Anyone use Windows Phone 7?

[BerG]

Just been playing with my brothers new Nokia Lumia 800, and it has to be the sexiest hardware/software combo I have seen in my life.

I am tempted to get one, but still remember the disaster that was my attempt at switching to Android.

Of course I am worried about the limited app development. While I can live without dominoes or trademe, iOS has a huge array of aviation apps that are invaluable to me.


However iOS is looking very tired, and I like sexy things.

Does anyone use this OS? Are you satisfied?

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Mine arrives tomorrow.  

The black one looks sexy as, and when I saw that Vodafone was offering it for $0 upfront on the $90 plan, I was sold.

I'm so excited. i'll post about it tomorrow night.


I've had the HTC 7 for a year (one of the first generation windows phone), and it's been really good, but I wanted something with more storage and a better screen.

[BerG]

Excellent.I'll expect a full report on my desk at 8.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

My Phone arrived today. The body looks really nice, and it feels soild. The screen is amazing, the black is really black, and it cuts down alot of the reflections I used to get on my old phone.

It takes a Micro-SIM, so before I could call with it, I had to ring up Vodafone and get my phone number switched over. But that was easy enough, took about a minute.


Nokia provides some apps which you can only get on the Lumia phones, one being Nokia Drive, a GPS navigation app. There are plenty available on the app store anyway, but it's nice having one from the start.

The Windows Phone App stores doesn't have as many as the Apple and Andriod stores, but there are still plenty, but I guess it depends what you are looking for. You could have a look here first to see what there is http://www.windowsphone.com/en-NZ/marketplace

Like Apple, Microsoft approves apps before they go into the marketplace, which means you can usally be sure that the app will work fine and wont break anything.


Tomorrow I'll see what the screen looks like in the sunlight, and test out the camera.

Awesome
The Body
The Screen

Good
8MP Camera

Not so Good
No front facing camera

Notes
Requires Micro-Sim
16GB storage

[ATTACH=CONFIG]7265[/ATTACH]

[Retardobot]

Also, you can try apps before you buy.

[BerG]

I may buy one of these today.

Will be keeping the iPhone this time, in case I need to come crawling back with my tail between my legs.


I see the charger on the Lumia is on the top. Why oh why do other phone manufacturers not make phones dockable like the iPhone? The age of having to have a cord to charge your phone in the car should have ended a long time ago.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

I agree, iPhone got it right having the data connection at the bottom.  However the phones been good so far. The screens slightly less responsive then my htc7, but it's still fine. i have to work out some kind of docking solution for my new car.

And the phone is sexy, I like hard black sexy things.

[BerG]

Very happy with it so far.

As you say, its hard and black and long and sexy, so you cant go wrong.

I think this calls for a new thread...

[Lias]

I've just started playing with one of these.. I've never really been a smartphone user but this was the right price ( I won it lol).

Seems pretty nice so far but I doubt I'm going to use even half its capabilities ;-0

[xpertz]

Yer the bad thing with windows is you are limited in what you can do however it is really easy to use and yes the software looks and feels pretty sexy. I still prefer the Android and Apple touch keyboard.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

On the Lumia, these an Nokia app called 'Network Setup', I would recommend uninstalling it. It screwed up my internets connection when I opened it and I had to reset my phone.

[xpertz]

Did you have problems only accessing mobile sites outside wifi to spacemonkey? That setting is a bit o a joke, after you change the setting you have to turn off your phone, take the sim out for 2 minutes and then reboot for the setting to be changed 0_o

[BerG]

Well I'm happy enough with the Lumia to stick the iPhone on trademe.

Im loving the homescreen. Sometimes I just leave the phone unlocked so I can sit it on the desk and watch it flicking around with all its pictures. The OS is super fast and never lags. I'm surprised at the marketplace, theres a lot more quality apps than I expected, most of them free or with a free trial which has most features. I love not having a status bar.

There is a few major annoyances:

-No customisation of notifications. Text messages just flash up on the screen, for anyone using the phone to read. You also cannot set custom sms tones per contact (or any custom SMS tones at all). Emails do not wake the phone, or have any indication on the lock screen. The lock screen needs some serious serious attention.

-Not much of a hacking scene. With Android you can install anything to completely customise the phone. With iOS you can jailbreak and completely customise the phone. With WP7 you are stuck with what Microsoft gives you (at this stage).

- The marketplace seems localised to Australia. Lots of Australia specific apps/reviews. Seems to be lots of reviews from bots.

-The keyboards a bit shit, with no customization at all.

-Needs folders. At the moment you can end up with a very very long homescreen when you add a few apps. Would seem a simple addition to add folders using a similar method to iOS. Will surely be in WP8.

-Web pages look ugly. Coming from the retina display to this, text on the herald site looks horrid. There are no decent browsers in the marketplace, so I've stuck with the stock browser. Zooming in on web pages is clunky. Tap detection is not accurate (when trying to tap a small text box). Bring on Dolphin Browser.

-No ability to delete lots of pictures from camera roll at once. Have to do it one by one. I do like how pictures auto upload to skydrive.

- I like the magnifying glass button taking you to bing search, but doesnt automatically bring up keyboard. You have to tap search box first. Wtf? Just stupid.


Have no complaints about the hardware, other than the four buttons on the side being all identical. I often hit the wrong one when trying to unlock the phone. Everyone complains about the little flap you have to open to charge the phone, but I love it. Keeps that ugly port hidden away and you only need to open it once a day. The camera is a bit shit, though.

[BerG]

The Vodafone online system is lightyears ahead of Telecom as well as having a far more transparent billing system.

Fuck you Telecom, never coming back.

[Codex]

I've just started playing with one of these.. I've never really been a smartphone user but this was the right price ( I won it lol).

Seems pretty nice so far but I doubt I'm going to use even half its capabilities ;-0

Practising for windows 8?

[xpertz]

The Vodafone online system is lightyears ahead of Telecom as well as having a far more transparent billing system.

$#@! you Telecom, never coming back.

Yes yesssss.... This is soooo trueeeee!

[O-L-W-A-G]

Fuck you Telecom, never coming back.

This

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

I also like Vodafone, they have bar charts whowing how much data i've used. It's really easy to see my usage.

[Tiwaking!]

http://mashable.com/2013/01/06/google-stops-blocking-windows-phone/

Google says it will stop redirecting Windows Phone users away from its mobile Google Maps website.

This weekend, controversy erupted after users reported that attempts to access Google Maps on Windows Phone devices led to redirects to the Google homepage. Google confirmed the redirect on Friday, telling Mashable and other news outlets that the decision to redirect users away from Google Maps was because it had optimized its mobile Google Maps website for WebKit-based browsers.

Why dont Microsoft ban Google Maps and redirect everyone to the brilliant Bing Maps?

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Bing Maps is brilliant. I find it faster then google.

However Google maps tends to have more points of intrest.

[Codex]

You're such a hipster monkey

Fo cereal a hipster

Grand mustah bustah hip

[Tiwaking!]

Bing Maps is brilliant. I find it faster then google.

However Google maps tends to have more points of intrest.

Oh hello there!

Would you like to view YouTube videos?

You can guu kha mokkel

http://www.wpcentral.com/problems-google-alters-mobile-youtube-windows-phone

So what’s going on here (Windows Phone ?

As far as we can tell, the problem stems from Windows Phone 8 users using the default setting of Desktop Mode in Internet Explorer. Even though users can still navigate to m.youtube.com and view the mobile version of that site, videos simply will not play in that mode (on Windows Phone 7 devices where they don’t have the App Search ability, videos simply don’t play).

Switching to the Mobile view in Internet Explorer appears to alleviate the problem.

While that hardly seems like a terrible situation, it is causing confusion amongst users since the behavior has seemingly changed starting January 10th/11th for an unknown reason.


Reader complaints have started rolling in...
 It gets worse for Windows Phone 7 users...

On Windows Phone 7 the problem is even worse as Desktop mode or Mobile version both don't work on m.youtube.com anymore at all. That differs from Windows Phone 8 devices where switching to Desktop Mode appears to "get around" the block.