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HTC Mozart and Windows Phone 7 Social Review

2010-12-10T11:56:40Z

For the last week I have had the pleasure of completing a Social Review for Telstra on the HTC Mozart and the Windows Phone 7 Operating System. I would say now that I would recommend anyone to give the two of them a try. I do know that in some cases the Phone and in others the Operating system may not be for everyone.

Hardware

I have found that I do like the phone and it’s little quirks have grown on me. In the beginning I did not think that I would be able to use the phone as it just didn’t feel right. First off the phone was a lot heavier than what I was used to, but this was because the HTC Mozart has a body that was made from a single piece of metal. The good thing with this is that it bounces… only joking, but yes it is a lot stronger than most.

One thing that I did point out on the first day, and again in one of my blog posts is that the Power Button to me wasn’t in the right place. For those who do not know the Power Button also allows you to wake up the phone. I can say that it did only take me a week to get used to it and now I do not have a second thought about turning the phone on. But I can say I do like the hardware button that is on the front of the Samsung Omnia, in cases it makes it easier to turn on the phone.

Camera

I have found myself falling into a habit of using my Phones camera more and more nowadays, and with the Mozart the pictures are of a really good quality. Most of the phones I have had the resolution of the cameras have always been second class and a bit behind the times. I find that the 8mb camera in the Mozart is of a high quality. The camera is by no way a replacement for a stand a lone camera but it does a good job for those quick shots. Just to give you an example there, over the last weekend we had a sporting event where the whole family went. After setting up and getting out the camera and freshly charged batteries ready to take the days shots I found that the batteries I had brought must have passed there used by date and they had not held the charge. Out came the phone camera, and we ended up with some really good shots for the day.

Sound and Audio

To get to and from work each day I spend a good couple of hours on the train, use I use the country train service which at least has a good set of seats for you compared to the Metro trains, but even still you need to find something to take you away from the various noises coming from sleeping passengers and such. To do this I spend a lot of time listening to various pod casts, a small collection of music files and some quality time to catch up on TV Shows that I either miss or we do not get down under.

For a while now I have been using my Microsoft Zune device to provide my needs, that was until the Windows Phone 7 came out, now this is the only device that I am going to use. For one it means that I do not have to carry around multiple devices anymore, the windows Phone 7 system uses that same functions and software that I have been using for a long time with the Zune. Because of this I find the functions on the phone easy to use and easy to manage the files for the media player.

Now in relation to the Hardware and the Mozart, the biggest fail on my part is the limited space, having only 8gb on this device for the storage of the files as well as the storage of the Installed applications, the operating system and it’s cache of data it needs to function for day to day activities is very limiting. I personally thing that it would have been nice to have an expansion card slot on the device where you could store your media files. That way you could have multiple cards with different libraries of media and swap them out as needed. I am sure that the operating system could have been developed to use a secondary device for the storage of multi media files.

Applications

Being a gamer at heart I spent a lot of my application time in the games hub. The thing I did like about the games hub was the choice you had with the launch titles, there is a lot of different titles to choose from that all integrated with the Xbox Live system. The disappointing thing from my side was the lack of quality games from the Independent developer, maybe as the system takes off we are going to see more games drop into the marketplace.

I do plan on doing more reviews on some of the applications that are around, but to get started here are some of the applications and thoughts on the main ones I used while on the review.

Twitter – Always a good start, but in the case of the Windows Phone 7 version of the application i was finding that it seemed to crash a couple of times a day. Most times I would find that the application would run, stop and then from that point on every time you started the application it would just stop without even showing the splash screen… From a Twitter side of things, hurry up MahTweets team and get the mobile version finished and certified.
Facebook – A simple interface and was almost like using the web application, still missed a lot of the applications, but it did it’s job. For those who just use Facebook for updates on what their friends are doing, the people hub on the Windows Phone 7 will do what you need.

Overall, In Summary

Yes I have been using the Windows Phone 7 Operating system for a while now, but it was good to take on the reviewer role for the HTC Mozart and the Windows Phone 7 as a complete unit. I found that over the review period I changed from being a real user and spent some time playing with the settings and the different ways of using the device. During the review period I went through a stage of trying the applications that I would not have even looked at if I was not on the program, one of those applications was Foursquare. The bad thing is that I am now using those applications more, and am actually enjoying using them. So for me the review program has taken me to an area I would not have gone normally gone to, and that means that the program has worked, thank you Telstra for the opportunity.

For those who are interested here are some links to my previous posts on the Mozart.

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.”

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 →

HTC Mozart 7. My Sims Not Dead Yet!

2010-12-11T11:15:02Z

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve been participating in a review program through a local carrier, Telstra. They gave me a HTC Mozart 7 to review and keep, and the program finished yesterday, but my SIM is still working, So I thought I’d bring home the bacon, or pork belly any way.

Now the Mozart is a beautiful phone in every respect, and it brings some great features to the table, but it’s on par with a lot of the current smartphones out there, whether they be Android, less so Windows Mobile, maybe the N8 from Nokia, and the Blackberry Torch. The iPhone 4 boasts a higher resolution screen but not much more. All of the acquired, obsessive knowledge that I accumulate from the internetz daily, specs and the like, do not portray how I use my phone, or the apps I‘ve found that enable that use. I still feel compelled to post about WP7, while the phone is running on a Telstra SIM, So usage and stand out apps, as well as some niggling problems.

First and foremost, my phone serves as my mobile computing solution. That’s a nice clean sentence but what does it imply, in my work, there is no desk, there is no office and there is very little spare time. My phone has to let me, bank, order online, talk to people, text people, read, find resources, document things, and then link all of that back to a PC when I get time at home. More of late, it must also amuse me, games have become a transition from work to relaxing at home since Angry Birds hit Android. That’s a very simple set of requirements for a device that can do so much more than that. SO what would that list require? First, a fast network, as it is heavily internet focused. I now the Mozart has a newer chipset than my Desire, but the comparison between network speed is phenomenal. What takes the Blink of an eye on the Mozart, takes a couple of seconds on the Desire. That would be marking a page of posts read in Google reader. I’ll be interested to see the comparison in time when I put my normal SIM in the Mozart.

Secondly a good browser. Internet explorer has always been playing catch up, and didn’t play well with secure sites. nothing has changed in that respect. I’ve always been interested in mobile browsers, and MIE is still lacking in some respects. So Metro Browser is the thing for Windows phone 7, for me at the moment, you can learn all about it here

The Good, The Bad … Mozart 7. part 3

2010-12-10T10:43:37Z

A lot of emphasis has been placed on the “everything in one place”, and the “glance and go” nature of the Windows Phone user interface. Whilst that may be true of the calendar and email tiles that you place on the home screen, maybe even the pictures tile. The people tile, nicely animated as it is doesn’t really convey much information. So no matter what you do you have to get down further into apps, but many of the apps don’t include a live tile to transmit current activity. The only app I’ve found that hooks into WP7 like that is called Phonealytics, it connects to your Google Analytics account.The Os’s social integration revolves around Windows Live and FaceBook, and they are built in, Let’s face it though, they are not the quick and easy social media choice of most socialites. So we have to look to apps for that! Probably the most important function though a smartphone should have is constant internet access through a browser. It is the most important feature for me anyway. Mobile Internet Explorer [MIE] which is the default browser in WP7 is … how to be kind about it?

There is no support for flash, html5, it is basically IE7 on a mobile phone. This is probably the biggest let down for me in the whole WP7 experience, and it migrates lote of problems from earlier versions, like the inability to access high security sites properly. If a site has a https:// prefix, like internet banking, you’ll probably find it hard to use. There are plenty of browser in the marketplace you can try, The best of which is called Metro Browser

HTC Mozart a Week in with Windows Phone 7

2010-12-06T02:01:52Z

Over this last week I have been using the HTC Mozart as my main phone, but have also been carrying around a Samsung Omnia 7, both are running the Windows Phone 7 Operating System.

Hardware

With having both phones it is giving me a good change to see them running side by side. In doing this I have the same accounts set up as well as the same sync for email. Overall in that since I find them both about the same. In the case of the battery I haven't had a problem with it, yes the do only last just over a day and sometimes into the second day before I give them a good charge, But with that I like to keep the phones charged and if they drop too low I plug them in, I will say that I have never let any of them drop low enough to give me an alert or notification.

As I said at the initial briefing I do not really like the positions of the hardware buttons on the phone. I like to be able to hold the phone in one hand and be able to turn it on and use what I need. With the HTC I have to move the phone around to press the unlock button. And then there are the touch buttons on the front of the device, Sometimes I wish you could just turn them off. I find that I seem to hit the search button a lot.

Software

Over this last week I have spent a bit of time downloading and playing some games, as well as exploring the applications that are on offer. What I have found is that some of the more popular applications seem to be crashing a lot with no updates from the developers. For example for several days I had to manually turn off the phone and restart it because twitter had crashed. The first time it was the loading transition screen, and others have been during the update of screens and the timeline. The Facebook application has just been stopping while the application is loading.

The last frustrating this I have at the moment is trying to purchase 2 games. The first is Assassins Creed, and the other is Max and the magic marker. When trying to purchase these apps I get through the billing screens and after the final press of the buy button I get a message saying “Can’t get this information at the moment.” but I exit select another application and I am able to purchase it… so why does it happen with only these two applications.

Disclaimer.

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 →

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.

Engagement? This is not the platform you are looking for

2010-12-10T05:55:00Z

Or how the little things destroy the big picture I have written this post over the course of a few days. There are a lot of ideas half-formed in my head, and two weeks has not been long enough to tease them all out. As much as I would have liked longer, I suspect I [...]

A face made for radio…

2010-12-10T05:55:00Z

…and a voice made for blogging. While you may not get to see my face (some things are best left unseen), you can still have the dubious pleasure of listening to me um, ah, interrupt, be distracted and not get around to saying what I was going to say at the start of the sentence [...]

The Good, The Bad …Mozart 7. part 2

2010-12-09T11:58:05Z

I’m going to preface this post with a little thankyou to Telstra. One of the biggest issues all of the social reviewers have had is poor battery life, this morning we all received an email that eluded to a fix that Telstra had put in place to help.

Hi all,

I’ve got news! Overnight we implemented a fix that will optimise battery life on the Mozart 7 for people using push email.

This was an automated fix and so you will not need to adjust the settings (Telstra tweaked some settings on the servers that support push email on the Mozart and this will optimise battery life). If you have adjusted your APN, I’d recommend you return the phone to its default setting.

It seems though, that this server side optimisation is making all pushed data work more efficiently. I made it through a full nine to five day today, with my usual heavy usage, and got home with 60 % still on the battery. My normal usage is probably quadruple that of an average user, so that’s a big improvement. So Cheers Telstra! SO on with the review.

Camera

I intentionally left the camera out of the hardware overview yesterday, and I know I did a look at video, and photo quality earlier, but I wanted to revisit the camera for a very special reason. It’s ability to do fairly decent macro photography.

All the images above were just random as I was walking home from the train station today. I didn’t take a thousand pics to get a few that looked good to post, These are all just single shots taken on a random basis.

Even though the camera app loads a bit slow, and I would say the dedicated camera button is a little bit small, once you get used to it, you are good to go. The other thing that’s really impressive is that the camera button will wake the phone from standby, directly to the camera. In these days of converged devices, when the camera you always have is your phone, WP7 has made things a little bit smoother.

Native Apps of Note

Native apps included with Windows Phone, should be a no brainer for Microsoft. Ll of your average smartphone apps are there, email, messaging, calendar, contacts and the like. I showed you the people hub and internet explorer earlier. In general Windows Phone is just that, a phone user interface with some fancy add ons. The biggest functionality change for all of the apps on WP7 is SkyDrive sync. Windows phone is built to sync with all of your other Windows Live services. Once you initially set up the phone, all of your info from FaceBook and windows live pulls to the phone. Office on WP7 is little better, than on WinMo 6.5. The big break through is live sync for One Note. It gives you a real time solution, across different platforms, or in the cloud for cumulative text notes that are active, editable on the go.

Zune media player is adequate, combined with the HTC equaliser software, but it gives a simple solution to get any media onto the phone, music or video.

Xbox Live gaming is the jewel in the WP7 crown, and takes mobile device convergence up a level. Gone is that PSP, you got games on your phone. I’m impressed with the quality of the games, and the graphics quality. You don’t have to have an xBox to play the games now. You can play a slew of games on WP7, but they will cost you. The transition from the phone to the console is seamless, you don’t even have to get the console, do it all on the phone

Email on the #telstrawp7

2010-12-09T08:50:09Z

I don’t have access to an exchange server to test connecting email to Exchange. I have Gmail and Google Apps - about 7 different accounts on Google, so I can only test the WP7 with Gmail. I use all the features of Gmail, including Stars and Labels, extensively. Unfortunately the WP7 email client does not handle these features well (it’s similar to the iPhone in that regard), and for that reason alone, I can not use the WP7 as my main email device on the go. Having said that, the email client is very beautiful, and probably quite functional if you are using exchange. One cool feature that the WP7 has that my Android does not have is that when I click on the name of the sender, it takes me to their card in the People app, and then I could see their facebook updates from there also - very nice. Another nice feature is the list selection feature - tap to the left of the message and then the checkboxes appear to check a number of emails. The “push notifications” (well, I can’t really be sure that they are really push, or is it just polling frequently), are a bit flaky and I had to restart the phone after I noticed that the emails were not coming through to the WP7 at the same time as the other locations I receive emails. I don’t know how it works with Exchange but it seems that the email “synchronisation” is only a one way Sync. If I read an email on the WP7 it is never marked as read in my Gmail. If I flag and email on the WP7 it does nothing - except keep the flag on the email in the WP7. I can do the iPhone trick of moving the message to the “starred folder” or a folder named after a Gmail label, and Sync it to get it to MOVE to that folder, but I still want my emails in my inbox until I work on them (this is one of the main reasons I don’t use an iPhone). But it’s even less than that. If I mark a previously read email in Gmail as unread, it does not sync to be unread again on the WP7. So calling this Synchronisation is a complete stretch - it is not even a one way “sync”. So overall review of the email is - Beautiful: Yes, Functional: Limited.

Music on the #TelstraWP7

2010-12-09T09:15:02Z

I don’t listen to music all day every day, and I don’t have music on my Android. It’s a choice - as my Android is a business tool, I don’t want to drain the battery if I want to listen to some music. So I have an iPod touch (plus 2 other iPods) that I use when I want to listen. But for the sake of completeness of the review, I wanted to try the whole Zune experience. Now I’m not one of those people that hate iTunes, so I was not looking for a replacement. For me the whole Zune experience was a bit meh. Where other people have raved about it, I just was not that excited. For the music on the device, one really annoying thing is that it does not show the artist on the lock screen. I have a lot of diverse music and sometimes don’t know who is singing this track and want to find out. Being able to control the next and previous song from the lock screen is great, but it does disappear very quickly and I can’t work out how to get it back except to turn off the screen again. Another annoying thing is that I can’t work out how to get back to the same song I was playing when I have had to go into Email or take a phone call. Aah, I just worked it out - use the back button to go back to the Zune app rather than opening the app again. Good. Even if I kept this phone as my primary phone, I don’t think I would keep using Zune or keep the music on the Phone. I have invested too much time and effort setting up my playlists in iTunes and I can’t see any way to get those playlists into Zune.

Games on the #TelstraWP7

2010-12-09T09:39:45Z

I have never really ever played “computer games”. I get very motion sick even looking at shoot-em-up or racing games, and don’t like the idea of playing violent games anyway. So, again for the completeness of the review, I got stuck in and created my Xbox live profile and avatar (that was fun) and then downloaded some games. The first game I downloaded was James Patterson’s Womens Murder Club. Gee I liked that game, part puzzle, part story. I got so stuck into it and finished it in under 2 hours. Cool, I thought, lets go again - try the next story… but alas, there is only one story - only one game! I know it’s only $4.00 but I did expect more for my (sorry, Telstra’s) money. (Disclaimer: we are allowed to buy games and apps for the phone and charge it to the Telstra sim card we were provided with). Now that I have finished that game, what is the point of even having it there? Other games that I have loved and become a bit addicted to are Uno, Solitarie, Bejewled and Backgammon. Stupid pointless games have been Butterfly, Flowerz and More Brain Exercises. I did download Tetris but I find that boring (maybe because I’m a bit crap at it). I have seen in some of the screen shots that you can do turn based games with friends on Xbox live. I have not worked out how to do that. I think this would be a great experience if you were an avid Xbox user already. I enjoyed it but I’m just not that into Gaming to get the most out of it. It will be interesting to see if a) I continue to use this phone as a gaming phone or b) if I install any games on my Android. Whichever I do, I will not be installing Angry Birds on either phone :).

Volume Control on the #telstraWP7

2010-12-09T09:51:51Z

Is it just me not being able to work it out, or is there only one volume control to rule them all on the WP7? You turn the music down and the ringtone turns down. You turn the phone to vibrate during the night so the email notifications won’t be disturbing and the alarm then only vibrates to wake you up. So, to trust the phone to wake you up you either need to go into settings and disable email notifications or put up with all the notification noises of emails coming in during the night. Either way is not a good option.

Office Documents on the #TelstraWP7

2010-12-09T10:20:43Z

Again, this must be something that I’m just not getting… I’m sure that Office on the WP7 should be one of the best features of the phone. It seems that unless you have SharePoint there is no way to get documents on and off the phone whilst on the go is via email. Isn’t that taking collaboration of documents back to about 1990? Microsoft has released the fantastic new features of Office Live being able to collaborate on documents via the cloud (either editing them on the web or editing in Office 2010). There seems to be no way to sync anything from Office Live to the phone (without maybe syncing it to the desktop, which is not the point, as it’s note entirely mobile). All I can seem to do is download a document from the email, save it onto the phone, edit it and then email it back. I think (hope) that Office Live will come to the WP7 and when it does it will be very useful to those of us that don’t use SharePoint on a day to day basis. Until then it is a bit limiting. It is also quite disappointing that there is no way to add heading styles to the “Word” document. Not that I would be writing a whole document on the WP7 phone (especially without the Swype keyboard). But one of the reasons I still use Word over Google Docs is the keyboard shortcuts to do heading styles, to quickly create structured documents. What Word does have is good commenting, so you can make notes on a document (but only if it has been emailed or synced from the desktop of course). I can’t wait to try this out once it is connected to the cloud via Office Live.

Maps on the #telstraWP7

2010-12-09T10:32:11Z

I’m sorry to say that I can not say anything good about the Bing maps on the WP7. Maybe if you didn’t have Google Maps to compare it to you would think that the maps were adequate and the driving directions worked. But since Google Maps has just recently bought out Turn by Turn Navigation for Google Maps on the Android, there is just no comparison. (OK, apparently there is a Bing Maps Navigation product, so it could be cool eventually). The maps on Google look so much better, and with additional features such as house numbers and Google Plances, and Google Traffic on their maps, it just does not compare to Bing. It would be good to have some competition, but Google Maps wins hands down for now.

Calendar on the #TelstraWP7

2010-12-09T11:13:46Z

UPDATE: I had to update this post because I was a bit silly and could not find the day view (swipe left from the calendar view), so most of what I was saying is wrong. The calendar looks great, and if you use Exchange it would probably be a great calendar, because you can import all your ical feeds into your main calendar and sync that one calendar. With Gmail the ical feeds are included as separate calendars, so I have 5 calendars that I refer to regularly. All my calendars are synced with my Android phone. The live tile showing the next appointment is good, and way better than the iPhone that tells you nothing about your upcoming appointments, but I’ve got my Android set up to show me my next 3 appointments at a glance. So the “Glance and Go” features of the Android for me are better. The Agenda view is beautiful, the Month view is a bit small, and after finally finding the day view, it works well. There seems to be no Go To Date functionality at all. This is a small issue and doesn’t really detract from the overall usefulness of the calendar. So overall, it is a perfectly functional calendar, but just missing the lovely bells and whistles that my Android / Gmail calendar has.

Final thoughts on the #TelstraWP7 during the Social Review Program

2010-12-10T05:00:00Z

There are some very nice features about the WP7. The beautiful hardware, the beautiful screen, and the great Facebook integration to name just a few. The bottom line for me is that I love my Android, and there are not enough features on this phone that will make me keep using it. The main issues for me are:

Calendar - Only one Calendar can be Synced
Email - Not easy to Star and Label emails
Twitter - I’m sorry, but the few Twitter clients there are available in the marketplace just don’t cut it
Maps - Just doesn’t cut it against Google Maps
Widgets - I love my widgets to turn off features on the phone with one touch

However, just because I won’t be using it, I would probably recommend the WP7 phone to any one who uses the following on a regular basis:

Work Email on Exchange Server
Personal Email on Hotmail
Xbox - Lots
Facebook - Lots
Doesn’t use Twitter much
And probably someone who has not previously used a smart phone.

For someone in this category the Windows Phone 7 would be a great phone, and I would recommend it.

I don’t know if I’m going to keep the phone, and use it for games, which I quite enjoyed, or see if there is someone in my family who would love to use it, or even sell it. I will wait for a while before deciding.

Windows Phone 7 Review

2010-12-10T00:42:11Z

A few days ago i recorded a one hour chat with fellow social reviewers @smperris and @TheMonkeyBoy – you can listen to it here. But i realise¹ a lot of people don’t have the time to dedicate an hour listening to our thoughts, so here’s my final thoughts on the latest phone from Redmond. All of this will be on the test.

Hardware.

The Mozart is a nice enough phone. Feels better (softer?) in the hand than the iPhone 4 and a better build quality than the HTC Desire. I hope the next iPhone takes some inspiration here and goes back to the rounded edges of the 3G/s with the aluminium of the first gen Jesus.

The screen is a high res, high gloss beautiful touch screen. The screen is as responsive as Jebus, let down (at this stage) by the bugginess of the software.

Network

Considering every wanker with a twitter account (myself included) has complained about call dropouts and slow data on the Vodafone and Optus network, bemoaned the 24 month contracts they signed, and told the world they’d switch to Telstra as soon as their contract was over, its should be no surprise that Telstra has a kickarse network. Yes, it is kickarse. No, it is not perfect, but its the best we’ve got. I had no dropouts on the phone, although I still couldn’t get data in some of the deeper crevasses of the UNSW campus.

Software

The software is a very polished 1.0 product, but still very much a 1.0 – The already iconic home screen is very pretty, but some fucntionality is lost from the big blocky icons. To compare this screenshot stolen from another blog :²

The Windows Phone 7 can only have 8 applications available for immediate launch on the home screen. The iPhone, by comparison, has space for 20 apps of the home screen. Making this worse is certain apps (like Pictures in this example) or Calendar for me, take up two whole squares, leaving just 7 apps to access on the home screen. Worse still, each email account takes up its own app square, so in my configuration ((a screenshot would be so handy right now)) the 4 of my 7 homescreen apps are taking up by email and calendar, leaving just 3 spaces for SMS, Phone, and Twitter.

Another disadvantage of the UI is switching between homescreens. On iPhone, a swipe to the left reveals another 20 apps that are easily accesible (more with folders). But the Windows phone UI is not divided into “homescreens”, it’s one long list of apps. So a swipe down in this case scrolls indefinetly, it doesn’t swipe then stop at the next 7 apps. This makes finding and sort apps even harder. And thats before taking in to account every fucking icon looks the same. Big blue squares.

Unified UI

But the phone has some beautiful features too. It appears there are some strict UI guidelines for developing apps for Wp7, which make the experience as a whole feel much nice than the ‘anything goes’ feel of Android. It even looks sexier than Apple’s offering at first (perhaps i’ve just become sick of the same old interface after four years) but within a few days i found myself tired of an interface built around sexy fonts and typography with no obvious buttons to click. But if you may get a kick out of it.

Apps

Not surprisingly, 3rd party apps for WP7 are not even close to the polish of iPhone apps. Very few 3rd Party Android apps match the polish of the iPhone and they’ve had far more experience copying the tastemakers at Cupertino. But wp7 apps have a better chance of becoming polished quicker, as the style guides have already been set, developers can now just focus on function. The best apps on the phone are the Office suite. It makes sense, Office is Microsoft’s strongest brand, and creating the ‘best Office integration’ on a phone should be Microsoft’s killer app.

On the other end of the Microsoft stable is Xbox. The name and colours of Xbox are all over the phone, but really, its just another folder on the homescreen to store games. The Xbox live experience app is mainly pointless, it only allows you to play with your Xbox avatar and see your points. Anyone claiming that changing the clothes of your Xbox avatar on your phone is somehow a ‘game changer’ and ‘immersive gaming experience’ has spent too long reading the marketing material.

The main problem with apps for the WP7 is the lack of apps we’ve all become trained to use on a daily basis on phones like Android and iPhone. There is no Evernote, Dropbox, (decent) twitter app, Instapaper, Simplenote, Tripview, MetroMelbourne, etc, etc. The Bing Maps App looks muted and washed out compared to Google Maps on Android and iPhone.

The App Store itself is pretty annoying too. Like every other part of the UI, its all font no buttons. Every day the background changes to whatever app is recommended by the store, making the interface even harder to navigate, and purely based on the small amount of users, there are very few reviews or ratings on apps to help decided what is decent and what is not.

The Browser, IE 6 Mobile apparently, is good enough, rendering full page sites fast with the standard zoom and click you’d expect on a modern smartphone not made by RIM.³

Wait for January

So my final thoughts would be, don’t buy the Windows Phone 7. Yet. I’m throwing my wp7 into a drawer where it will sit, waiting for the rumoured January update that will supposedly bring the software up to the feature set of the iPhone 4.0. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rumour is true, Microsoft were able to get a very solid 1.0 out the door remarkably quickly after ditching their awful Windows 6 system. They have the money and resources to throw everything at the mobile market, and they must realise they need to – as iPhone solidifies itself as the Mac of the phone world and Android is quickly becoming the Microsoft.

So stay tuned. iPhone’s quality is still miles ahead of the competition, Android’s growth seems unstoppable, and now Microsoft has woken up and stumbled in to the market demanding its share. The phone market over the next twelve months is going to be fascinating to watch.

In a world without iPhone, the Windows Phone 7 may well be the best phone on the market. But then again, in a world without iPhone, Microsoft would probably think Windows for Palm was good enough.

my girlfriend told me to write this
the most frustrating thing about the phone for me the last two weeks was not being able to take screenshots on the phone. Note to Microsoft, screenshots make reviews helpful.
Interestingly, its the iPhone optimised sites that seem to trip up the browser. A screenshot could be really handy here, too.

HTC Mozart: So after 2 weeks…..

2010-12-10T00:09:16Z

So after two weeks what is the verdict? Will I ditch my iPhone 4? Will I keep using the HTC Mozart?

No & Definitely

For users getting a smartphone for the first time this device would be great, however the iPhone (iOS) has had time to mature as a platform and so making the switch to me would be a downgrade. There simply aren’t all the apps available that I need (want) to be able to exclusively use Windows Phone 7 as a platform.

Having said that I’ll be keeping my HTC Mozart and be watching for updates and new apps that will meet or exceed my experience on the iPhone 4/iOS.

Over the two weeks I saw myself using the Mozart less and less. This was in part due to the interface that needs a bit of tweaking to make it easier to use but mostly the fact that I didn’t have available all the apps I used daily or the apps in their first versions are a bit slow/buggy. As the platform matures I expect there to be a lot of improvement this area.

As expected the Telstra Next G Network performed well, just as good as on my iPhone 4. There were a few APN quirks that caused poor battery life if push email was enabled buy these have been ironed out by Telstra engineers.

The battery life of the device is surprisingly good and miles ahead of the iPhone is the ability to carry a spare battery and actually change it. The slim design of the phone should prove to Apple you can make a slim device and be able to change the battery

Disclosure: Telstra is supplying the HTC Mozart 7 free of charge for me to review, however all opinions expressed are my own and not made on behalf of Telstra.

So now the official review period is over I can pass the device on to @BeauGiles who has far more time to fiddle with it than I do I’m sure he will post a review on his website at some stage