The Windows Phone 7 (WP7) devices are out, and recently at conferences all around there were a number of people sporting the new devices and blogging, tweeting, and more about their new toys. Since I tend to know many people that work in the Microsoft world, there was a lot more buzz about the phone at recent events than I've seen elsewhere. Finally it seems the Windows phones are a worthy competitor to the Android and iPhone devices.
A good friend of mine, a Windows infrastructure guru, sent me this early review of WP7, with the idea that it might convince me to switch from my iPhone and give it a try. That's not likely to happen anytime soon as I like my iPhone and don't really see a compelling reason to change. To me the important thing is the platform and the coverage. While I get decent, not great, coverage from T-Mobile, I am tempted to switch to Sprint or Verizon as they seem to do a much better job. If they had an iPhone, I'd move tomorrow.
The platform is the bigger deal for me. I had an Android phone, and while I liked it, the platform wasn't mature, with relatively few applications that would do what I wanted it to do. Things have changed, but I'm still not sure it's quite mature enough for me. WP7 might get there as well, but I am sure its platform is much less mature than the others right now. We'll see if Microsoft can change that.
One thing in the review that I found very, very interesting was in part 9 of the review. The author mentions that WP7 is changing the game by understanding that the user is the center of the device, not the applications, and it seeks to better blend the core data, the information about the user across different applications. It's an interesting idea that the data a person has (photos, music, contacts, etc.) should be overlaid across applications. I know that the data is the most important thing to me and finding ways to better integrate it is important to me.
I don't know what many of you think of WP7, but it might be worth taking a look if you want a new smartphone. And if you don't have a smartphone, I'd encourage you to look at them. I know that all the major platforms (WP7, Android, iOS) have made me much more productive over the last few years.
Steve Jones
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