Telstra's shared items in Google Reader

Better late than never: The Social Review Wrap Up

2010-12-12T22:45:00Z

A fortnight after Telstra provided myself, and 24 others around Australia, a HTC Mozart 7 featuring Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system, and I’m pretty much sold on the platform. This wrap-up post should have been completed by last … Continue reading →

Mini game review – Assassin’s Creed (WP7)

2010-12-09T05:18:55Z

Windows Phone 7 Xbox Live games are miniature-sized, so they get miniature-sized reviews. Say goodbye to ‘meh’ – features are either cool or shite. The next game to get the mini treatment is Assassin’s Creed by Ubisoft.

The cool: If you like the Assassin’s Creed series, you’ll most likely enjoy this HD-enhanced iPhone port. The story itself is actually quite good and is a major improvement over the series first instalment. While this game isn’t essential to understand the series, it is a good side-story.

The shite: Some games just shouldn’t be made for a mobile; this is one of them. You control Altair (from AC1) via a left-hand thumbstick for movement and right-hand buttons for jumping and attacking.

If your control scheme means you’ve constantly got two hands blocking the screen in order to control your character, you’re doing something wrong. This phone has a touch screen and accelerometers; they should have be used in an innovative way; the developer should not be trying to transform your phone into a traditional controller.

The most annoying thing about this game BY FAR is that whenever you start to play it, you’re forced to watch a 45 second introduction video before the game even starts to load. You can’t skip it. You can’t avoid it. Why?

Overall, only die-hard Assassin’s Creed fans or achievement hunters should pick up this title. Anyone else will find it hard to control, frustrating to launch, and a general waste of time.

Note: I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

My HTC Mozart experience

2010-12-09T14:30:00Z

It's been good and bad. Tears and laughter and happiness.

My Mozart experience has been surprising. Windows Phone 7 as an OS is by far nowhere near as bad as the memories of Windows Mobile x.x - but it's no iOS. That's likely an unfair comparison though, as Apple have had 4 years to get their OS to this stage and this is Microsoft's first iteration of WP7. Sure, there are some rough edges, but over the past two weeks it grew on me.

I couldn't abide the onscreen keyboard. My fat thumbs struggled to type on it accurately, and while the autocorrect built into WP7 is very slick... re-editing a tweet or e-mail afterwards is not what I want to have to do. I prefer it to be right first time 99% of the time. A friend suggested I should just type fast and it will catch up - and it did, mostly. I still found it hard to be looking at the keyboard and having letters next to the letter I want show up in words when I didn't want them to. Oh, teh lulz.

The gaming component of this WP7 device was pretty cool. Lots of great games, lots of cool gamer points to collect. An absolutely productivity killer. But the cost... $4? $6.50? $9?!?! Sure, some of the games were great, but not that great. Being able to stick them as tiles on the main screen was a wonderful distraction, and made them easy to access.

Interacting with the device worked exactly as you'd expect it to. All the normal gestures are accounted for, and scrolling is very smooth and precise. It took me a little while to adapt from just up/down scrolling to including side-to-side scrolling once you're in the app. It does allow for some pretty compelling content to be displayed, & while the Telstra One app starts to hint at that there's a lot more that could be taken advantage of as apps develop.

The battery life sucked - no other way to say it. Advice from the Telstra team yesterday that a fix had been made to the Telstra network meant that we've only had 24 hours at best to really see if the change made a difference (and it needed to - with medium use I was getting, at best, 4-5 hours out of the handset - far from ideal). There has been a temporary fix, but that cruelled your ability to purchase apps from the Marketplace. If the battery/flipping APN issue can be resolved then this device will absolutely benefit. As will the owners of the device.

I saw nothing but goodness from Telstra's NextG network. Solid data bandwidth, no call dropouts, access everywhere. I didn't travel much out of either Brisbane or Sydney during the trial though during this time I didn't have a problem.

As a phone the Mozart works well. Clear call quality, easy enough to use phone component although frustrating when you open the phone part it didn't default to the keypad option, instead going to recent calls. Importantly it worked every time someone called me and I called them.

Overall it's a win. It's no iPhone, but it's a win. I've had some frustrations with apps, but that's not the device's fault. Everything you'd expect a smartphone to do, it does. If I hadn't bought an iPhone I likely would have picked up the HTC Mozart and used it. For the record, I have my quibbles with my iPhone & iOS, not unlike WP7. Given time, WP7 will be an absolutely competitive smartphone OS with a deep and rich app marketplace supporting it. Soon.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra. Or Microsoft. Or AuTechHeads. Or my wife, even.

Final Thoughts on the HTC Mozart

2010-12-09T21:06:21Z

I’ve listed this phone for sale here.

I’ve had the HTC Mozart to play with for the past two weeks as a part of Telstra’s Social Review program for this phone. I have posted a lot of thoughts on this blog over this period and the review period has drawn to a close. So where do I stand with this phone ?

This phone is not for me but let me explain why.

I had stated right at the beginning that I was going to approach the review by focusing on the features of the phone that are important to me as a user of smartphones. And that I would be drawing comparisons between the HTC Mozart and the phone that I am using currently, the iPhone 4. It’s only natural and credible to draw comparisons against something that I’m familiar with. I haven’t compared the Mozart to any phones running Android as I’ve never used an Android phone.

Let me clarify also my profile as a smartphone user as people use smartphones in different ways. My primary uses of my iPhone 4 are : Twitter, Facebook, taking photos and videos and Google Maps. My secondary uses are gaming, music, watching videos, e-books. Lastly, I also use my iPhone 4 as a phone and messaging device. Essentially, a smartphone to me is a mobile internet device first and foremost and lastly as a phone simply because I really don’t make that many phone calls. And when I do, they are short and sweet. It was really against this usage profile in mind that I approached the HTC Mozart and anyone reading this, should also keep this profile in mind.

In making a decision as to whether the HTC Mozart is a keeper, it was easy. Do the things I really like about the phone outweigh the things I really dislike about the phone ? The stuff in the middle doesn’t really matter (photo quality, video quality, lack of apps, mediocre Mac support).

What do I really like about the HTC Mozart ?

A number of things. Firstly, the screen quality. It was the first thing that struck me and I continued to enjoy the rich and vibrant display on this device. It wasn’t great under daylight conditions but neither is my iPhone 4. Both are quite hard to read under a sunny day. Is it better than the iPhone 4′s retina display ? Probably not, but I wouldn’t say the difference is that great to be a bother.

Secondly, the WP7 “Metro” user interface is very nice. It is very different to the iPhone user interface and it has sexiness in spades. Thirdly, I really like how Microsoft has designed the WP7 platform to be tightly integrated with Facebook. Hopefully, they will also extend this to other social networks, such as Twitter.

Lastly, and I know this is not directly related to the phone, but the NextG service was heads and shoulders better than the Optus service that I’m currently with on my iPhone 4. Browsing the web on the go with the Mozart with NextG was very fast and at times, I really couldn’t tell the difference with browsing the web on the device at home over wifi.

What do I really dislike about the HTC Mozart ?

My absolutely number one pet hat about the HTC Mozart are the three touch buttons at the bottom of the phone. If nothing else, this is the key reason why I won’t be keeping this phone. I think the HTC usability team has scored a massive fail on this. Surely, anyone using this phone for no more than 5 minutes can see how troublesome these touch buttons are. I’m regularly dropped out of the application or game that I’m in, back to the start screen or into Bing. Much have been said about gaming (by others) on this platform. But I really can’t see how that’s possible if the user is regularly interrupted by accidentally pressing those touch buttons, especially during the excitement of a fast paced game. Maybe I’m just a klutz if no one is having the same issue with the buttons but I find the phone completely unusable as a result.

But that’s not all. The second major problem that I have is the side scrolling problem that I wrote extensively about in my post about WP7 Twitter apps. Initially, I had thought that this was an affliction affecting Twitter apps only and I couldn’t logically understand why. But, with my further usage of this phone, I’ve encountered the same problems in the Facebook app as well as the custom TelstraOne app. If you look at my smartphone usage above, Facebook and Twitter are two of my primary uses. I absolutely cannot use Twitter on this phone because of this issue. I really don’t know if this is a hardware problem with the touchscreen or if it’s something software related in WP7. Hopefully, it is a software issue and not a hardware one.

Lastly, applications take a very long time to load on this phone. If you combine these three issues, the touch buttons, the side scrolling and the slow application load times, you can see how bad the user experience is with this phone. Let’s take this simple scenario :

- I open Twitter.

- Wait for the timeline to load (which takes longer than my iPhone 4 even with the faster NextG connection).

- I start scrolling up to read the tweets.

- Oh crap, side scrolling problem hits and all of a sudden I’m taken to the “mentions” screen.

- I scroll back to the timeline screen.

- Wait again for the timeline to load.

- Start scrolling again.

- You wouldn’t believe it, side scrolling problem again.

- I scroll back to the timeline screen.

- Wait again for the timeline to load.

- Start scrolling again.

- Damn ! I hit the Window button accidentally.

- Thrown out into the home screen.

- Repeat from top.

- I give up and pull out my iPhone 4 and the Twitter app loads in 1 second and the timeline is refreshed after three seconds.

This is just a horrendous user experience.

I really tried to use this phone and I couldn’t because of the issues above. Other social reviewers have had issues with phone crashes and extremely poor battery life. Luckily, I did not encounter those issues but I just really could not use the phone for the purposes for which I would use my iPhone 4.

The only app that I used for any length of time was Spider Solitaire. The Xbox Live integration is pretty cool and I got hooked playing Solitaire (which I don’t even normally play) because it was fun to accumulate points and level up. But even then, I kept hitting those stupid touch buttons and Solitaire takes almosts 45 seconds to load everytime (I’m guessing here, I didn’t time it but it certainly wasn’t fast to load).

I hope the folks from HTC and Microsoft are reading this. The WP7 platform has a lot of promise but it’s quite rough at the edges and it’s not ready for me. The phone design itself has to go back to the drawing board. There’s no place for touch buttons on a small handheld device. It may look cool but it really sucks.

To wrap up this review, I want to say a big thank you to the Telstra social media team for giving me the opportunity to be part of this program. Even though, I did not leave the program liking or intending to keep the phone, I really enjoyed playing with a new platform and blogging and sharing my experiences with a group of enthusiastic fellow social reviewers. Lastly, a big thank you also to the Microsoft Xbox team for the free Xbox 360 – it’s awesome !

Disclaimer : I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra. All my views about this phone are categorised under Windows Phone 7 on this blog.

Posted from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Windows Phone 7 App Marketplace — is there an app for that?

2010-11-26T00:59:31Z

I don’t have my HTC 7 Mozart yet, but I’ve already started thinking about apps I desperately need…or at least, equivalent apps to take their place. I bet other WP7 Social Reviewers are in the same boat, so let’s try to help each other out.

Feel free to comment and help me fill this in!

Equivalent apps - iPhone 4 and WP7:

iPhone 4	WP7
Facebook	Facebook
Twitter	Twitter
SoundHound	Shazam
TweetDeck	Seesmic
NewsRack	Headliner, G:RSS, FeedReader, gReadie, Flux
IMDB	IMDB
YouTube	YouTube
Kindle	Kindle
Dropbox	WP7Box, CloudFiles
Australia Post	Australia Post
iDrinkulator	Alcohol Meter
Weather	Weatherbug
eBay	eBay
World Clock	World Clock
Flight Control	Flight Control

Apps I’m excited about trying on WP7:

Microsoft Translater
Torrent Remote
Media Control
Mouse Pad
Halo Waypoint
Assassins’ Creed
Guitar Hero 5
Bejewelled
Adobe Reader
Iheartradio
myPlayer

iPhone 4 apps I can’t find an equivalent for in WP7:

Comixology
Citrix receiver
LogMeIn
Epicurious
WordPress
Skype
AirVideo
Qrank
Quota
NAB
NHL GameCentre
Metlink
TramTracker

Argh Marketplace!

2010-11-24T02:00:00Z

I'm planning to write a general frustrations page today, however, apparent issues with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace have pushed me to do this one now.

On Friday when I got the phone, I attempted to buy Assassin's Creed and was presented with a prompt that said "Cannot get this information right now, please try again later" - OK, fair enough, generally when I get that sort of thing, I try immediately, just in case, but got not joy. Instead I purchased Guitar Hero and that worked fine without any issues. It did however, require me to be connected to Wifi or do the download via the Zune software on PC. I feel that I should have been warned of this by the marketplace before attempting a purchase. In any case, once that download started, I was fine.

On Friday night I was having some issues with checking my usage, so out of curiosity I temporarily changed my APN setting to telstra.iph (again, as mentioned by Chris Walsh here) and then tried an application purchase. Admittedly, I didn't expect it to work, and I wasn't disappointed.

As soon as I changed the APN back, I didn't have this issue, so that's an easy one. In that time, I bought UNO and De Blob, they both worked fine - no hitches, niggles or anything!

Yesterday though, I tried to buy Max & The Magic Marker. I came up against the same issue I did with Assassin's Creed - "Can't get the information right now" - this went on most of the day. Last night I thought I'd try connecting to Wifi to make the purchase. What do you know, it worked! As M&TMM is a big download as well, I stayed connected to Wifi and went to bed to let it do its thing.

This morning I got up and found "Attention Required. Press Here" on the download page for M&TMM. I tapped it and found this prompt.

Now... what? License? There's a problem with it? What did I do? I truly didn't get it, so I tried redownloading the game, twice more, to see if that resolved the issue. It didn't. After Googling the phrase "Can't play or download. There's a problem with the licence." I eventually found a post that suggested, in geek terms, that I restart the phone and see if it's there. Lo and behold, Max HAD installed. I just needed to reboot the phone to see it.

Me? I'm a geek and I have contacts. While problems like this frustrate me, I can usually find my way around or get to a solution. However with what appear to be transient, inconsistent issues like this popping up as frequently as they have been, noting that others in the Social Review team have had similar problems, I feel for the Mr & Mrs Average consumers. I tend to agree with Matt Marlor's blog on AuTechHeads - while we geeks can enjoy, if be frustrated, by all this new technology, I can't help but be concerned for everyone else. The biggest problem with all of this is that there is no clear description provided of the issue, nor a resolution path provided. "There's a problem with the license." Yeah, ok? What is the problem? How do to fix it? Do I call the people I bought the phone from? Do I call Microsoft? I. Don't. Know.

I can only hope that this either

Improves or
Is not the case for everyone.

If not, then all I foresee is headaches.

UPDATE: I should make it absolutely clear - I have only tried using "Bill to mobile carrier" - that is, Telstra. I've not tried purchasing things with a credit card, so I have no idea whether that is better or not.

I am also about to try a factory reset to see if that improves things at all. If it does, that really raises more questions than answers - should I need to do that? Would Mr & Mrs Consumer know to?

Consider that full disclosure, I guess.

Apptastic #telstrawp7

2010-11-30T11:09:07Z

Tonights blog is going to be about the Windows Phone 7 Apps. Whilst having a wander around Town Hall Station on the weekend, I noticed this ad (and yes this photo is taken off my Windows Phone 7..)

In my personal opinion, iTWire probably wasn’t talking about the apps for WP7 when they wrote this – the whole Marketplace really doesn’t live up to the iTunes expectations – it feels more like an Ovi Store equivalent more than anything else in terms of size and quality of available apps. I think that’s because it just feels immature and they really don’t have the groundswell of developers wanting to create awesome apps for it yet. In saying that though, there are some pretty cool apps/features you can get for your phone… So what have I been playing with this last few days?

Twitter

A lot of people have been having problems with this (resetting automatically, freezing) but honestly I haven’t had too many issues with this. I think this app’s major flaw is the bottom icons – they really don’t provide any valuable meaning, and they’re also quite small – even I feel like I have fat fingers when I use this because I have to be so precise pressing the buttons!

Flight Control

It’s exactly like the iPhone one (yay) but costs double the price.

Lonely Planet Top 10 Cities 2011

A really pretty app (with gorgeous pictures) and a great way for advertising the book.

Colorize

I had expectations that this app would be more about having a greyscale image and you select the colour you want to display – it’s more like having a greyscale filter and you erase the layer to show the colour underneath. It’s still pretty cool, but you have to be fairly accurate to get it filling to the edges of your image components.

Deck of Secrets – Sydney Eat

One of the best apps. Seriously if you have Windows Phone 7 you have to get this. It lists out the best places in Sydney to eat – I think the closest one on iPhone is Time Out Sydney’s app – but whoever made this app seriously needs a medal because it just suits the Windows Phone 7 interface so so well. (EDIT: ok according to Brock it exists on the App Store.. my bad!)

Love

According to the Telstra/HTC guys at the launch – this was the ‘Girls Game’ – it’s literally a flower and you select the petals for a virtual loves me/loves me not. I wasn’t sure if they were being sarcastic when they showed this to us, but when I’ve been showing it to everyone as the most awesome app – really sarcastically.

Philosoraptor Generator

Really simple, but really awesome. It’s a shame its just only for Philosoraptor – if the whole meme generator site could be replicated as an app – that would make this so much more versatile.

Email

OK, so not an ‘app’ but still thought I’d highlight it – as you can see it is really simplistic which I do really like – but again those small buttons down the bottom really have no obvious meaning and you do have to test them out to understand how they’re used.

Guitar Hero

My Lady Gaga Tap Tap Revenge was like $5, and Guitar Hero was $9 – if I wasn’t getting these for free I probably would hesitate buying this – but I’m glad theres a tap-tap game available on Windows Phone 7. The whole guitarist image at the end is a bit repetitive but the songs variety is pretty good. Downside is the mini icons again – they use them as a yes/no but you seem to get more response from the application selecting things on the screen instead.

Link Me In

The only available LinkedIn app I could find – but not sure if it’s an official one or not. It has pretty basic functionality – your profile, a list of your contacts and latest updates; but I guess that’s really what LinkedIn is all about.

Uno

Awesome game which reminds me of my childhood so much. The career only starts with two people, so some of the rules are a bit weird but apart from that its pretty good. There’s Xbox Live integration – but as I don’t have my network set up (those Xbox wireless things are like $150 at JB Hi-Fi!!) there really isn’t any major value to that stuff at the moment.

There’s definitely more apps I’ve played with, but these ones have been on high rotation at the moment. But if there was one major gripe I had with the apps is that the Xbox ones go into a separate app – ‘Xbox Live’ – so I was questioning why I wasn’t able to access half the games directly from my applications list. It would be really awesome if you could drag and drop apps out of Xbox live into your start list or list – because it takes time for the Xbox app to load, which means it takes more time to get to the games!

What other games have you seen that you want me to try out?

Is there anything else I should be researching or testing out with this phone?

FYI – I have been given a HTC Mozart with Windows 7 Phone by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own user experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

WP7 Apps and the Marketplace

2010-12-01T10:25:00Z

The Apple implementation of their App Store has ruined me. So much choice, so many apps, such cheap prices… But what of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace? Does it work? Is it slick? Who'll think of the children?! Won't SOMEBODY think of the CHILDREN??!!

The Marketplace implementation on Windows Phone 7 is actually pretty good – the apps are categorised in the first instance and also listed by in other formats (new, top, etc). The background changes to promote specific apps from visit to visit too, with the same ‘peek’ navigation style as employed with other WP7 natively designed apps. And there are some cracking apps too.

I’ve download a few apps, and a bunch of games(!). While I’ve had my share of hassles in downloading them – either through the app not wanting to download at all or not being able to purchase the app – that’s seemingly been atmospheric. Wait a few minutes and start again. Similar to the AAS (Apple App Store) the Marketplace will not allow you to download a massive app when you’re not on WiFi, with the aim being to minimise your telco data usage. This is necessary as some games are decidedly sizable and you could easily eat up your monthly data allowance by downloading a couple of larger apps (e.g. games).

The apps in the Marketplace are, on the whole, VERY expensive. There are a number of free apps – some of which are quite good – but on the whole the starting price is $1.30 per app, an upwards from there to some of the better games retailing at $9! On a smartphone this struck me as pretty steep, but I guess these prices may mature and reduce as more apps become available & the quality across the board lifts with the competition. Still - $9! That when purchasing apps there are a couple too many “are you sure” steps is annoying, but not impossible to put up with.

When purchasing an app you have two options for payment: Charge back to your phone bill or use the credit card you have setup with yoru XBOX Live account. The former method could lead to some very significant bill shock for post-paid accounts; not sure how it would work for pre-paid accounts (may not be possible). Using the credit card option seems safest and in line with the AAS. I can’t speak to the complaints of people who are being hit with an additional conversion charge when purchasing apps with their credit card as I’ve not seen that on my two purchases to date.

The real win for the WP7 Marketplace is app trial mode. Essentially, developers can build into their app what is and isn’t included when someone wants to check it out. This could be as simple as only 1 level available, or disable achievement unlocking, or alter your ability to save/publish the outcome of your work. It also saves a bunch of hassle in having duplicate apps (one free trial, one fully paid) that you’d need to download and install, and taking up valuable space in your Marketplace. I’ve downloaded a couple of trial apps & games, and in a couple of instances it prompted me to purchase or uninstall straight away based on what was available in trial mode.

While the apps – particularly the games – are expensive, there are some crackers to get immediately. Games have featured highly on my list to see how this affected my GamerScore and also to see the turn-based play implementation… but I’ve found it very hard to turn two of them off - Star Wars:Battle for Hoth and Max & the Magic Marker. SW:BFH is a pretty cool tower defence game using Star Wars characters & weapons taken from the scenes on Hoth during The Empire Strikes Back. It’s simple, addictive, and STAR WARS! M&TMM is a physics-based drawing game in the same vein as Doodle Jump, however the overall style is what has sucked me in (download the trial and see what I mean). Tough for those with fat finger syndrome such as myself, but still a whole bunch of hour-killing fun.

As a delivery mechanism for apps for a Windows Phone 7 device, it’s pretty good. In comparison to the AAS it’a step up in style, but a step down in content. It looks pretty nice. It’s not like you can use the app store from the other on the platform, so you are kinda stuck with it. Excuse me, but I have to go play Max & the Magic Marker again now…

Zune: Music, Rethought

2010-12-09T15:36:19Z

One of the more fantastic ironies of Apple’s success with its iPod, iPhone and iPad over the last decade is that iDevices, along with iTunes, have become so prolific that using them is no longer about thinking different, but going … Continue reading →

Crash or crash through: Windows Phone 7 stability & performance

2010-11-30T12:48:12Z

With just over four days of use in the bag, it’s probably the right time to give everyone an update on the stability and general performance of Windows Phone 7. If you’re a person who is content with using the … Continue reading →

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

2010-12-02T13:03:52Z

The Marketplace is the app store equivalent of the WP7 world. One caveat before I get into this post. The Marketplace experience that I’m blogging about is purely through interacting on the phone. I’m a Mac user and there’s no Zune Mac application, hence all the application browsing and downloading has to be done directly on the phone.

Just like the rest of the WP7 user experience, the Marketplace experience is visually rich as compared to browsing apps via the App Store on an iOS device. The background of the Marketplace is a regularly updated wallpaper featuring whatever app that is chosen to be featured at that time. When you first enter the Marketplace, you are given a list of the categories for the various apps eg. Games, Entertainment etc. This is very similar to the list of app categories you find in the Apple app store. Within each category, the way apps are presented are pretty much identical between the Marketplace and the Apple App Store – a vertical list of apps showing their icons and their ratings.

To state the obvious, the Apple App Store has way way way more apps than Marketplace. To be fair, that’s because WP7 is a brand new mobile OS whereas iOS has had a 3 year head start. It will take some time for the Marketplace to catch up to offer the same breadth of apps. Not only is the range not there in the Marketplace, sometimes I wonder how many people buy apps from the Marketplace. One example is Flight Control, an incredibly popular game on iOS which is also available on WP7. On the Apple App Store, there are 1065 ratings for Flight Control compared with 29 ratings on the Marketplace.

Despite the lack of apps, the other downside with the Marketplace is the cost of WP7 apps. They are around three times the cost of iOS apps and there are far fewer free apps on the Marketplace. Here’s a sample of WP7 app (games) costs vs. iOS :

- Flight Control $4 vs. $0.99

- Assassin’s Creed $9 vs. $2.99

- Guitar Hero $9 vs. $2.99

I do like the buying experience on the Marketplace compared to the App Store for the simple fact that I’m not forced to enter my iTunes password every time I want to download an app. At the bottom of each app’s detailed screen is a “share” link which is similar to the “tell a friend” link on the App Store. I was expecting that given WP7′s tight integration with social networks that it should allow you to share via social networks (eg Facebook) unfortunately that’s not the case. Sharing is done by email or SMS instead.

Marketplace is not a trouble free. I have encountered issues downloading apps from the Marketplace with cryptic error messages. The Marketplace app has also frozen on me a few times and other times it’ll quit as soon as it’s loaded, requiring a phone reboot to enable it to launch successfully. It’s definitely not the smoothest experience.

Overall, while Marketplace is a slicker experience, it really is pretty much the same as the Apple App Store but with fewer and more expensive apps.

The missing pieces

2010-12-10T06:13:03Z

As the review period draws to a close, I have noticed that I have already started to use the Mozart less and less. In my own view, the make or break for a smartphone operating system is the number of quality apps it has available. “Quality” is clearly a subjective term, and it is unlikely [...]

Facebook on the #telstraWP7 is great!

2010-11-28T09:38:58Z

After a few negative posts about the WP7, it is nice to do a very positive one. The Facebook for Windows Phone app is wonderful! It is utilising the WP7 Pivot interface to great effect. It has all the features you need, like Events, Notifications, Messages, etc. The photos are beautifully displayed and also look great. One of the best things it has is Lists of contacts. I use Facebook mainly to catch up with extended Family, and I have all the family contacts in a List. It is really annoying that the substandard Android Facebook App does not have the ability to see Lists, wheras the iPhone does. So, this feature alone, it makes it a pleasure to use the Facebook App on the WP7. But it does not stop there. The Facebook integration into the People App is great, with the ability to see latest photos and updates from people in your phonebook. Android also has this feature, but it seems to be more polished in the windows phone. Overall, it is a pleasure to use this App.

#TelstraWP7 Wrapup

2010-12-10T04:56:00Z

Two weeks ago I was given a HTC Mozart with Windows Phone 7 and a bunch of Calls/Data from Telstra. Basically the deal was “We give you this stuff for free and you tell us how it really is from an end user’s perspective”.

So, how was it from an end user’s perspective? Let’s find out.

The Awesome
So what was fantastic about it? Let’s have a quick list

Really cool Facebook + Google + Live! Integration
Simple and easy app purchasing
Great Network
Smooth Animations
Games

Integration on this phone is incredible. From the first moment I logged in I linked it to facebook. Bam, all my friends, my news feed and photos came straight on to the phone. Soon I had linked with Google, it synched all my contacts (without duplicating any names) and suddenly I had everyone’s numbers. No painful migration process, nothing.

App purchases using the sim card to pay is a fantastic feature. I didn’t have to link my credit card, I didn’t have to log in every time, no issues. Just click buy. This was definitely one of my favourite things about the phone. I think it could be smoother, but it was nice.

Next G is great, honestly I never had reception problems. I’d always known that the Telstra network would be better. In fact I used to be with Telstra about 3 years ago. But being able to call people from within the cement covered IT Labs, being able to browse data from the Optus dead spot at my favourite cafe (Badde Manors, go check them out) and never thinking “ergh, I hope i have data for directions” was a nice change.

Animations all over the interface make it look super slick and futuristic. I think this is one of the few Graphic aspects that I really like. I’ve said before that I don’t really like the look of the UI. But every time my emails slide in, or I swipe across I kind of feel like I’m in the future (like with jetpacks?).

Games on the WP7 were kind of impressive. From the launch they’ve had a bunch of big developers get some decent games on the phone. All my friends loved the graphics in NFS. However, I think they are trying a bit too hard. Most of the games seemed like they were trading fun for impressive graphics. The most successful games on iPhone and Android are the cutesy lets have a bit of fun then move along games. Like Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds.

The Expected
Some things just aren’t impressive any more. But if you don’t have them it’s very noticeable.

Decent Camera
Email all syncs and pushes and notifies and stuff
It does text messaging and phone calls
You can install apps
It has Maps with directions
Big Touch Screen
It plays music
Cool Hardware Design

Really, you wouldn’t buy a smart phone if it didn’t do any of these things. So I couldn’t imagine them not doing it. Not really impressive, but well, you get the drift.

The Ugly
Well, this is the part that’s fun. Tearing the shit out of the phone. I’m not going to be too rude, but there are definitely parts I don’t like.

The WP7 UI - ergghhh
Internet Explorer
Copy Paste
“Meh”

I’ve ripped into The UI before but this time I have much more experience with it. I said from the start that I didn’t like the “Minimal UI” feel. I still agree. There’s not enough decoration, which means my brain often finds it hard to pick up hints on what is intractable and what is not. Plus, for a device that’s meant to be pretty and futuristic it looks bland and retro. Actually, this phone is kind of what I imagine the 80’s thought the future would be like.

If you want to see an in depth look at how poor Internet Explorer Mobile is as a browser, check my other blog post. Really, I disliked almost everything about it. The only redeeming feature was the tab-like grid for open pages, which was kind of nice to browse through.

WHY DOESN’T IT HAVE COPY PASTE

Overall, I think the worst thing about it was the “Meh” factor. Most of the features I was just like, yeah, I guess that’s cool. I was never really like “holy crap, you can touch the screen! and omg if I move my fingers like this it gets bigger”, which is definitely the feeling I got with the first iPhone I ever saw.

So yeah, that’s my wrapup and summary. Cheers everyone for following along, hope you continue to read my blog.

Telstra One and HTC Hub on WP7

2010-12-05T10:30:28Z

Microsoft have locked down Windows Phone 7, much in the same way that the iPhone interface was. SO no matter what you try, the only customisation you can do is change the lock screen image, and change the colours in the live tile interface. So you are left with two things, possibilities, carrier and manufacturer add ons. Or Hubs as they are being called. Telstra’s own hub is great, bringing you lot’s of local news and weatheras well as all of the Telstra services, like white pages and your account usage.

Then there’s the HTC hub, this is HTC’s stampy foot thingy, to bring an essence of their popular Sense UI to Windows Phone. Sense UI has been included on all HTC devices, whether they be Windows Mobile or Android, not being able to skin WP7, HTC had to settle for a hub as well. The hub does provide some familiar features and design, but could be easily bypassed, for the WP7 UI.

Market Place on WP7!

2010-12-04T11:11:19Z

How many Windows phone users are out there? If you look at the current stats from this Facebook source, you can see there’s quite a few. In a post from WMPowerUser this morning

Windows Phone 7 currently has at least 139,877 users (who have used the built-in facebook integration in WP7 in the last month). This is a week after our last count, and surprisingly only about 5000 more.

A much healthier result is that Marketplace has at least 3,340 apps, a number which appears to be accelerating rapidly

You can see that the number of users on Facebook, using WP7 has jumped by 11,000 since the time of that post. The lack though of apps in the market, may be a hindrance to adoption of the platform. So today I thought I’d talk about the market on WP7

I’m not kidding when I say, the market seems to be full of flashlights, tip calculators and to do list managers. Now don’t take me the wrong way here, the Windows Phone OS is incredibly new, a bit over a month old, and there are some great apps in the market, but if you’ve come from Android or even iOS [the fruit company] you’ve been spoiled for choice. This could probably be a turn off for lot’s of people, but just how the Market Place is pitched as part of the WP7 OS is lovely.

The market background changes daily, with interesting graphics, Your installed apps will updated dynamically, as they hit the market, and search is as relevant as it can be at this time. Markey search is powered by Bing, and very keyword heavy. If you search the market for “recipes” there are only about five results. As most of the apps come from tech savvy devs, the categories and keywords associated with them are vague.

The ratio of users to apps though, infers a huge burden on the dev community, to expand, and supply, needed and useful apps to the public. Is this the plan Ballmer had when he yelled “Developers,Developers, Developers”

First Impressions

2010-11-27T01:32:00Z

So, yesterday Telstra gave me a HTC Mozart with Windows Phone 7 and a bunch of calls/data to use over the next 2 weeks. The intention being for me to perform a series of reviews of the device, the OS and Telstra’s network itself. So as I have only had the device for a day I figured I should give some first impressions. Just as a note, my previous Smart Phones have been the HTC G1, iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 so anything comparison based will rely on this.

My first thought when I had the device in my hand was “wow, this is really slim”. As it turns out side by side it’s slightly fatter than the iPhone4. However the hard edges on the outside of the iPhone, while attractive, do make it feel larger. In general the HTC does feel nicer on the hand.

The front face of the device has three soft buttons, these look like hardware buttons but actually respond to touch the same way the screen does. Apart from these there are the top button (general purpose lock/unlock), side rockers (volume) and side button (camera). The number of buttons is nice and minimal, which is a bonus.

On to the OS, Microsoft has gone with a very unique style. This makes the OS seem very unique, though at the same time sometimes like something out of the 80’s. The first screen you see is meant for connecting your phone with your Live ID. This is similar to linking to a google account with Android. Noticeably the UI is very minimal, all text and buttons. The buttons themselves are only defined by a square white border, with the whole screen, and the background of the buttons, being black.

When we jump into the main homescreen it’s quite obvious that Microsoft have really shaken things up. We have a vertically scrolling “boxes” UI where each box is able to update from the background giving incredible integration straight to the home screen. Again the UI is quite minimal and flat, no rounded corners, one pixel shines or gradients. All boxes and colours.

Moving on to the People box (being one of my favourites so far) we can see tight integration with Facebook. Straight up all my friends are there as contacts with phone numbers and pictures. I can easily see status updates and people I’ve recently talked to. I like this.

So that’s a few random things. I’ll be chucking more content up soon. Going to try developing my own app as well. We’ll see how that goes.

Here’s a few tweets I made last night.