Secondly, the only reason I’m reviewing Windows Phone 7 is because Telstra were kind enough to give me a free HTC Mozart. I’d like to assume that this is because I’m internet famous and an all-round awesome person, but it’s more likely that they thought this long-term Mac and iPhone using, incredibly cynical and generally grumpy guy would be a good critic of an ‘exciting’ new device from a company that is only slightly more interesting than the soles of my feet (you can interpret that as a comment about Telstra, HTC, or Microsoft, it’s your call). Or maybe they drew my name from a hat.

With that out of the way, let’s attempt to piece together a review of Windows Phone 7 without resorting to dropping a “Microsoft sux” and a few “developers, developers”. Keep in mind that this is in no way an exhaustive review of Windows Phone 7 – there are plenty of professional reviewers to do that kind of thing. This is just me, using the phone, and telling you what I liked and didn’t like.

The Good

You might have heard: Windows Phone 7 is pretty. If you haven’t, let me enlighten you: Windows Phone 7 is pretty. Not pretty in the “I can’t stop looking at that cheerleader/lifeguard” sense, but more in the “I can’t stop looking at that Lava Lamp” regard. It’s unashamedly minimalist – in a world saturated with the gradients of the iPhone and the utilitarian design of Android, it’s quite refreshing. Everything is simple colours and basic shapes. There are some fantastic transitions between menus, when starting applications, and selecting UI elements, but they never seem to get in the way. In fact, these transitions tend to provide a neat distraction to stop you realising that Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have an inkling of multi-tasking ability, and as such switching between applications is akin to trying to change lanes in peak hour. But more on that later.

The home screen on Windows Phone 7 is made up of live tiles – shortcuts to applications that can update to give you an insight into what’s happening. The Calendar live tile, for instance, shows your next appointment, and any email accounts you pin to the home screen give you a count of unread messages. This is good. Little red badges on the iPhone can only go so far, and while Android and Windows Phone share similar toaster-style notifications that pop in at the top of the screen, this doesn’t give you a whole lot of information for the times when you just want to glance into your mobile world and see what’s happening. Live tiles are quite well implemented by the built-in applications, but when it comes to third-party apps, I’m yet to see anything compelling.

While navigating your way around Windows Phone 7, you tend to come across quite a few nice surprises. This is good and bad, however, since it does mean that the fastest way of doing things is not always the most intuitive. I can appreciate the small conveniences like being able to tap on the very edge of an email in any of the folder views to bring up the check boxes for multiple selections. That’s pretty intuitive, but having to long press on the title of the People app to get additional options (one of the few places this works) is not. Some features sit on the fence between intuitive and hidden, like being able to press on one of the letter headings in an alphabetically sorted list (like your contacts) to bring up a grid of buttons to quickly jump to another letter. Makes perfect sense once you’ve done it once, but i spent quite a bit of time scrolling before I realized. Then you feel a little silly for not having guessed.

Despite most of the launch devices having very limited storage capacity (8GB is weak these days), the Zune music experience in Windows Phone 7 is a joy. Streaming songs through a Zune Pass works almost as well as playing music from the phone itself, which goes some way to help the storage situation. Even syncing was a pleasant surprise – given that I’m a Mac user, I was impressed when Microsoft’s Windows Phone Connector seamlessly transferred music and playlists from iTunes to the phone. While you’re playing music from the Zune application, it downloads images of the artist (not just cover art, but publicity photos as well) and uses them as a background in the application, and on the Zune live tile. Little touches like this go a long way to creating a fun experience with a phone.

It’s worth mentioning that the voice control in Windows Phone 7 is excellent. This is something that often falls by the wayside, but Microsoft has nailed it. The voice control on the iPhone 4 and 3GS is pretty good, but where Windows Phone gets it very right is the time between pressing the button and actually being able to speak a command. On the iPhone, this seems to take an age, but Windows Phone 7 is ready and listening almost instantly.

The Bad

The unfortunate way to summarize this section is simply “everything else”. There are a lot of glaring omissions, and practically every good experience is followed shortly thereafter with a new frustration. Let’s get the easy ones out of the way: there is no copy and paste. There is no multi-tasking. There are no custom ringtones. Windows Phone will not make you breakfast. Yes, these things really suck, and no I am not going to talk about them anymore.

The real problems are in the small details. The internal monologue generally follows something like this:

Wow, the Zune application is nice! Oh, why do I have to press the volume keys and change the volume to get to the skip track button?

Wow, the email client has nice filtering and easy shortcuts! Wait, why is there no message threading?

Wow, easy access to search in a nice UI! Oh, it’s Bing.

The email client is perhaps the worst culprit. It’s unfathomable to me why one would make a shortcut to change folders, but then only have the list show your inbox without a second tap. Message threading is also such a basic feature to leave out these days, especially on a device with an implementation of Exchange right from the source. The Exchange implementation itself seems a little clunky as well – email comes in with push effectively instantly, but deleting and moving emails and syncing the read status to the server seems to only happen every 10mins or so, if at all, whereas it happens instantly on the desktop and on an iPhone.

Since the iPhone and other devices have convinced people that using the internet on a small screen is a good idea (and with good text reflow, it is), browsers have become such a crucial part of a mobile device. Let’s not beat around the bush, Microsoft doesn’t have the greatest record of building good browsers. And in perhaps the greatest understatement in some time, Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 is a pile of crap. The design of the browser is nice, but then like an unexpected kick in the nether-regions, you browse to a site and the pain sets in.

I will say that the scrolling performance in Internet Explorer is good. That’s where the pleasantries end. It uses the old desktop Internet Explorer adage of rendering things in the ugliest way possible, and supports none of the newer CSS3 and HTML5 features that make browsing, especially on modern mobile websites, just a joy on the iPhone and Android. There is no Flash (which isn’t the end of the world), but there is also no HTML5 video. YouTube can be played back by installing an application from the Marketplace that appears to be just a shortcut to the YouTube mobile site, but in fact does something behind the scenes to get it working. Though not entirely the fault of Windows Phone 7, most sites default to the mobile version designed for 5 year old Nokia phones, though even if they didn’t I doubt Internet Explorer could render their modern counterparts anyway.

The Marketplace is still fairly sparse of 3rd party software, and what is there is generally not as fully featured as equivalents on Android or iPhone, but even if there were a million applications you’d not be able to find them. When you push that magical search button in the application Marketplace, you’re presented with results mixed in with music and videos from the Zune store, and no way of filtering. You can also only search application names, so unless that recipe application is conveniently called “recipe application”, you’re plum out of luck. Carrier billing (having application purchases charge to your phone bill) is something that’s been lacking with modern phones, and I’m really happy to see it back with Windows Phone 7.

Contact synchronisation on Windows Phone 7 is a nice idea – link your Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many other popular social networks to your Windows Live ID, and you get a nice unified view of your social life. The status update stream works well enough, but only your Facebook contacts can become part of your general contacts list, and only if you add your account separately to the phone. Once added, you can’t filter Facebook contacts out, either.

Gaming

I am nothing more than a casual gamer. Frankly, between work and a one year old son, killing zombies is the very last thing I want to do when I get some downtime. Though it does have competition from writing reviews about free phones in the I-can’t-be-bothered stakes. That said, I do have an Xbox 360, and when I’ve caught up on some sleep, I love to play it. If I had more time, I’d probably play it far more often.

Windows Phone 7, as a gaming platform, is the best around. Xbox Live is integrated perfectly, and not only are you able to earn achievements in-game that appear right on your traditionally Xbox 360-only gamer card, but you can also edit your avatar, send messages, and modify your friends list. This is what Apple’s Game Center should have been. It’s far more rich and integrated than Apple’s effort, and stands alone on the list of great mobile gaming hubs.

Unfortunately, the games themselves are far more average. Graphics seem choppy, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of detail. Loading times can also be a big frustration, with even something as simple as Uno taking longer than you would expect to get to some gameplay. There isn’t a huge library of games available at this early stage, but Microsoft seems to have buy-in from a lot of the bigger publishers, so well-known titles like Need For Speed and Earthworm Jim are well represented.

I’d really like to see Xbox Live on Windows Phone when some really powerful hardware comes out. The immersive platform is a little let down by the in-game quality right now, but that could turn around with smoother and prettier games.

The Mozart

I’ve refrained from talking too much about the actual hardware of the HTC Mozart we were given up until this point, but that’s mainly because it’s nothing spectacular on its own. Windows Phone 7 is the real innovation here, and the Mozart is somewhat of a ‘good enough’ piece of technology.

Once Telstra fixed up their mobile access point settings for users of push email, the Mozart battery made it happily through a day of use, which is all you really expect these days. The phone feels slightly above average in the hand, though it has nowhere near the premium aura that surrounds the iPhone 4. It’s body is apparently made out of a single piece of aluminium, but it all just feels like plastic to me, and it still has all the creaks and squeaks you’d expect from a mid-range device.

The 8MP camera is nothing special, but the inclusion of a xenon flash is a very welcome addition. Dark scenes are very well illuminated, but using the flash only amplifies the camera’s tendancy to take washed out photos.

Call speaker quality is great, though there is a lack of noise reduction from the microphone, so calls in loud places get a little difficult for the person on the other end. This isn’t a huge deal though, since most people I call don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say anyway. Apparently, the phone includes the amusingly named SRS WOW HD (capitalization all theirs) for virtual surround sound when you listen to music, but I couldn’t tell much of a difference with it on or off.

Closing Thoughts

Excitement, followed by disappointment. This is the general feeling of Windows Phone 7. With all its money and more than capable staff, I didn’t expect a “version 1″ OS from Microsoft, despite the fact that Windows Phone 7 is a complete from-scratch rewrite. And herein lies the problem – people expect a version 1 to be on par with features to everything else that’s on the market, which is probably unreasonable. Windows Phone 7 shows a lot of promise, however, and I do believe that with a string of rapid updates, it could actually make a dent in the market.

As it stands, I can’t use Windows Phone 7 as my day-to-day phone. But adding the missing features I crave would be relatively trivial: Give me threaded email, copy and paste, and at the very least a way of suspending apps so it’s not a clean launch every time you switch task. Let’s see that, then we’ll talk.

Fact is, they are missing a key feature of Google apps that lets you sync to a lot of places, including the iPhone, directly and with push updates – Google supports Microsoft Exchange for both contacts and calendars.

With the Exchange support, you can get push updates to any device or application that supports Exchange, including Outlook on the desktop and the iPhone with v3.0 software and above. It doesn’t get around syncing to iCal (unless you’re already on Snow Leopard, which supports Exchange out of the box), but it’s damn good for mobile devices.

Here are the instructions for setting it up on the iPhone, and you can use the server settings from there to set up any other device/app that supports Exchange.

The Schmap guys were nice enough to pass on to me a code that will let you access the Schmap iPhone interface before it launches on Monday. To get a sneak-peek, browse to http://schmap.com/iphone on your iPhone and enter the access code 724627.

Once you have an MMS compatible handset, simply:

1. Log in to Brightkite and select Account settings from the left of the screen
2. Click the Mobile tab
3. Scroll to the bottom and find your unique account email address, program this into your phone or remember it
4. On your mobile phone, create a new MMS message
5. In the To field, instead of putting in a phone number, put your Brightkite email address
6. Put the standard SMS commands into the body of the message. These can be found in the Brightkite help, but the basic ones are:
   • @placemark or @full address to check-in
   • !message to post a message and attach it to your current location

Using this method also means you can post photos to Brightkite from your phone. To do so, just add the photo in the body of the MMS message, and the text you want to go with it in the Subject field.

Enjoy, and feel free to add me as a friend over on Brightkite.

After viewing this video in particular, one can see that at this point in the development cycle, it appears as though Google is looking to pull in the best features of Windows Mobile and the iPhone UI. On first inspection, Android looks most like Windows Mobile, especially the home screen. Once the device is in use, however, a very ‘smooth’ quality reminiscant of the iPhone can be seen. The browser especially is obviously modeled off Apple’s efforts, though there is a lack of finish at this early stage.

The most interesting and exciting part of Android is the level of openness. The iPhone is a great product, but like many Apple releases, it is basically Apple’s way or the highway. Sure, Apple has now announced an SDK for third party applications, but it is an afterthought, rather than Google’s release of an SDK months before devices are in the hands of customers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone, but should Android provide the same slick UI elements on an open platform, I will switch in a second. Many features demonstrated on Android so far are available on other handsets, such as Google maps, but with Google’s announcement of a $10 million competition for the best applications, I am looking forward to seeing what can be done. Particularity, I am keen to see where developers go with the built-in OpenGL support. Already Google has shown some pretty cool features, though, like Street View in the Maps application.

What I am really curious about is where this leaves the Apple/Google relationship. Google is basically releasing the best competitor to the iPhone, despite Eric Schmidt serving on Apple’s board, and Google taking a large part in the development of the iPhone. I was surprised at Google’s involvement with the development of the iPhone originally, considering its love of all things open, and this proves my point in a way.

Indeed, if Android shapes up to be the open version of the iPhone as it is appearing as at this early stage, there might just be an iPhone for sale out of my place.

While I understand Google had to do a lot behind the scenes to ensure that actions mapped into Gmail properly, it has been a long wait for long-time Gmail users like me to get IMAP support in Google’s mail product. I’ve been using Microsoft Exchange for email for a while, but with my reshuffling of jobs, I found I no longer need the advanced features that it provides. Instead, with the new addition of IMAP access (a necessity in my books), I decided to save myself the money on Exchange and switch to Google Apps, and as such, back into Gmail.

This decision left me with a conundrum – how to get my bank of email out of the clutches of the MS empire and into the supposedly less evil Gmail. While my mailbox is not the largest around, weighing in at around 2GB, this was still a daunting task. IMAP support certainly made this easier, but finding the right application to do the move proved difficult.

I tried Outlook 2007 itself, Mozilla Thunderbird, Entourage, and Eudora with varying success, from Outlook’s constant timeouts on the IMAP connection, to Thunderbird ending up with messages without subjects or senders due to Exchange mangling headers. The solution came from an unlikely source: Windows Mail.

Windows Mail is the replacement to Outlook Express in Windows Vista, and was able to import email directly from the Exchange server through Outlook, then upload it to Gmail through IMAP. While the process was slow (around 10 hours for all my email), it managed to get the job done perfectly, without any timeouts and with the complete messages intact. I did not expect much from Windows Mail, but it pulled through in the end, and if Thunderbird wasn’t so damn good, I would consider using it as my full-time email client.

I now have Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar plugin syncing to my Google Apps Gmail and Google Calender, complete with all my email and calendar entries from Exchange. I still fire up Outlook and use the wonderful RemoteCalendars to pull down my Google Calendar for syncing with my iPhone and other devices, but other than that I am totally satisfied with the free alternative to Exchange.

After reviewing the original i-mate JAQ back in November last year, I did not have particularly high hopes for the JAQ3. The original JAQ was i-mate’s first handset after parting ways with HTC, who designed and manufactured its handsets for some time, and was flawed in many ways. The JAQ did show promise though, and I am happy to report that virtually everything that was wrong about the JAQ has been remedied with the JAQ3. Manufactured by Chinese OEM TechFaith Wireless and sold in some markets as the UBiQUiO 501, the i-mate JAQ3 is a Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition device, and comes packed with connectivity features and a thin, albeit wide, design.

Physical Aspects

Unlike most Pocket PC Phone Edition devices, the i-mate JAQ3 has a front facing QWERTY keyboard instead of a sideways slide-out design. This has plusses and minuses, as it increases one-handed usability though adds quite a bit of width to the device. This design does allow the device to come in at just 14.5mm (0.57”) thick, making it the thinnest touch-screen Windows Mobile phone around currently. Length and width measure up at 126mm x 67.5mm (4.96″ x 2.65″) respectively, and a weight of 160g (5.64oz) is a little on the hefty side, but not overly so.

The back and sides of the i-mate JAQ3 are covered in a soft-touch rubber compound, with the front and bottom a slightly glossy hard plastic. Thankfully, it is not glossy enough to attract mass amounts of fingerprints, which is somewhat of a pet hate of mine. Decked out in black, the device looks quite classy, and will look right at home coming out of a briefcase or suit pocket. The right side of the device holds the 2.5mm headset jack, miniUSB port, and power button, with the three-way jog wheel, OK button, and camera key taking residence on the left. The 2.0 megapixel camera is the sole item on the back of the JAQ3, positioned above the easy to release yet firmly attached battery cover, itself hiding a 1250mAh battery. A covered microSD memory card slot sits atop the JAQ3, with the hard to release extendable stylus held in a silo the bottom, though it did get easier to get out over time.

I will make somewhat of a big proclamation now: the i-mate JAQ3 has the best QWERTY keypad I have ever used on a phone. With the exception of the space key, every key has great tactile feedback, adequate spacing that is accentuated with a convex shape, and is just about the perfect size. The only thing I can fault is that while there is only one space ‘key,’ it has a pressure point at either side, which caused me to occasionally get two spaces when I hit the key plumb in the middle. Even the special characters, accessed with the Fn key, are intelligently placed. Big softkeys, call and end keys, the OK and Start button, and shortcut keys for Pocket IE and the Messaging application surround a very large 5-way directional pad. Unfortunately, the same level of quality found on the keyboard isn’t shared with the jog wheel, which has a terrible feel when pressed to select items. I also wish the keyboard backlight stayed on a little longer, or better yet, had a setting to control the time it stayed on.

The i-mate JAQ3 has a bright, relatively clear QVGA resolution touch screen, though its landscape 2.4” screen is smaller than most other Pocket PC phones. This is further perceptible due to the handset’s size. Other than the size, there is not a lot to complain about, with the screen accurately detecting taps with the stylus, and having adequate readability even in bright sunlight.

Let me say this right off the bad: the iPhone is not a device I would buy myself. It is an influential device that will do fantastically in the market, that is for sure, but its omissions are too deal breaking for me. They are also things that could have been easily remedied by Apple, and I am sure they will be fixed in a second-generation product, but for now I will do without a device that can’t record video, use 3G networks and A2DP headphones, and other things I appreciate. But more on my actual iPhone pros and cons in a future post.

What the iPhone has achieved though, is forcing the industry in general to rethink the whole user interface paradigm. Touch sensitive devices have long used a stylus, and are only now evolving to use the finger. This fact, combined with the swishing, swirling, and sliding seen in the iPhone’s UI make it a much more organic device, one that consumers may find easier to ‘relate’ to.

On top of this more organic approach to UI design, the iPhone’s interface just looks so damn good. Sure, Windows Mobile is functional, S60 is pretty, and so on, but the iPhone interface is sexy. User interface design cannot take a back seat to device design any longer, and Apple has shown us that an attractive physical design can be accompanied by a functional and attractive UI design.

While other manufacturers may not have to play catch up to Apple with technical specifications, they definitely need to with UI design. Verizon’s new Motorola Q9m features a fun circular UI enhancement, and devices like the LG Prada and HTC Touch are certainly steps in the right direction, but the iPhone just integrates everything so nicely; this is what Apple does best.

The iPhone is not the device it could have been, but for UI design, it is revolutionary. If manufacturers take nothing else away from the iPhone release, I hope it at least forces them to take a step back and reevaluate the user interface experience.

Sure, smartphone hardware and software are getting cheaper and easier for manufacturers to produce, but I think there will always be a place for non-smartphone devices in the market. Simplicity is key here – not everyone needs the full features of a smartphone, and while that remains true non-smartphones will always be produced, regardless of how cheap it becomes to make smartphones.

I have seen a trend over time of a general rise in the technology level even in cheap handsets, which is an obvious repercussion from the reduced cost of the components that make them. I wholeheartedly agree that even cheap handsets will eventually come with big, high-resolution screens and other treats, but I doubt that all handsets will become smartphones. The PIM features in non-smartphones have come a long way, and have reached a point where they will accommodate most users; transitioning to a smartphone user interface will do nothing but add a level of complexity that will ultimately drive the market away.

I am all for the advancement of technology, but only if it suits the needs of the consumer. There will have to be a radical change in the usability of smartphones before they truly become mainstream, perhaps the introduction of a ‘dumb’ mode that removes things like the ability to install new applications and the more complex PIM functionality would be beneficial. For the foreseeable future though, I think there will still be the constant flow of new non-smartphone devices.

Younger generations are far more open to advertising in general, probably because of the way it is always in their face, and has been since birth. Sure, advertising has been around for a long time, but older generations would have had far less and in far fewer places, making them far more resistant to its introduction these days.

The fact that youth are more open to advertising is aided by the way there is more commonly something in it for the viewer. Schemes like Virgin Mobile’s ‘Sugar Mama’ allow users to earn free minutes on their phone accounts for viewing mobile advertisements, which makes it feel like the viewer is getting rewarded, making them want to view more ads. The company showing the ads will then get more advertisers interested, making it a win-win situation, provided the company being advertised finds leads as a result.

I do not believe this trend will stop, and I think that advertising will become a more pervasive part of our lives. This may upset some people, but for the next generation, it will just be a fact of life.