Windows Phone 7 three months on: a retrospective

When I reviewed Windows Phone 7, I’d been using it for a little over a week. At the time, I concluded:

Microsoft doesn’t often get version one releases right, but this time, it has got the release very right indeed. Windows Phone 7 looks great, works well, and is a treat to use. Market success isn’t assured, but judged on its merits alone, this is a platform that absolutely deserves to succeed, and I really, really hope it does.

As of today, the smartphone platform has been on sale for exactly three months—long enough for things that felt like minor flaws at the time to develop into fatal, infuriating, carbuncles. I’ve been using it since launch on a range of handsets: how does it stack up now that the new gadget glow has worn off? Is it still a platform with promise, able to hold its own against the competition? Or are its widely publicized flaws and omissions crippling in longer-term use?

I stand by my original assessment. This is a great platform that fundamentally works well. The Metro user interface is fast and elegant, the applications that are most important to me—e-mail, Bing, and the browser—work well, and the hardware is generally pretty decent. It remains a release that Microsoft should be proud of.

However, not every early impression was accurate. Some things that seemed like problems at the time turned out to be not such a big deal. Other things that I thought I would use often have for one reason or another fallen by the wayside.

Happy surprises and annoyances

Day to day, the smooth animations, transitions, and clean graphics continue to delight. There is often a danger with animations to make them excessive. HTC is a repeat offender in this regard; its applications (for both Android and Windows Phone 7) contain all sorts of cutesy animations (such as windscreen wipers wiping the screen when the weather app says it’s raining) that look fun and amusing the first time you see them—they make great demo apps—but are just downright annoying the 900th time, when all you want to do is look at what the weather is.

Even three months in, I’m finding the Windows Phone 7 animations to fall firmly on the side of “good.” There’s no point at which I’m waiting for the animation to complete just so I can do something useful. The transitions and animations just serve to make the different parts of the software feel integrated and joined up. Microsoft has struck a good balance here.

A few things have surprised me. I use the Bing application a lot more than I thought I would. I didn’t really think I’d need instant access to a search engine all that often. But because the Bing application is smart and “knows” that if, for example, I’m searching for a restaurant, it should find places that are nearby and show them on a map—and not just do a dumb Web search—it is invaluable when out and about. It provides quick access to relevant information—Microsoft’s essential mantra for the platform. It makes the iPhone’s built-in Spotlight and Web search seem extremely primitive and unhelpful in comparison.

I’ve also found that I don’t really care that the Bing application doesn’t search the phone itself. This was flagged by many as an omission at launch time—after all, the iPhone does search the phone—but while I do search my mail and contacts on a regular basis, these things are conceptually different enough that I don’t really want them in the Bing application. So while I suspect that some kind of unified search will materialize in the future, it might not be as desirable as I once thought.

Indeed, the one place where local and remote content is searched in parallel, the Zune application, annoys me most of the time. When I’m searching for a song, I don’t actually give a damn about stuff in Marketplace. Sure, I could buy it. But I ain’t gonna. I just want to listen to what I already have. The Zune application hides local search hits behind an arrow, encouraging me to buy new songs instead, making it optimized for the wrong thing. I suppose I might think differently if I had a Zune subscription, but I don’t, and so searching for music to buy is for me logically distinct from searching for local music. The two shouldn’t be conflated.

What’s worse is that if the phone has no network connection—and hence can’t search Marketplace at all—it also loses the ability to search local music. This is clearly asinine.

In fact, if one weak spot has emerged in using the phone for a prolonged period, it’s Marketplace. It suffers the same conflation problem as searching Zune—if I drill down into “applications” and then search for “Twitter,” it’ll still show me songs and music that contain the word “Twitter.” Who wants that? Nobody, that’s who.

Apps are surprisingly good

Which is a pity, because I’ve been generally pleased with the third-party development on the phone. OK, it’s still got a long way to go to rival iOS or Android, but growth has been steady, with around 6,500 applications currently available. Some are idiotic fart applications, unfortunately, but I have, for example, a good Facebook application, a good Twitter application, Yelp, and a useful travel application (Wipolo). I’ve been consistently impressed that developers have really made an effort to create applications that leverage Windows Phone 7 user interface concepts like panoramas and pivots, and they do so to good effect. This is heartening to see: it makes the applications feel like they’re really part of the platform, that they belong there.

I’ve also found myself gaming on the phone much more than I thought. It’s clear that Microsoft has spent quite a bit of money in this area, to encourage third parties (notably EA) to develop for the platform. The result is a range of games (Tetris, Rocket Riot, Need For Speed: Undercover, Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst, Bejweled, The Harvest and others) that are pleasingly diverting or even downright entertaining. I’m not going to give up PC gaming anytime soon, but equally, I know I’m not going to be bored on the bus; there are plenty of high-quality games to choose from. The development may not be entirely “organic”—without financial incentives from Microsoft I’m sure game availability would be worse—but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyability of what’s on offer.

The trial option (optional in all third-party software, but mandatory for games that want to achieve the more stringent Xbox Live designation) is excellent. Not everything has a trial, but I’ve been glad to see that many developers have gone for the option. I only hope their conversion rates are good, and that they continue to do so. Trials make purchasing essentially risk-free, and the contrast with Apple’s App Store is stark.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t own an Xbox, but I haven’t found the Xbox Live integration to offer much value. OK, I collect gamer scores and achievements from the games I play, but I honestly couldn’t care less about that.

I still want multitasking

One area that third-party software seems to have done less well is tombstoning. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t offer any true multitasking of third-party applications, but it does have a suspend/resume model that allows applications to save their state to ensure that switching back to an application after, say, replying to a text message is speedy. I’m not sure what the difficulty is, but it seems to be awfully haphazard. When it works, it seems to work pretty well, with an experience that’s almost as good as multitasking. But I find that is the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, resuming applications seems to make you essentially wait for them to restart.

I’m not sure where the fault lies here, but I do know that it detracts from the phone experience, and it appears to be a pretty consistent issue in third-party applications. It’s better than pre-multitasking versions of iOS—especially when it works well—but it’s still not what it should be.

The problem is compounded by some extraordinarily long load-times in third-party applications. Restarting programs each time would be tolerable if only it were quick; often, it isn’t.

When I first reviewed it, I found the back button behavior annoying, particularly in conjunction with the browser. Sometimes I want to go back to the previous application, but the browser just wants to take me back to the previous webpage. I felt at the time that if anything about the phone would drive me to abandon it, it would be this.

It still annoys me, but much less than it did—but that’s only because I found a way to kind of work around the behavior. The main problem situation: I click a link from an e-mail (or other program, but typically e-mail), and then navigate beyond the linked page. I then want to go back to the e-mail, but without backing out of the navigation I performed. The workaround is simple and inelegant, but it works: create a new, empty tab in the browser, and then hit back from there. This backs out to the e-mail application directly. It’s still not perfect, because it means that I can no longer visit history items for the e-mail originated browsing, but that’s normally a trade-off I’m happy to make. Well—not happy, but it makes the phone more livable. My worry is that nothing better will ever materialize, because this dual usage of the back button is so baked into the OS.

Some great ideas are undermined by sloppy execution. The camera button, which instantly opens the camera application when you press it, is a great concept. I find myself not using it as much as I would like, however, because of what’s really a very basic oversight: the camera application doesn’t remember its settings, so my preferences for the flash (off), and anti-shake (on), get reset to their defaults (automatic and off, respectively) every single time I press the button to take a photo. I’ve grown tired of flash reflections ruining the pictures after the automatic flash decided to fire, so now I just don’t bother. The entire point of the (well-intentioned) feature is to allow instant no-hassle photography, and if it can’t do that, well, what’s the use of it?

It’s worth using

Three months on, there’s no doubt that Windows Phone 7 works well on a day-to-day basis. The interface and design aren’t just eye-catching razzamatazz. They’re well-thought-out, functional, sensible pieces of design, marrying form with function. The platform’s beauty is more than skin deep.

It’s not all plain sailing, and there are problems. The biggest problem could essentially be phrased as, “the software today is identical to the software three months ago.” In other words, Microsoft has yet to ship a single update, a single new feature, a single bug fix. And we still don’t know when an update will ship: we know that copy-and-paste and faster application launching are coming, but the company hasn’t seen fit to tell us when they will materialize.

If I wanted that kind of update situation, I would have bought an Android phone. With Windows Phone 7, part of the promise of the platform was that it would get better over time. So far, it hasn’t. The early adopters, the people most likely to champion the phone and show it off to their friends, family, and colleagues, the ones who will build grassroots support for the platform, have been left wanting. Apple managed to get its first bug fix release out within a month, and its first feature release out within two months. That’s the standard Microsoft should be aspiring to—but hasn’t.

What does the Twitterverse say. It’s essentially welcome competition for consumers, some of whom will undoubtedly find Bing’s search vertical approach a refreshing way to find information by context. Where does one park. Guaranteed. Microsoft says that music searches will now include lyrics and playable tracks from more than five million songs which are already available from Zune.

So you can now search for your favorite casual game, and with one click, be playing the game. You get a single play of every song in this 5 million song catalog, and after that 30 second previews. Working with some of the best data sources out there, we now provide detailed information on over 35,000 games, including in depth reviews, cheats and walkthroughs for all your favorite games.

Tracks can only be played once for free, with 30-second samples available thereafter. Microsoft’s search engine just got a whole lot more media-focused with the launch of Bing Entertainment, a new vertical centering on music, movies, TV and games. Bing Games aggregates reviews, cheats and walkthroughs for console and PC titles as well as providing 100 playable casual games right in-line.

As the content on the web has exploded, it has become difficult to navigate and find what you are looking for. Microsoft is adding casual games, more TV content, and Zune music and lyrics to the service. We know from research that people spend 60 hours watching TV online video every single month. Movie tickets are promised to get the similarly easy purchase option, and their will a entirely new entertainment section, which will act as a portal for all forms of entertainment.

A bunch of celebrities (and some not-so-celebrities) turned up on the red carpet on Tuesday, as Microsoft unveiled a bunch of entertainment features for its search engine. Look, we’ll either like them or not, so just tell us what they are. Movies: Plan the perfect night out. In addition to the full Bing answers experience where you can get photos, videos, and even tour dates for your favorite acts, we partnered with our friends at Zune, and are now able to offer full-length streaming for more than 5 million songs. Try it out, tell us what you think. All of this cool stuff is going live right now, with the exception of the TV listings, which will be along in a couple of weeks, and the music playback will ramp up over the next few days. What time is the movie playing. We didn’t stop at lyrics.

Second, hosting the games inline means you can be sure they are actually games and not malware. Microsoft tweaks its search engine, Bing, with updates centered on entertainment such as music, movies, TV and video games. So you can now search for your favorite acts, we partnered with our friends at Zune, and are now able to offer full-length streaming for more than 5 million songs. Try it out, tell us what you think.

People when they watch a show like yours want to say something, and that does conflict with a form I love. Microsoft says it’s also working to provide local TV listings, which should go live in a couple of weeks. Colbert does his joke on knowing Bing is a search engine because he Googled it, which gets Yusuf to say as it ends there “that’s what we’re up against.” Tried to be more visual with the service, which seems to be helping especially with children.

The changes are going live now, though some features will take days or weeks to appear. No, he says, we use technology to create stuff. Story telling has been community experience from the start of time. I looked for NCIS, one of the four areas focused on: shopping, health and travel were the others. Bing born out of vision that it could do more than let people just search but instead harness knowledge from the web and make decision. We’re in the middle of growing pains as a culture. That’s right, search for a song, get to hear it play full length. We have an audience.

I think Microsoft is on the right track with these changes. Elisabeth: He has a million jobs. First, if you try a query that Bing recognizes as musically inclined, it will include links to play relevant songs–in many cases, entire recordings, not just 30-second previews–and view their lyrics. But I think we’re heading back to wehre storytelling came from, a communal thing. Bing has gained links to song lyrics, since as the post says, over 70 percent of people use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10 percent say they have a right to how it will end. A query for “Toy Story 3,” meanwhile, brought up a Bing page showing the episode at a more normal size. After all, this vertical is devoted to entertainment. Phil (who’s last name I didn’t catch, sorry, gaming from Microsoft, I’ll add later).

Ryan asks T Bone about music and where things might be going. I don’t see this live yet. T Bone says machines will replace human intelligence, he jokes. Ryan makes a remark about Bing.

That’s “potentially” because some of these features aren’t working yet.

To Matt.

It must be fun I would think to work on something for a year and have it premiere and look at the real time stream and see how peopel are reacting to it almost like a play. You can play a full stream once, and thereafter for 30 seconds. Movie highlighted above, but shows how further in the results, you can see a listing of all the A-Team episodes online. You get showtimes near you. But if you’re hard core, can do searches like Halo ODST and get things like reviews or walkthroughs or get cheat codes.

Let Bing’s New Features Entertain You

To give Bing a boost, Microsoft’s bringing in the muscle of its modest entertainment empire.

New features on the Bing search engine allow users to stream music, watch videos and play games all within the Bing domain. The changes are going live now, though some features will take days or weeks to appear.

For music, Bing now takes a page from Google and streams more than 5 million tracks directly from the browser. For example, a search for “Lady Gaga” brings up four tracks powered by Zune, along with a link for lyrics. Users can listen to entire songs once, then 30-second samples after that. In addition to streaming music, Bing also lists concerts and news atop the usual list of search results.

Searching for certain television shows also returns links to full episodes. I looked for NCIS, one of the shows that Bing now hosts on its own domain, and got four thumbnail video links above the fold, each leading to a full episode. Microsoft says it’s also working to provide local TV listings, which should go live in a couple of weeks.

Gamers will also get a helping hand if they search for specific titles in Microsoft’s online gaming portal. For instance, a search for “Bejeweled” brings up a short description of the game, a tiny screenshot and a link to “Play Now.”

Microsoft also added theater listings and other information for planning a movie night, but movies are notably absent.

I think Microsoft is on the right track with these changes. If I was actually looking to play Bejeweled or watch an episode of NCIS, searching on Google would’ve revealed more cryptic results, and I would’ve had to dig through a couple of links or refine my search. The idea behind Bing Entertainment is to act like a content portal without actually being one. Because Internet users access so much by search, this seems like a natural fit.

Now, Bing just needs more. With the exception of music, I had to search for very specific terms just to see Bing’s new features; typing random shows or games into the search bar probably won’t yield any new results. Microsoft has the system in place for Bing to become a top-notch entertainment portal. All it needs now is the content.

Google to Debut Their Own iTunes Competitor Through Their Search Engine …

Back in the day if you wanted to buy music without leaving your home you were pretty much forced to use an illegal service such as the late, great Napster. As of late, companies are stepping in to fill the gap and offer completely legal, paid for digital downloads. Some prominent companies that are doing such things are Apple with their immensely popular iTunes and Amazon.com with their own music digital distribution website. Sure, there are still illegal ways to download music and there probably always will be but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

What we are talking about here, however, is new competitors in the digital music industry. Apple can’t take all of the glory and who better than Google to let them know that? Back at their I/O conference, we told you that Google would be updating the Android marketplace to also include a song section. This means if you have an Android powered device running the new Marketplace, you’d be able to download a song through the service. Easy enough.

However, it seems like this isn’t all Google has in the pipeline as rumors have surfaced today that say Google is working on a full fledged digital distribution platform for music. At launch (whenever that may be) Google will provide a website that will allow users to not only purchase and download tracks, but also stream them (much like you would find over at Lala or Pandora.

Furthermore, considering Google is first and foremost a search engine based company, these reports also suggest that the company will provide song downloads straight through search results. So, if this pans out to buy a song all you’ll have to do is go to Google, search for the song you want and presumably the first result will be a link to Google’s music store where you can download the song.

I don’t know about you guys, but if Google can price their tracks competitively enough, I’m thinkin’ Apple’s iTunes is going to have a worthy competitor on their hands. Finally.