The Windows Phone 7 Thread

[soumalidon]

Well i recently got the Omnia 7 and am loving it even with all the limitations I think its time to start a thread for these devices and the OS.



Here is something interesting



IDC: Windows Phone 7 marketplace ramping up

[vishalrao]

Just got the HTC HD7 in my grubby hands, posting a show-off thread shortly

Very first impression is - awesome smooth UI, fun to play around with - this is exactly the challenge iPhone needs and if Android gets there ASAP the fruits are in big trouble.

[soumalidon]

did u get GPRS to work??

[vishalrao]

I have yet to place my SIM in the device, will do it some time tomorrow (will be on the road today)... what about you? Any issues with the GPRS?

[soumalidon]

yup am not able to get it to work and have u tried the various features in the LIVE account? eg locate phone, ring phone,lock phone etc??

[vishalrao]

i didnt try the others (didnt want to make ringing noise at nite) just the lock phone worked have not yet enabled location/gps - will do that tomorrow



--- Updated Post - Automerged ---



My Airtel SIM worked fine including GPRS (slow as usual though), this is in Pune. It detected and configured the stuff automagically after rebooting, enabled data and 3G option (which I dont have), did not have to enter any APN and such stuff.



Also, FindMyPhone works, able to locate phone on map from the windowsphone.live.com site and also make it ring and lock it with a user message

[vishalrao]

After a few days of usage, I'm really loving this device, and like you said - even with all the "limitations".



*** Please do post you own points of interest/annoyance that you notice. Now is a good time to send feedback directly to MS via their websites (will try to locate a good point of contact) so that they bring out decent fixes/imrovements to the OS and apps.



* I think this thing does "crash" in some places but does a good job of hiding/recovering it Like some apps will quit and return to the previous menu and you have to go back though it seems to return to where it was, like the GMail email thing and the "email accounts" settings page. Also the main live tiles home screen the "live-ness" goes away where the tiles become plain colour with names and no customer pic/colour/animations running for a few seconds, then it starts off again. The UI still is working/responsive meaning I can scroll/navigate between menus/apps in this state.



* Internet Explorer is very good/smooth though looks like it has some catching up to do compared to latest Opera/Firefox mobiles. For non-mobile optimised sites sometimes the font is too small and the screen width/does not "re-flow" the text and you have to scroll left/right which is annoying since it does not fit the screen width. Opera mobile on my N900 and the Firefox mobile beta with a nice extenstion does this font-sizing/re-flowing thing and pretty much even the worst non-mobile sites are at least readable if not navigable.



* Haven't used the Bing maps/GPS too much, but looks quite nice/smooth again here, will try running it while on the road next time and not driving myself.



* Sadly (or funnily) the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync/Outlook support does not connect/work with my companies Exchange email (my N900 worked fine) - tried to ensure I have the right settings - sent email to my IT support - lets see what they have to say. Other emails (Live/Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo) work well including fancy spam/advertisement emails with big pics and attachments work well.



* The Adobe PDF reader application is slow/basic but at least you can read PDFs when you need to. The MS Office mobile handles even the latest DOCX/XLSX formats though does not support opening password-protected files. Havent tried editing files to see how user-friendly that part is, but reading is fine.



* The incoming messages has this neat but some times annoying thing where it displays the message right at the top of the screen even if you're screen is closed/locked - privacy issue - don't want to get any embarrassing/personal texts for all to see



* The device has a digital compass, though can't seem to see/display it anywhere in the OS or apps - apparently MS has not released a developer API that can be used to access it - should come in the next update and at least one app promised to update once its available. Would be nice to see the Maps app autorotate based on your direction you are facing. Currently you can calculate speed/direction if you move around while GPS coordinates are being sampled.



* I just LOVE all the subtle animations/effects both 2D and 3D and also the fact that they are smooth and flicker-free, as good as, if not better than the experience on iOS



TODO/wishlist:



* Check out any messaging/IM apps like Pidgin for multi-protocol support in one place - currently I only see a Live/MSN app and another one for YahooIM.

* Want to see other OpenDocument/LibreOffice file format support - actually haven't checked it yet - maybe MS Office app already reads it?

* FIX THE DAMN MS EXCHANGE EMAIL SUPPORT K THX PLZ BAI

* Some nice VPN/terminal programs perhaps?



I guess you need to rely more on third-party apps in the MarketPlace to mature more than anything special from MS itself for the OS. Looking forward to the next two announced updates where they promise CutNPast support, better multitasking, improved user customisability etc.



Sadly half the fun disappears when there is no connectivity (don't have 3G yet) and GPRS/EDGE is too slow.



--- Updated Post - Automerged ---



Also noticed the OS does not have indic fonts so any apps/browser/facebook etc where people post messages/emails with Hindi shows as blocks/squares. Visited baidu.com and it displays chinese characters apparently just fine. I'm sure they'll fix this stuff in upcoming updates, certainly by the time India launch happens.



Tried doing a search in the Gmail built in app, at first it looked like it was not doing anything and when I clicked the search hardware button it did a web search, was disappointed. Started to log in to gmail web mobile site to search for emails. Then had a thought, went into Hotmail app and there it searched emails fine! Was thinking to myself "SUE THE EVIL EMPIRE BASTARDS AGAIN" for crippling gmail search but then went back into the gmail app and realised the search was happening just app was unresponsive while it was scanning around 5000 conversations (15,000 emails) in my Inbox!



So search works quite well, no need to sue these buggers.



Then I checked my gmail account in desktop browser and see there are about 15k emails in my inbox and perhaps about 50k emails archived using just under 1GB storage.



So selected the "All Mail" folder in the Gmail WP7 app and started to sync it to see how far it can handle it, it synced up to about 15k emails then I dont know what I did it started counting back down to ZERO and again started syncing currently reached 5k emails, will leave it for a few hours to see how that goes.



Next stress-test would be running Internet Explorer on various sites with as many tabs as it allows/can handle to see stability/performance in that department.



I've already mentioned the UI/tiles appear to crash or something even though the UI/menus themselves still respond and move around/animate, so some sort of nice recovery.



I wish Microsoft would publish videos/blogs with some technical details of how they engineered this OS like they used to do during Windows Vista development on Channel 9 under Jim Allchin - since Steve Sinofsky (hope I got the names right) took over for Win7 development everything went back behind closed doors.



I would really be interested to know technical details about the OS guts, like I'm sure they're running multiple threads for UI/apps so it works smoothly without interfering/pausing each other and have basic multitasking in the OS itself for things like background syncing, listening to GSM radio for incoming calls etc.

[soumalidon]

I am not able to get the live account stuff to work :-/ ah man.

[vishalrao]

You mean for getting access to MarketPlace and apps and stuff? What steps did you follow and what error/problem are you seeing? Worked for me



BTW, the MS Exchange ActiveSync corporate email problem I was getting has a solution which works for me: When attempting to sync email on Windows Phone 7 you receive error code 85010001



Silly me for not doing a simple search on the error code and banging my head and trying to get help from my highly *competent* IT helpdesk who simply replied to my lengthy descriptive email with a one-liner "Sorry, we don't support HTC Windows" heh.

[soumalidon]

no the market place works fine... i meant the lock phone, ring phone etc... not able to get it to work.

[vishalrao]

Maybe if you ensure the "location" option in settings is enabled and the "find my phone" option in settings has both items selected "save location" and also "better results", then step outdoors for some time and then go back to windowsphone.live.com site and try again?

[djmykey]

Silly me for not doing a simple search on the error code and banging my head and trying to get help from my highly *competent* IT helpdesk who simply replied to my lengthy descriptive email with a one-liner "Sorry, we don't support HTC Windows" heh.

First of all eternal pwnage for Windows Mobile 7 not able to support MS Exchange OOB.



Secondly, please spare those poor IT Helpdesk ppl. First of all you bought a phone which is less known and secondly if they come up with a solution to one problem its a tendency of the ppl to bug them till eternity as if the support guy's have developed / made the Windows Mobile 7 OS.



This comes from personal experience (Psst... me a System Engineer too )

[Sei]

^ Yeah Vishal Sir, you should empathize with the hard-working Exchange administrators!!! Look how you made Michelle so senti!

[vishalrao]

Hey, I've worked in tech support and customer support for many years, I know how it feels

This is how it feels: Take A Number Hand Grenade Stock Photo 57230341 : Shutterstock

[soumalidon]

Maybe if you ensure the "location" option in settings is enabled and the "find my phone" option in settings has both items selected "save location" and also "better results", then step outdoors for some time and then go back to windowsphone.live.com site and try again?

did all that. how long do u have to be outside??

[vishalrao]

Being outside was just a thought (few seconds should be enough) because my Nokia N900 has problems getting GPS signal indoors and HTC HD7 reportedly has same problems, though it worked for me indoors. Could be some other setting hidden away somewhere. Have you run Zune software and done a connect/sync via that? It also allows you to "name" your phone which I did while syncing a few songs/videos, not sure if that enabled something.

[soumalidon]

hmmm i did all that. Sometimes syncing acts weird... have to disconnect and reconnect the phone a few times. I jus wish those LIVE options would work hmmm



--- Updated Post - Automerged ---



hey i jus got all those features to work!!! he he...

[vishalrao]

heh, cool



in the mean time, im downloading some games off xbox live. initially i thought i could only get the crappy free stuff, but pretty much most of the paid ones have trials too, so checking out stuff like assassin's creed, particle sim, sims 3, stuff like that... not for the gaming, but more to check out the 3D graphics performance/quality of the GPU.

[soumalidon]

ya the cool thing about the market is that u can try out the apps assassins creed is nice but gotta get used to controls.

[vishalrao]

Games are nifty to look at the graphics and all... I might actually get a couple full versions too, like the "TimeScape" and "WomensMurderClub" heh, seems to be interesting mystery/adventure games



Also tried Shazam on the "gryotrance" song I have been trying to identify for a long time, worked here too - which was IDed in this thread: http://www.techenclave.com/general-t...ng-180766.html



Now I need a proper Google Reader app like the one in Apple store, the free "Simpi Reader" sucks totally, currently visit the mobile site in IE which is OK but not ideal thanks to the recuring small font and page width/reflow/wrapping problems which are there in IE and the mail client too.



Now that reminds me, I need to start visiting these forums, like TE and others to check out the experience there, these sites usually totally suck on mobile, even the iPod Touch