As implemented in HTC's HD7 smartphone, Microsoft's
Windows Phone 7 emerges as a solid mobile operating system with no major issues
worth complaining about. Despite its overall polish and functionality, the
platform feels a bit like a first draft—one far more polished than the Android
1.6 that ran on the original Motorola Droid, for example, but nonetheless
lacking some key features such as cut-and-paste capability.
Based on my tests of Windows Phone 7 running on the
HD7, the unit's best shot at eclipsing the Apple iPhone or a similar Google
Android device in the eyes of prospective smartphone buyers is the device's
penchant for integrating with Microsoft services such as Sharepoint or Xbox
Live.
Windows Phone 7 also caught my attention with its “Hub”-oriented
interface, in which Microsoft has eschewed the familiar grid layouts of Android
and iOS-based devices in favor of subject-specific “Hubs,” meant to consolidate
both applications and Web content into an intuitive and easy-to-access format.
For example, the “People” Hub draws contact data from a number of online
sources: With a few taps, I could see an individual’s phone number, a link to
their personal Website and an option to write on their Facebook wall. In
similar fashion, the “Music + Videos” Hub offers access not only to Zune media,
but also online radio such as Slacker.
Windows Phone 7’s most seamless feature, at least in
this reviewer’s opinion, is the “Office” Hub, which allows workers on the go to
perform light edits on Word documents, Excel worksheets and PowerPoint
presentations. Those items ported from my 15-inch laptop to the smartphone, via
e-mail, with nary a glitch or a flub in spacing or formatting. All elements
seemed right-sized on a 4.3-inch screen, and simple functions such as
italicizing came off without those frustrating bugs that often grip
first-generation software. (The WP7 keyboard is also well-executed, even for
big fingers like mine). Saving and porting those documents to e-mail was also a
snap.
The HD7 is available from T-Mobile starting at $99
with a two-year contract.
Hardware and Calling
The HTC HD7 is a solidly built device with a 4.3-inch
touch-screen (480 x 80 WVGA) and a 1GHz processor. (Microsoft is keeping a
tight leash on its manufacturers by imposing minimum hardware requirements, the
wisdom of which seemed evident when the smartphone undertook its functions with
little slowdown.) The metal edges are nicely curved, and the back panel offers
enough friction to prevent the smartphone from sliding off a table or out of
your hand.
Tipping the scales at 5.7 ounces, the HD7 feels
comfortable in one’s grip; at one point, I spent 40 minutes with the handset
pressed to my ear, without wishing I had used an earpiece instead. Sound
quality for calls was crystal clear, and T-Mobile managed not to drop a single
call over the five days of testing. The touch-screen itself was pleasingly
responsive, operating at what you might call the Goldilocks equilibrium: not
needing too hard a press, nor activating at too light a brush, but seemingly
just right for navigation.
The phone comes equipped with a 5-megapixel color
camera with auto-focus and dual LED flash, and the capability for 720p HD video
recording. The camera is capable of adequate but unspectacular images, both
indoors and out. The software offers a variety of options for shutterbugs who
like to tinker with effects, resolution, flicker adjustment and the like. Its
Achilles’ heel is the mechanical shutter button on the right-hand side of the
device’s exterior rim, which requires such a hard and decisive push that it
frequently jostles your frame out of position. A software-based shutter button,
like the one found on Android smartphones, would have been much better. On the
upside, you can easily upload your photos to the cloud.
The HD7’s back includes a kickstand integrated into
the camera aperture, which clicks out to rest the smartphone in landscape mode.
Such kickstands are becoming standard-issue for more media-centric mobile
devices like this one, which comes with a preinstalled Netflix application.
Quality-wise, video seemed a little muddier than on some rival devices, such as
the iPhone 4 with its Retina Display and the Samsung Galaxy S with its Super
AMOLED (active-matrix organic LED) screen. As with most smartphones with plus-size
screens, the HD7 also has a bit of a battery-life issue: More than once I found
myself turning off the phone by midday to conserve power, after a fairly
intensive few hours of Web cruising, e-mail answering and video-watching. For
most users, though, a full charge may very well see them from dawn to dusk.
Software and Services
It took me about five minutes to set up the phone with
my Gmail, Outlook, Twitter (which requires an individual application download),
Windows Live and Facebook accounts. Windows Phone 7 also ported over my
calendar appointments without a hiccup. The “Metro” theme, familiar to those
who’ve used the Zune HD, offers intuitive navigation and a handsome interface.
Microsoft’s applications marketplace now features some
5,000 applications for Windows Phone 7, according to reports, and this presents
a fine collection for those wanting to download a few games and productivity
applications. It doesn’t even come close to the size of Apple’s and Google’s
respective application bazaars, of course, but those platforms also boast their
share of substandard programs. Although my delving into Microsoft’s applications
wasn’t extensive, it seemed after a few days that the bulk of the applications
on offer were of suitably high quality.
Once downloaded, applications install onto a secondary
Windows Phone 7 screen, one swipe away from the “main” Start screen. From
there, you can press down on a particular application to pin it to the Start
screen. This is fine if you’re only interested in having, say, Facebook and a
few games a tap or two away. Power application users, though, may soon find
themselves wishing for some sort of organizing principle—along the lines of
Apple’s iOS applications folders—for ordering the applications they’ll
doubtlessly want to place on the Start screen.
Microsoft’s massive investment in initiatives such as
Bing pays off in Windows Phone 7. The phone’s Maps application looks
spectacular, shifting to a satellite view as you zoom closer to the ground.
However, this element also comes with some kinks: I kept trying to navigate
from Manhattan to Queens, for example, only to have the application’s
Directions feature repeatedly try to direct me to Long Island. Eventually, I
had to activate Internet Explorer and use Google Maps. Other addresses proved
less of a problem.
In a
development that will shock exactly nobody, Bing is also Windows Phone 7’s
default search engine. One of the smartphone’s better features is voice search,
which seems responsive and relatively accurate. For example, when I told the
device, “Chinese restaurant” while standing on a busy street in Midtown Manhattan
on New Year’s Eve, it heard me accurately; a few seconds later, I had a list of
nearby eateries serving highly questionable egg rolls. Specific place names
take a little work, requiring you to enunciate clearly and loudly into the device,
but ultimately work as intended.
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