Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Windows Phone 7 vs 6.5: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Microsoft has given Windows Phone 7 to all of its employees. Before I got Phone 6.5 also from Microsoft. So now I can compare both.
 
Windows Phone Features / Version
6.5
7
Multi-touch
Browsing experience is much better for 7


Radio FM
Really sucks in 7. No memorized stations,  possibility to switch between headphones and a speaker.


Apps and App Store
Nothing useful as of today for 7.
Phone 7 follows a bad for the customer tradition of requiring a developer to spend 100 bucks in order to upload an app. With 6.5 you could install any 6.5 CAB file you found on the Web. There are quite a few free apps whose creators won’t pay these 100 bucks


Copy-Paste
Currently missing in 7


Uploading Photos with One Click
The cool stuff with Phone 7 is that you can upload a Photo to your 25GB free Sky-Dive account  with just one click


Support for writing in non-ASCII
E.g. if you want to write in Russian, or even include a non-ASCII word  forget it (on top of you do not have copy-paste which could’ve been a work around)


Editing text you type
You have to delete the whole word or sentence – e.g. I could not figure out putting a cursor in the middle of the word


Battery Indicator
Hard to beleive but Phone 7 won't tell you exactly how much battery life is left. Be prepared for unexpected shutdowns


Multi-tasking
Missing in 7. It also does not work on Phone 6.5 good (the apps are sometimes just shut down – looks like a regression from Windows Phone 6, where it worked better)


Having access to most of the stuff on the main page
You can set up Phone 6.5 so that on the main page you can see weather, stocks, top news, turn on and off with one click the phone, WI-FI, Bluetooth, ring, vibrate…. And 10 most useful apps on the same screen on top of that!



Last but not least, if you are using Windows Phone 6.5, install my free Gmail client: NanoGmail

As Wayne Gretzky once said, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." Unfortunately, with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is starting to play where the puck was long time ago and ice is already melting.

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