Windows Phone 7 UI review

Test Subject: HTC Trophy

OS Version: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango

Rating 4.7/5

Performance

     Windows Phone 7.5 is a big step up from 7.0 with over 400 bug fixes and a more beautiful, natural, and ergonomic design. Multitasking is much better in Mango and the overall performance is very zippy. Some of the big things is more apps able to run in the background, message threading, more stable UI, and a whole lot more apps. On the HTC Trophy apps loaded up fast and games ran very quickly. Windows Phone is very minimal and everything is bigger, faster, and better than other mobile operating systems. Internet Explorer 9 is not what you think it is big bulky and always in the way. This time around it is almost non existent and the address bar is at the bottom of the screen and is much improved in quality and speed. Also the entire look and feel is more refined. I prefer this OS to any other and hope to see some of WP7 (marketplace apps) on Windows 8.

Marketplace

     Windows Phone 7.5 brought in a lot of mainstream apps but not enough for many picky consumers. Adobe reader, ESPN, Shazam, Pandora client, Tune In radio, and Iheartradio shows you that they have great music choices for the regular music streamer. There is a ton of Xbox Live games for the true gamer at heart and the average daily Joe like angry birds, Hydro Thunder Go, fruit ninja, and Pac Man Rally. Even at 70,000 apps it is still found lacking in some departments but also has some very unique apps that I found like the free Tom and Jerry app with 100+ episodes and for $3.99 you can get the best outdoors app to date SAS Survival Guide with not only the best selling book in the app it also includes video gallery, comprehensive picture database of edible and non edible plants and animals, and pop quizzes to test how smart you are in the wild! Windows Phone apps are the best looking and quickest loading apps out in the smartphone arena.

Design

     The Windows Phone 7 team must have taken a long time planning the layout of a otherwise unknown Operating System. The important thing about the layout is the ease of use of the WP7 platform. The main thing to know about the design or layout is the unique metro layout. The idea behind the "metro" look is putting the user first. The word metro derives from a subway station where there is a whole bunch of metro or retro stores underneath the ground. The entire metro interface follows you wherever you go even especially in every app. The whole design has a similar character trait with Apple's IOS platform uniformity. In Android you do not get the same experience where ever you dare enter. With IOS it is the same look wherever you go even if it is not a very refined look. Also the only thing able to be customized is the background and all you see is a wall of apps which do not tell you anything except for the few with little red notifications on them. With Windows Phone 7 you get a beautiful Start menu which you can choose to pin certain items and things like the temperature on your weather tile or how many and who e-mailed you all show up without you actually going into the app. The whole fluid minimal design puts the user up front and personal with what you want not just random bloatware. It may have a ways to go but for me it does the job well and beautifully. 

Score 9.5/10

 

Best Iphone 4S Competitiors

I have been hearing many complaints from my base on my partially biased review on the Iphone 4S (biased toward Apple not Android) and have decided to do another review except showing the 3 main phone OS other than IOS which are Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7. I personally am a Windows Phone fanboy but today I am going to give an unbiased review of the top dogs of these respective phones.

#1 Android - Samsung Galaxy Note

     Android is the most popular phone/tablet operating system and the Galaxy Note is a wonderful combination of phone and tablet a.k.a phablet. One of the biggest detractors of the Iphone 4S is the small 4 inch screen. The Galaxy Note has a 5.3 inch screen which may be a bit big for your hands but ultimately comes with alot of perks including a S stylus, faster and more productive 1.4GHZ dual core processor, 8mp rear camera with LED flash and full 1080p video recording, Super AMOLED screen (Active matrix organic light emitting diode) which is far superior in quality and performance, and a suite of apps dedicated to the big screen and perfect for your stylus such as a solid note taking app and the Samsung touch whiz skin layer similar to the HTC sense UI. Also Android is growing quickly with approximately 500,000 more or less apps and games, and with the new Google Play store it features 14 million songs and 100 free songs with a new Google Music account, all the latest and greatest movies available for 24 and 48 hour rental for low prices, and google books has over 3 million books for all subjects and gets 5 stars for research papers especially on Azerbaijan! This is a solid choice even though the 2 year contract price starts at $249 depending on your carrier. If you need a ton of apps and a really large screen this is your best buy.

#2 Windows Phone 7 - HTC Titan II

     This was a very hard choice for me since all of the Windows Phones are the same. Microsoft has done a great job with their propiertary OS especially since it has surpassed Blackberry in 2010 in app count. Market share and carrier availability is low since almost all phones are on AT&T and all the other carriers except T-Mobile have only one. (T-Mobile has two). The big factors for the HTC Titan II is the biggest camera sensor to date a whopping 16mp camera with 1080p video recording, a large screen is also great at 4.8 inches, and all Windows Phones come with Office Mobile apps preinstalled (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and One Note), and it has 4GLTE functionality which the Iphone can only do 3G. The reason I chose this as number two is because Windows Phone has 70,000 apps to date and even though it got a late start among the 500,000 app count giants it still made 10,000 apps faster than anyone in the market even if they were not the first. Also it passed Blackberry in app count in May 2011 and is expected to pick up market share and app reliability when the launch of Windows 8 and WP8. The idea behind this is that you can synchronize your documents, apps, and files all on one account. With this idea developers will come and so will consumers. This is a great phone for $199 on a two year contract with AT&T only unless you buy one unlocked off of Amazon. Also Windows Phones are extremely cheap unlocked some going for $139 refurbished with excellent specs. 

#3 Blackberry - Torch

     This is the only touch screen powered phone by Blackberry and is the only phone on our list which is smaller than the Iphone at 3.7 inches. This is underspecced compared to our other competitors on the list bearing a 5mp rear camera with 720p hd recording, Blackberry 7 also BB10 upgrade able which features an Android emulator so you can run any Android app on your Torch, this is the first Blackberry that is all touch and is aimed at consumers and BYOD (bring your own device) establishments, and features the lowest price on our list at $179 on Verizon Wireless. The Torch is a big step in the right direction for the dying RIM even though they still have more market share than WP7 and has one of the most money making app stores around people do not will not buy it because it is a Blackberry. RIM has to learn how to stop scaring consumers and bring them into the "Bold Fold."

   Wrap-UP

All of these OS are very respective in all that they do and all have similar features that rival the boring IOS. Android features Google Voice Search which is much like Siri which you can ask questions and it will direct you to the right answer and can text by voice. Also live wallpaper brought in by Android 2.3 update is a beautiful touch to the boring row of apps in IOS. Windows Phone 7 has the most dynamic look of all the OS there is. Live tiles show you how many e-mails, messages, missed calls, and facebook notifications you have and are big and bold in color. Also Bing search acts alot like Siri and does the same as Google Voice but can also earn you Bing rewards with each search gathering prizes like $5 Amazon gift cards. Lastly Blackberry has a voice search client and a mostly boring but functional UI. I prefer WP7 since it has Office built in for free and all WP7 phones have 25GB free of cloud storage on Skydrive which syncs with your Windows or Mac pc.