Windows Phone 7: The AnandTech Guide
by Brian Klug on March 21, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Windows Phone 7
- Mobile
Hands on With WP7S - Phone and SMS
This being a phone, it's surprising how little there is to talk about with regards to the dialer, phone, and messaging applications. I've been paying especially careful attention to what Microsoft is ready to show of the call in progress screens, incoming call dialogs, and the dialer. Of note is that all of the interface demos shown thus far completely circumnavigate the dialer; calls thus far have been entirely initiated from contacts, search, or contextually linked numbers in UI. The reason is that although the dialer is there, it isn't finished. You can't fault Microsoft for not showing something that isn't done yet. At the same time, it needs to get the same kind of re-thinking that the rest of the UI got between Windows Mobile and WP7S.
We've seen a handful of glances of the call in progress screen, but these vary from build to build. Notably, we can see the carrier string at the top right, although in one build it humorously shows "AT&T/Cingular Wireless," despite Cingular no longer existing under that name. On newer builds, it reads simply "AT&T."
This is blurry because it was up for all of 3 seconds
As far as the "text" SMS/MMS application goes, the interface in here is reasonably well fleshed out, but still not finished enough that Microsoft would let me get away with a photo or two of it. Our demo phone showed an interesting error message about failing to back data up to the cloud, but this was entirely because the phone hadn't had a SIM in it until 10 minutes prior. I did get a brief chance to play with the interface, and it has nice landscape to portrait transitions and the same sort of look as the rest of the interface, but I didn't get a chance to actually send or receieve messages.
These are the things that are likely going to be first on the list for WP7S Microsoft developers to tackle in the remaining months before launch. This basically wraps up the hands-on I had with the platform. You can check out the gallery below for all the photos we've got. Now let's dive into the rest of the details.
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Hrel - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Yeah, pretty sure I'll never buy any portable ANYTHING that doesn't support expandable memory. I don't need more iphones out there, thanks anyway.jconan - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - link
Will Microsoft support Unicode in its WP7S phones? They never got around to it on the Zune. I hope they do for WP7S and hopefully in Courier. It's easier to read text the way it's meant to be read than in gibberish ascii with diacritics.MonkeyPaw - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Wow, all this talk about Web-capable smartphones sure makes me wish for a mobile version of Anandtech.com. :|toyotabedzrock - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
We have heard this promise of adding features before!RandomUsername3245 - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
The article says, "There's also of course the stigmata attached to buying a phone preloaded with a bevy of carrier-branded applications."The author should have used "stigma" rather than "stigmata". Stigmata is a Roman Catholic reference: (from dictionary.com) marks resembling the wounds of the crucified body of Christ, said to be supernaturally impressed on the bodies of certain persons, esp. nuns, tertiaries, and monastics.
CSMR - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Stigmata is just the plural of stigma. "Stigmas" is normally better but stigmaga is correct. So the problem with the sentence is that "is" is singluar and "stigmata" is plural.jhh - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Applications can't currently run in the background, but they can process push notifications. Does this mean that any application that wants to provide background processing needs to wake the phone via push notifications? If so, do those mean that the push notifications need to come through a Microsoft back-end notification server? If so, that would be another case of application lockdown. I can't see Facebook or Twitter wanting to run their traffic through Microsoft just to be able to use the notification service.ncage - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Is it perfect? Nope but i still think its pretty dang good. Can't wait. I will still probably get a nexus one when it comes out tuesday but will get a wp7 near xmas. Have a BB Tour now and i hate it with a passion. If your not an email addict then i don't think you would ever like a BB. I'd get a palm pre instead if it didn't sound like they were just about to die. RIM should buy them.hessenpepper - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Will the tight hardware requirements allow Microsoft to release upgrades directly to the end users or will they release in to the manufacturers/carriers? Will we be at their mercy for timely upgrades?MGSsancho - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Part of the reason Microsoft wants tight control over hardware is so they can focus on other stuff and not write 9000 drivers. Windows CE works on ppc, x86, arm with varying amounts of ram and configurations. It is the same strategy Apple has, only have a few select hardware platforms and focus on the user experience.