Early adopter: Windows Phone 7 and HTC HD7

So, let’s put this whole thing in context and give something of a back story.

1) I have in the past been in shit load of debt and for the last few years have abstained from impulsive purchases.
2) I was not an Apple fan boy for the first or second iPhones, though did get a 3GS two weeks after it launched and have loved it since day one.
3) I went along to an developer conference a few weeks back and there was a presentation on Windows Phone 7, which impressed me and my colleagues considerably.
4) I have 8 months left on my iPhone contract.

So, they are the facts that took me into last Friday, the day after the European release of Windows Phone 7. And it was with those facts in place that I walked into the O2 phone shop on Briggate in Leeds and having pawed an HTC HD7 device for all of 5 minutes, with 2 friends deriding me for not letting them “have a go” that I handed over near £400 to the polite (hungry for a sale) assistant and walked back to the office with a cheery smile on my face having secured my birthday present to me for this year.

I have now had my Windows Phone 7 mobile for around 72 hours and this is my preliminary review of both the hardware and the software… complete with score, and whether I think it’s better than the iPhone.

Aesthetics

So, the HD7 itself is gorgeous. A slab of shiny black the build quality is second to not many - it feels better and more substantial than the HD2 (which I have as a support phone)  and from a touchy feely point of view is in my opinion every bit as good as Apple’s iPhone.

The curvature of the phones backplate is nice and it sits perfectly in my mid sized mits, though upon trying to use the HD7 with my right mid sized mit I’ve started to see an issue… when the ball of my thumb even comes close to the right side of the screen (yes, I’m right mitted) then using the device becomes erratic - with typing becoming impossible. Maybe my hard isn’t big enough, but I have to make an active effort to ensure that the HD7 is placed in my hand just right - and I guess it’s a trade off for having such a large screen - but it doesn’t stop it being mildly annoying.

The addition of the kick stand is a lovely idea and I’m sure I’ll kick that baby out as soon as I get some movies onto it - really will save having to prop it against a wall.

8/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Apps

I’m already pleasantly surprised by the number of apps on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace - ranging from what look like brilliant games through to useful applications. Of course Microsoft have a few apps to call their own in the marketplace, some being nicely executed accessories (like the weather app) and some being useless trivialities (like the YouTube app, which is actually just a link through to m.youtube.com), but the majority of the marketplace are third party apps - and this is where I think that Microsoft have immediately fallen behind the guys over at Cuppertino. A quick browse through the “entertainment” section of the marketplace reveals around a hundred apps already - 4 days after launch. However about 15% of them are “fart” apps. Now I know that in the early days of the iPhone a very similar app made lots of money for a certain someone but it strikes me that Microsoft might be better in introduce a more stringent Apple-esque policy to their acceptable criteria for the marketplace, otherwise I fear that it will become unusable with absolute drivel in no time at all.

That said, there is of course twitter, facebook and foursquare who have made it onto the platform at launch - all three look amazing - putting their iPhone counterparts to shame on the huge 4.3″ screen - but from a usability perspective only FourSquare really lives up to the experience that I’m used to on my iPhone. Both twitter and facebook suffer from stuttering unresponsive panels in the 20 seconds after launch as data is streamed into the device. Once it’s in they work great, but if I’m opening an app I want an app to load and be responsive.

The only other app I’ve bought is bejewelled, an old classic on every platform going. The graphics are superb, again eclipsing the iPhone version, and the gameplay is as you’d expect - my only annoyance with this game is that it takes about 30 seconds to load. Unheard of on the iPhone.

Spotify was promised for launch but as of yet not in the marketplace - I’m thinking that they mean the US launch, which is in 2 weeks…. can’t wait.

8/10 - iPhone beats HD7

Battery Life

One of my biggest problems with the iPhone was that I never ever got more than 1 days usage out of it - I’d read that the standby time on the HD7 was 320 hours, and that the usage time was over two days. So I’m quite disappointed that so far my HD7 is managing about 14 hours. I’m not using it massively, yes I’ve had a play with Bejewelled and I’ve listened to some music - but that’s nothing more than I did on my iPod. I’ve now got mail set to pick up every hour, got the brightness set on auto and am going to be giving games and music a miss to see how long it will last - I’m presently at about 80% having unplugged it 3 hours ago.

This however leads me to a more substantial point - that in a world of “always on” connectivity, standby time means NOTHING.

4/10 - iPhone beats HD7

Camera

The camera is brilliant! The flash is blinding, the settings are few but useful, and the images are clear and crisp. Focussing is a bit hit and miss at the moment, especially in video mode, but I have a feeling that’s more me than the HD7. I’ll try it out later in the street and put the results here… But I’m really impressed with the camera. The iPhone 3GS camera doesn’t even compare.

7/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Integration

The integration into facebook and live is ace. I would just love to be able to do more than facebook and live tho - twitter, linkedin, all the other services where I have a profile and know that other people do. This needs to be extensible.

9/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Keyboard

Typing is a doddle - and while the blockiness of the keyboard isn’t the most beautiful thing in the world, the keys are responsive and the predictive keyboard is brilliant. I’ve got a few names that it keeps trying to correct and it would be nice to tell it to stop doing that, but besides that and a weird cursor issue it’s a joy to use. Weird cursor issue? yeah, when you click and hold the cursor appears ABOVE where you’re holding… which is odd… I’m sure it’s something I’ll get used to, it’s not the way I’ve been doing it for 18 months after all, but it’s not enough to make me believe that the keyboard on WP7 is better than the keyboard on iOS.

9/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Screen

It’s big, it’s bright, it’s brilliant. Is it better than retina display? Not quite in my opinion, but almost nearly. There is a slight sync issue when you start ragging the home screen at pace, but it’s hardly noticeable really. And all the apps look BEAUTIFUL.

9/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Speed

The main OS is like a velvetty dream, everything ebbs and flows beautifully - apps open up smoothly using amazing transitions that you’ve probably all seen already. Once into apps there is slowdown as data is retrieved from the net, and if you can put up with these seconds where the responsiveness of the device dips slightly then you’re in for a treat as the apps themselves run with the same whizziness.

Everything happens when you want it to happen (more or less) and this might be because the transitions hide the fact that it’s taking an extra second to load - but I don’t notice it in real life use. It’s amazingly fast.

8/10 - HD7 beats iPhone 3GS

Syncing

Zune center is easy to use. It’s no iTunes. Also, I get no direct access to my device through My Computer.

5/10 - iPhone beats HD7

Zune

Where I positivity definitely expected the Zune player to be pathetic (I hate Windows Media Player) I have been most pleasantly surprised. It’s easy to use, houses everything I need in one simple app, links with precision through to the marketplace for me to expand my selection of audio or video tracks and it just works - the interface is like nothing I expected it to be, and yes, it draws from the iPod, but in my opinion it might actually have the edge on that which it has sought to mimic.

9/10 - It’s a draw

Other Issues

I am an early adopter into the world of Windows Phone 7, and so for the most part any issues I’m seeing I’m having “well, it’s new and there’ll be an update in the next 2 months” in the back of my head. I am however sat here with an HD7 which won’t run Internet Explorer - or at least the BBC News website seems to have killed the ability of the browser to respond to me. And I can’t kill the app without rebooting the device.

Speaking of IE - the default search engine is somewhat preposterously Yahoo - I don’t know if this is Microsoft being jokers or O2 being pricks. I suspect probably the latter.

Apart from those additional 2 little niggles, all else is good in the world of HD7/WP7

Conclusion

I love my new Windows Phone 7. I’ll be selling my iPhone. And I’ll be putting up with all the foibles and differences between the two platforms until I’m used to everything WP7 throws. If the battery life was anything like advertised I’d suggest the world trade in their iPhones.