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Before getting my hands on the Windows Phone 7 phone, I was a bit apprehensive because I have been reading about it and I am aware of some of the shortcomings that could turn into really annoying niggles if they don’t get addressed.
Right, First impressions on taking the phone out of the box are that it’s not as big as I thought it would be. I expected it to sit awkwardly in my hand and feel too big to hold. I’m glad to say I was wrong, the Omnia 7 sits nicely in the hand and you can even do one-handed text replies (although if you want to write more than a quick text, it’s better to use one hand to hold the phone and the other to type)
As is the case with most phones nowadays the initial set-up was an easy process and within a couple of minutes I had set up my Windows Live and 2 Gmail accounts on the phone with it syncing contacts, email and calendar items from all 3 sources. I also added my Facebook account to the list and then went into the people hub to make sure that all my contacts had synced properly.
I was a bit shocked when I saw all of my Facebook “friends” in the people hub but a quick look in the settings screen removed all the Facebook contacts except those connected with my Gmail contact list. Next was clearing up one or two duplicate contacts that were showing. This was an easy thing of selecting the contact, then hitting the link button at the bottom and choosing the duplicate contact. After about 5 minutes all my contacts were sorted out the way I liked them.
I also like the clean way the “Whats New” area shows all my Facebook status updates and lets me “like” or comment on anyones status.
The whole metro UI seemed to flow very smoothly and I like the clean and simple layout in the apps. The Samsung does come with a “Now” hub that gives you the weather, news and stocks and it works well. The only thing that needs to improve is adding more locations. The weather is supplied by accuweather.com, news by Reuters and stocks by Yahoo! Finance. I haven’t been able to see if I can change those sources, say to BBC News etc.
The Internet Explorer that comes in WP7 phones has an option to report itself as a mobile browser or a desktop browser. By default it is set to mobile browser to reduce the amount of data that is transferred eating up your data allowance. I went to a couple of sites that I know use a mobile version of their sites, www.bbc.co.uk/news and www.smartphonegurus.com to name two of the sites I visited. Both of these sites displayed the desktop version of their sites instead of the mobile version that I was expecting. I don’t know if this is because of an issue with IE in WP7 or with the sites not recognising WP7 IE as being a mobile browser.
The X-Box Live hub is where I spent a lot of my time. I downloaded a couple of free games and two trial games from the marketplace, The two trial games were Monopoly and The Revenants. I loved both these trial games that I bought the full versions after playing the trials for around 10 minutes. I’m not slightly addicted to Monopoly on WP7… ooops…
I like the way that you can see all you X-Box Live achievements on the phone and gain new achievements from playing the live games that are available from the marketplace. One thing I hope that they implement soon is multiplayer. It will feel so much better beating a real person at Monopoly than beating the AI.
I’m not going to talk about the media side of the Omnia 7 yet as I’ve not had a chance to sync any photos/music/video to the phone using the Zune Desktop software yet. Thats going to happen later tonight and I’ll post how I get on tonight or tomorrow.
As good as the Samsung Omnia 7 and Windows Phone 7 are, there are a few little niggles that will annoy me until they are sorted out (hopefully in the upcoming update start of 2011). These are (in no particular order):
- Lack of Copy & Paste. The phone needs copy and paste. If I want to copy a URL and post it into twitter or Facebook or even in a forum post, then currently I need to write down the (potentially long) URL and manually type it in. Same goes for any blocks of text that I need to move around. Luckly Copy & Paste is coming in the update.
- Limited Number of Apps. This one should sort itself out as time goes on. Just like the Apple marketplace and Android marketplace when they first started, there isn’t that much in the way of apps for the phone yet. Oh but one grip I do have is if your making an APPLICATION, make sure it is actually an APPLICATION and not just a silly little link. I’m looking at you YouTube app.
- On the Omnia 7 I do find myself accidentally hitting the search button on the front. It seems to be just a little bit too sensitive for me. Might annoy me or I might learn to live with it, only time will tell with this one.
- I need to find out how (if its possible) to add custom words to the user dictionary
Overall I am happy so far with my Windows Phone 7 experiance. Will I stick with it or will I go back to the trusty HTC Desire? I’ll find out over time.
