Windows Phone 7 – first impressions

Just had a play with a couple of Windows Phone 7 phones. Overall, it's pretty impressive, and certainly much better than a lot of people predicted. However, there are a number of minor glitches I noticed which affect usability.

One problem is that the on-screen keyboard, while usable, requires you to press a key to switch to an alternate keyboard to enter most symbols such as apostrophes. This is much less friendly than the on-screen keyboard on the HTC Desire, where a long press enables you to enter special characters without switching to a different keyboard mode. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft allow users to download replacement keyboard apps to address this.

Also, the on-screen animations last little bit too long. While they are impressively smooth, the additional delay they cause using the phone is annoying. If there isn't an option to turn these off or increase their speed, there needs to be.

There are also some glitches relating to screen orientation, in a few cases. For example, selecting a Facebook status update to see comments that have been posted, causes the update and associated comments to be displayed, but in landscape orientation. Turning the phone to reorient the screen had no effect. Another niggle here was that Facebook statuses had a little speech bubble symbol to indicate there were related comments. You had to press on this icon to see the details; merely pressing on Facebook status update itself had no effect. This sort of niggle really spoils the user experience, and I'm surprised it was let out of the door.

On a more positive note, the hardware side of things is excellent. The HTC HD7 is a lovely piece of kit, as is the Samsung Omnia 7. Both phones have large displays and a neat angular minimalist design. The Omnia has the glorious OLED screen which is bright and vivid, although the unit is quite thick for a phone without a slide out keyboard. The HTC Mozart is also a nice piece of hardware, being basically an HTC Desire running Windows Phone 7.

There is clearly more work to be done on Windows Phone 7, but it's only a few tweaks and updates away from being a viable alternative to Android. It will be interesting to see how Google responds.