This may come as a shock but I recently jumped ship, from Sprint to T-Mobile. Not because of anything wrong Sprint did. I was just presented with an offer that I had to take advantage of.
So, that decision being made, the next one was what phone would I chose? Was I really going to give up my beloved Evo? After some research, I decided I really didn’t want any of T-Mo’s Android offerings. What else was there? Windows Phone. I hadn’t had a Windows based phone since the beginnings of Windows Mobile (eek!). So I checked it out. Looked pretty interesting. Read ALOT of reviews, both positive and negative. So I knew what I was getting into… I thought. The next choice was the phone itself. It was an easy choice for me. The HTC HD7. I already am a fan of HTC phones (…Hero, Evo) and the looks and feel of the HD7 were very similar to my Evo. Done.
image from everythingwm.com
First the phone. I love the styling of the HD7. If a phone can be sexy, this one is. It’s actually thinner and seems lighter than the Evo. Probably due to the difference in hardware. The HD7 dosent have a front facing cam or expandable memory. The cam it does have is only 5mp, instead of 8. There’s no wifi hotspot capability. There is no HDMI out port.
Do I feel like a took a giant tech step backwards? Not really. All that stuff I just mentioned are features I rarely used anyway. Seriously. I never used the HDMI. So I don’t miss those features. The HD7 is snappy quick and the screen is very responsive. The cam takes great pics. It has a kickstand! (I have to admit I love this lol)
Now to the real reason for this post. Windows Phone 7. First of all let me clear something up. WP7 is NOTHING like Windows Mobile. It’s not even like Windows Phone 6.5. So if you are basing your opinion of it on those to OSs you are grossly misinformed.
The first thing that hit me was the interface. It is all tiles. Kind of like WebOs in theory but not in approach. Very minimalist looking and easy to navigate. I can see it getting kind of un-wieldy though if i apply the same app hoarding mindset to it that I have with my Android phones. Speaking of Android, the main I miss is the customization ability. With Android, there is hardly anything you can’t customize. With WP7, there is hardly anything you CAN customize. No custom ringtones or alert sounds. No custom launchers. Oh, but I can change the lock screen wallpaper and the “theme” color of the launch page. Nice.
Deal breaker? Not really, just disappointing.
The more I use WP7, the more I’m liking it. Yes, it does have its limitations, just like any ‘new’ OS does. The potential is what impresses me. If Microsoft makes the right decisions (which admittedly they don’t have a great record of doing), WP7 could be a serious contender for Android and iOs. Right now its more of an interesting up-start.
As I spend more time with the phone and OS I will see if my perceptions change. Either way I will keep you posted!
Ciao!
Filed under: Tech, Windows Phone 7 | Tagged: hd7, HTC, t-mobile, windows phone, WP7 | 1 Comment »