Deepwire's Blog

They all say the first impressions are the most important, and you only get to make one.  Sometimes this is bad enough to prevent there ever being a chance for a second impression.  Fortunately for Windows Phone 7, I still wanted on, despite the disasters of the UK launch, and got a HTC 7 Mozart mid-November.  Of course, I couldn’t use it until December, because I needed to unlock it from Orange, to be able to use it on a good mobile network.

I’m still in 2 minds about the hardware.  It’s good, don’t get me wrong.  But it could/should have been better.  In times of Retina Displays, Face Time and 64GB storage, to be limited to 800×480 screen resolution, have no forward facing camera, and a fixed 8GB of storage (from a concealed micro SD card I might add!) is pretty poor.

It’s a good thing that the software does a lot to make up for these physical shortcomings.  Finally having a populated ‘app store’, called the Marketplace, is a huge step forward.  Yes, most of the ‘good’ apps from iPhone and Android are not there.  But hopefully they will be soon.  Also the Windows Live integration is really cool.  I like having Xbox Live and Zune on my phone, and syncing pictures to Skydrive and Windows Live. Facebook also integrates nicely, although I don’t use it much.  It’s disappointing that Twitter isn’t integrated.  Instead, you need a separate app, which won’t run in the background and auto update.  Instead you have to open it and wait for it to refresh each time.  Definitely a disappointment.

The things it does well, are mostly also done well on other phones, so don’t really make it stand out.  However the things it lacks do.  There’s no copy and paste.  There’s no custom ring tones.  There’s no multitasking.  These are all things I had on my Motorola MPX 200, a device which initially ran Windows Smartphone 2002.  That was 7 years ago!  When Apple were criticised for not having copy and paste on the iPhone, I thought it would show Microsoft there was a need for it.  Instead, they are going to release it in an update, just like Apple did, and make us use what feels like an unfinished operating system until then.

So, as I always do, I’m going to stick with it.  I’ve had devices running Windows Mobile of some variety since 2003.  The HTC 7 Mozart is definitely easier to use, more functional, and a smoother experience than my last phone.  That may just be because my HTC Touch Pro2, while good from a hardware perspective, was running Windows Mobile 6.5.  But for now, it’s enough to stop me from defecting to iPhone or Android.  For now.