Well, I got a Samsung Focus S to play around with this weekend and test the windows phone 7 OS out. Overall, I liked it, but I can’t switch from iOS just yet.
UI
The “Metro” UI is actually quite nice, I found it easy to use and find everything. My biggest gripe is lack of customization beyond just the basic moving around of things. I can’t find the battery percentage at the top, have to dig fifteen menus deep to get at it.
I love the email app, finally someone gives me a way to see only unread emails, only flagged emails, only important (!) emails in my exchange outlook. The linked inboxes are cool too, even though I finally got that on iOS.
Social
The phone is clearly aimed at social media users, and the integration is really good. Of course its lacking any Google+ integration. Not a big deal, but its easy to set up and easy to use. Can easy send pictures to multiple social media sites. Only biggest issue is you can’t easily switch between multiple users on different sites.
Issues
Have to use the Zune software on my computer to load music. I hate the zune software, why can’t I just copy my music over, or why can’t I download music from my skydrive?
No VPN??? Really Microsoft? Really? I can’t believe you released a mobile OS without any VPN support! This is absurd!
App prices are off the chart. Sure I get xbox live integration, but nothing too impressive here.
No Hulu? Again, Really? This isn’t rocket science, get hulu on your OS!
Development
I’m a native visual studio user, so I found creating apps using XAML very familar, but no sockets connections! This means any non web based connections are out of the question. I wanted to write a simple app to query my Control4 system. Already had a cool C# desktop app, figured it would be easy… Nope. The SDK lacks a lot of core .NET features.
Overall
I want to like this OS, but I can’t. I like the phone, despite bad battery life. The camera is good, the screen is ok, a bit gray in the whites for me. Ultimately, it will be another version or two before they win me over again. For now, I’m going back to my iPhone 4, I miss my iPhone 4.