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7 Things to Love about Windows Phone 7
Well, today has been quite a day with the official announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series (formerly known as Windows Mobile 7) finally happening. Overall, I’ve seen nothing but excitement from all over the social media outlets and major news sites. That is a good great thing. So, in the spirit of all the excitement generated, I’ve compiled a short list of 7 things to love about Windows Phone 7 and just why you should love each of them. In no particular order:
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 01: Xbox Live integration.
Why to Love this Feature: That’s right! For all of you Xbox gamers out there, you can finally take your Xbox Live functionality on-the-go. Boost your standing within the Xbox live community by earning gamer score, achievements, play games interactively, and the best — there are going to be a number of Xbox games made available to play on WP7! Microsoft has yet to specify which ones, but this functionality in and of itself will be the *main* reason for many to love Windows Phone 7!
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 02: A new emoticon keyboard layout and new misspelled word correction feature.
Why to Love this Feature: For you social networkers and text messaging fiends out there, you’re sure to love the built-in emoticon keyboard layout and misspelled word correction feature, the latter of which enables you to touch a word that auto-correction misses and a list of suggestions populates just above the text entry box. So, in practice, you can type as fast as you want and whatever auto-correct doesn’t catch, you can quickly touch a word, then touch a suggestion that matches the correction you’re looking for. If one is not present, you can simply add it for later use.
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 03: Every phone will have a Bing button and FM radio.
Why to Love this Feature: No matter where you’re located in your phone, search is just a touch away with the Bing button. Every single Windows Phone 7 device is to be equipped with one so as to create the same experience on every device adopting the Windows Phone 7 OS. More on this in points to follow. The FM radio functionality is a nice touch for a number of scenarios, one of which may be if a radio station is giving away a set of tickets and you want to be present to hear when they do so you can call, but you forgot about it and you’re out jogging. Looks like you’re in luck with your handy-dandy Windows Phone 7 device! Then, of course, there’s just having the desire to listen to FM radio. That scenario works, too.
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 04: Search is contextual.
Why to Love this Feature: Let’s say you’re out on the town and want to find a restaurant close to where you are. You hit the Bing search button on your phone, type the name of the restaurant and boom. Your phone knows where you are, so up comes the number, address, map, and even reviews for that restaurant closest to you. The same goes for movies where you could expect search results to contain theater phone numbers, maps, reviews, movie times, et al. The possibilities here are endless.
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 05: The browser recognizes numbers and addresses in HTML.
Why to Love this Feature: Take into consideration the scenario where you’re browsing the website of a restaurant or someone selling a product you’re interested in. Well, on their page, they have their phone number and their address. Instead of having to write them down, exit your browser, and call the number or fire up another browsing instance just to bring up the address on a map, you can simply click either of them right there on the site and — since it recognizes numbers and addresses — it will dial the number for you or bring up the address you click in Bing maps. Fast and fluid to make life just a little bit easier.
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 06: Zune Marketplace subscriptions work on WP7 devices.
Why to Love this Feature: Instant access to hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and more. If you own a Zune or plan to get one prior to the official release of Windows Phone 7 devices, the services and functionality of it will all be available if/when you decide to land a Windows Phone 7 device. It’s not going to get much easier than the Marketplace to download all of your multimedia desires ranging from the aforementioned music and movies to podcasts, games and more.
Things to Love about Windows Phone 7 – 07: Microsoft basically told everyone to take their mobile user experience paradigms and shove them.
Why to Love this “Feature”: You know all the talk you always hear about Microsoft copying another entity’s work? Not this time. Codename “Metro,” Windows Phone 7′s UI is very similar to the Zune HD UI, but both are ultimately enhancements of the Windows Media Center UI. In the end, the UI is nothing like anything else in the mobile phone market today. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it’s everything anyone could want or need to navigate the vast world of ones life all contained within a Windows Phone 7 device. Also, Microsoft has upped the ante for vendors and set forth a very strict set of guidelines. No more custom UIs and no backwards compatibility with Windows Mobile anything. The slate has been wiped clean and Microsoft appears to be doing things their way, which just so happens to be the right way.
This list of 7 is compiled based on what all was announced today. In the coming weeks, events like Mix 2010 are sure to give much more insight into the capabilities of Windows Phone 7. One of the major rumored features was gesture support via a front-facing camera. Even though that wasn’t announced, the device Microsoft has been showcasing WP7 on appears to have a front-facing camera, so perhaps Microsoft has yet to completely let the cat out of the bag. Looks like we’ll all just have to continue to wait and see.
Until then, what are some of *your* favorite features about Windows Phone 7 that you’ve heard so far? Any you didn’t hear that you would like to see present?
-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com
I think that there are still many ‘secret’ features which will be revealed in due time – to keep the anticipation and to fight with new features of iphone os 4.0 and newer versions of android. I still think that things like multitask, myphone support, games, 3rd party apps won’t be left out and they will surprise us even more cause even though at the beginning I wasn’t impressed with what they shown but now after few hours I’m very impressed and I’m waiting to see some real devices like k01 running WP7.
Hopefully every WP7 device will have HDMI to output zune videos to big screen like zuneHD does, besides using browser on 720p screen with bluetooth mouse and keyboard would be great
very good! I like it very much, it’s elegant and a nice new concept.
I always hope that MS will produce a Zune phone of their own with MS brand and not HTC or others.
Hoping for the silverlight support, in and out of browser!
I think the reason of the unsupport of Adobe Flash is built in Silverlight technology.
Something that I like so far is the mandated hardware spec. This is good for end users and developers, because there will be no guesswork.
I really think that the developer features are going to be the star here. It seems that with a lot of smartphone vendors, the developer experience is an afterthought. However, Microsoft has a good track record of providing a greate end-to-end developer experience. Mix is going to be pretty cool.
A very good development!
But.
The worst thing about liking or not liking is that it will be on the market in one year. Waiting until december.. And that’s too late at that time to make a difference with the new iphone and Android, Google.
So far, I only saw one major development, which is better than all the phones out there;
Sync over Wifi.
The rest, well, is just an improvement not an innovation.