One Week with Windows Phone…almost

Last week I posted my impressions of Windows Phone 7 from the few hours that I got to test one at the Launch Ambassadors event. I wanted to post before I had Windows Phone7 in my hands again and I did, but only by a few hours. Now, it is a week later and I’ve had an entire week of Windows Phone7…well, almost.

I picked up the phone on Wednesday evening and shipped it back Tuesday. Hopefully, I will have the new phone by the end of the week.

The unit I had was a Samsung Taylor. You won’t see it anywhere except in pictures from those who had the pre-production phones. It’s not a bad phone, just not one I would choose.

Set up is still just amazing, but without a SIM card you have to skip putting in your Windows Live ID and go into settings and turn on WiFi. If you buy your phone from a carrier this won’t be a problem.

Within minutes I had it all set up, my hotmail account, contacts, and calendar. Because I have Facebook tied into Windows Live I started getting Facebook updates in the What’s New section of the People Hub. I did nothing. Zune and Xbox Live took about two minutes more, because they both use the Windows Live ID that I had already entered.

So far this was just like what I had experienced in Washington. Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the setup and it shows.

The OS is fast, blazingly fast when compared to my Samsung Omnia It but that isn’t a very good test. Apps open quickly and you can maneuver through them equally quickly with one notable exception, the Marketplace. It seems to take awhile for things to react and sometimes you find yourself staring at a blank screen with a single word at the top.

Everywhere else, the one word that best describes Windows Phone 7 is flowing. The animations help a lot with this impression you seem to flow from the home screen to the app list. You click on an app and the app list flows out of the way and the app flows into view. You flow from screen to screen. It’s really quite amazing.

Now, there were a few hiccups. I already mentioned the marketplace. Lots of reviewers have mentioned that it took a long time to open games in Xbox Live. I only noticed that a little but I didn’t download any really complex games.

I found the back button to be annoying sometimes. I am used to closing apps and there just isn’t any way to do that. I found that a bit annoying and in my scant week with Windows I was just barely getting used to it. One problem is that it is rather difficult to jump between two apps. If you open an app, then you go back through the home screen to the app list, then open another app, you can use the back button to move back to the first, but there may be several steps in between, and without a forward button there is no easy way to get back.

Windows Phone needs a task switcher. Personally, I think it should be a bigger priority than Copy and Paste.

Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t mention many of the missing parts of Windows Phone 7 as outlined by a few dozen reviewers. That’s because, with the exception of a task switcher, I didn’t notice them. Well, okay that isn’t completely true, I did notice the absence of Copy and Paste, but only because Word in Windows Phone 7 does not work exactly like Word in Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s a long story…or at least it was long on my end.

So, my final word for now is that Windows Phone 7 is great. It has at least a few things that I hope Microsoft will correct in the early updates, but it is a strong competitor for Android and the iPhone.