard to sell the full version to your contact list” way of doing business. Since the trial model is proven and always has been strong in digital distribution businesses (ask Steam these days), I feel that it’s going to be the same for smartphones. Remember, apps are bought once and for all, if you don’t like it it’s like you just dropped money on the sidewalk. After a couple dozens or more of not expensive apps, people are going to really want to try before hitting the “buy” button.
The one in the middle is the official Android app. Looks designed by/for a 7 year old.
About apps quality I think it’s already way better than Android. I already have all the apps I had on my Android: Flickr, Amazon, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Chuck Norris facts… Kidding. Though they’re available too. Some apps are a bit slow but they’re all enjoyable to use, much more than their counterparts on Android and iPhone thanks to the sweet UI. I have experienced one app crash so far, a shady Flickr uploader (a Flickr API problem I suspect). Also, apps are all available in France too. For the life of me I couldn’t get the Android Amazon app even with my European unlocked phone, in Paris or L.A. And it happens a lot, even for free apps like Google Reader. So weird for Google the global company.
Bad: get the Zune Music out of the search please.
// Development
Maybe nobody has noticed but the pace at which people port iPhone games to Windows Phone is quite insane. Like ten times faster than to port on Android. Thanks to minimum specs and great dev tools and being a bit late to the party which is an advantage in this fast-moving hardware mobile market.
This tool is creepily efficient. It’s called Expression Blend 4.
Anyway I’m saying great dev tools but I should say really great. I did iPhone development saw Interface Builder Xcode, I tried Android and the AppInventor, Eclipse and all the endless annoying Android SDK installation…
Here you download a small exe file that gets everything you need at once and five minutes after finishing the download, you can fire the emulator and have an app page running. How about that.
It’s been a week that I use Expression Blend 4 and I already have two apps navigation flows running smoothly in the emulator. I just need transition effects, binding real data and I’m almost done with solid alpha beta versions.
That’s an amazing achievement and because MS is full of engineer once again, they communicate on the technology making this possible –Silverlight– when they should introduce people from a product point of view first. Microsoft can’t get PR right, we all know that.
I don’t want to use Silverlight for anything but for Windows Phone for now. But using it through Blend 4 is quite awesome I can’t deny. The product MS, the product attracts designers. Technology, not so much. Remember, the code is behind. (not saying that it’s less important, but it’s not the best bridge to consumers right?)
Bad: None really, absolutely no crash at all with the dev tools… I’d like to be going even faster to build a complete app with Blend 4. Enough about visual stuff like FXG import and Photoshop shit. Let designers build the entire app with real data (at least for the reading part) with a few wizards, give more pre-made transition effects templates etc Ease and fasten the real creation process, it helps so much to not only see the design but the data in it. But it’s just been 7 days with the tools so maybe everything is here and I have yet to find it. Also, make it easier to download tools updates please!
Overall:
Best mobile experience ever. Minor issues (OMG I don’t have copy&paste bullshit included) about to be fixed. I thought my camera button wasn’t working well but it’s actually because I’m lefty and leave my hand on the proximity detector. So it’s all good and works perfectly now.
Best dev tools ever. Really hard to not fall in love with them. Productivity and classiness to the max.
From my simple and honest experience, I don’t see how Nokia made a mistake. You should really try a Windows Phone if you’re about to get a smartphone. I’m totally serious.