I'm looking forward to seeing how these devices play in real world usage. The two things that jump out at me immediately.
1. Most important: On a device with a small screen pixels should be precious. It worries me that many of the built in apps use a significant and unchanging amount of the screen to tell you what app you are in. I don't know if it will really impact usability, maybe there is enough screen real estate to go around, but it seems wasteful. Perhaps the fact that many of the different app's UIs (especially the list UI and the list of tiles UI) look very very similar makes it necessary for you to have a 1/5 screen reminder that you are in the photos app and not the marketplace?
2. The multiple message selection is the best example of this, but there are others: many of the possible interactions with on screen elements are completely hidden and non-obvious. It would be difficult to discover that you can manage multiple messages by tapping on the far left hand side of a message. Contrast this with the iPhone, where you tap edit or whatever, and the message management UI comes on screen. It reminds me a little of the Anti-Mac interface (http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html) in that it is actually faster (you don't have to go and hit a button that takes up space on the screen in order to start moving messages around) but at the price of discoverability. Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users?
> Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users?
To use Windows Mobile, you had to deal with ActiveSync. To use ActiveSync, you have to be fairly tolerant and technically proficient. For example, when upgrading the OS, you have the responsibility(1) of manually backing up all your contacts, data, apps.
Contrast this with iTunes (yes, iTunes isn't elegant) - when iOS 4 came out - it downloaded it and asked if you wanted to upgrade your phone and did so without losing settings, data, apps. Now, Android supposedly can do OTA updates. The point here is if WinMo7 requires ActiveSync - it is severely behind the times.
I'm hoping WinMo7 won't require a user to use ActiveSync and it is all stored securely in the Windows Live cloud. I usually used lots of colorful adjectives when dealing with ActiveSync. I had a boss who was convinced to get a WinMo device by a co-worker; she lasted only about a month (ActiveSync).
There is no ActiveSync component to WinPhone7 .. The data (photos, contacts, documents, settings, etc) is all synced up to cloud via a live.com account (which even includes the newly announced feature of tracking the phone in case of loss or theft ala mobileme)
The data can also be synced via the Zune software on a desktop much like iTunes (but Zune Software is a far better experience in my opinion when it comes to music and video).
Ok, that's not at all what I mean by being designed for an expert user, though. The example I gave shows windows phone 7 taking the speed side of the speed vs obviousness tradeoff. Are there other examples if it doing that?
Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS.
There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
The UI doesn't follow a conventional way how people use UI in any form of mobile devices. There are differences in IOS, Android, Blackberry and PalmOS but those differences aren't huge. If you use either of those devices/OS who should be able to pickup any of the other devices relatively easily. At least this has been my personal experience with Android, IOS and WebOS. What Windows Mobile 7 is doing is a fundamentally different way of how you use a mobile device. You could argue that when IOS was first introduced it was also a different way of how people uses mobile phones. But it was different in the sense that it was not confusing, it was very intuitive.
In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor. Who thought big blocks of animated tiles taking up huge screen real-state to be a good idea? I think this is also a good example of different design philosophy with MSFT and Apple. IOS with its new update introduced folder with the goal of giving you more screen real-state so that if you have a lot of apps you don't have to keep sliding and MSFT adds huge block of tiles (and animated!) that will require you to slide around to find what you need.
It would have made an interesting showcase for concept design that car manufacturers always make, but I don't see this being much practical at all.
> In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor.
And that's the point, Albert Shum, a Nike-alum and now one of the folks behind this UI, is making. It's less about chrome/gloss but more about typography. Personally, I like it a lot. The "WP7 version of" Metro-UI seems to be inspired by direction signs (for travelers) you see at airports, train stations etc. that help people find their way.
>In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor.
Is this just your personal preference speaking? I actually was impressed when I first saw the UI, and the article describes it as useful and functional.
Of course its my personal opinion. I don't claim to speak for everyone nor did I run any public poll. Everything I said in my comment is my own opinion from my own experience (with other mobile OS), unless otherwise stated.
No, that's why I asked. You were stating something in direct contradiction with the article, and (going purely on prior) you probably haven't actually used a WP7 phone, so the implication was that you had more than opinion behind your comment.
iPhone is still basically in a class of its own for UI elegance and consistency but compared to the typical third party enhanced Android experience WM7 is looking pretty good in my opinion. At least it's consistent.
The UI doesn't follow a conventional way how people use UI in any form of mobile devices.
With this logic taken to the extreme, we'd all still be using phones with a typical Nokia-interface. I'm very glad we don't.
What Windows Mobile 7 is doing is a fundamentally different way of how you use a mobile device. You could argue that when IOS was first introduced it was also a different way of how people uses mobile phones. But it was different in the sense that it was not confusing, it was very intuitive.
Just noting I read this part and that I agree.
In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor.
Having used a Windows 7 phone I have to disagree. It's very simple to use. It may lack a "Wow" factor but it is sufficiently different to be interesting.
IOS with its new update introduced folder with the goal of giving you more screen real-state so that if you have a lot of apps you don't have to keep sliding and MSFT adds huge block of tiles
The Windows Phone 7 idea is that you shouldn't need as many "apps", but that apps should plug in to "hubs". I like this idea, but getting back to the actual implementation my personal complaint about this is that too few of the hubs on the phone are extensible by applications.
That's exactly what I was thinking...something like Android 2.1's pinch to zoom out on the home screen which brings up miniature versions of the 7 screens you could get to by scrolling left/right.
I was at one of the early developer sessions for Windows Phone 7, and even as a professional .NET developer I wasn't convinced I wanted to develop for this phone.
I'm replacing my iPhone (3G) now and it's not for a Win7 phone, it's for an HTC Desire. Even to me, a .NET developer, Android seems like a better platform to develop for.
IMO Microsoft copied pretty much everything Apple did with iPhone,with a subtle taste of too little too late. Ofcourse I would love to be proven wrong, but for the time being I'm going for Android and Java, despite all its shortcomings compared to C#.
Interesting - I wonder why the difference exists; Engadget seems to like Win7 (though they are not ecstatic), whereas other sources seem to despise it. I wonder where the difference lies.
I do hope MS the best - the more competition we have in this sphere the better, and if the responsiveness/performance of the OS is as good as Engadget says, there will finally be some hard competition for the iPhone (Android is great, but I've yet to use one where the UI isn't sluggish, and it really detracts from the experience).
Overall, I'm quite impressed. They've aimed at a similar target as Apple did with the original iPhone. Make it fast, clean and strip away as many features as you dare.
That would all be impressive if this was 2006, unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. It is symptomatic of bigger problems in Microsoft's innovation lag.
Both the IPhone and Android are far from perfect devices. If MS can pull off an OS as responsive as IOS, be intuitive and simple, I could see many preferring it or at least considering it over other devices, despite less functionality. I'm not hugely familiar with the UI, but I do believe there are significant differences in the UI other than a different overlay. Also, the fact that they haven't already packed a billion features into the phone is a BIG plus in my opinion (as long as they have the essentials).
Simplicity and ease-of-use have become key in today's world.
I wonder how the apps are going to play out. XNA is used for the games and there are plenty of shops out there creating for xbox. It looks like porting existing XNA games to the phone will be fairly straightforward. I'm expecting Windows Phone 7 to be a big player in handheld gaming because of XNA/Xbox.
I'm primarily a .Net/Silverlight dev myself so I'm biased but the core development experience is better than Apple/Google IMHO. They do need to get off their asses and release more controls (like the pivot) or they aren't going to have standardized UI across apps.
This is where MS can get the upper hand. If they are open enough with their app store, they can get developers there as the developer experience is going to be very good.
Its a chicken and egg thing though, most serious developers won't code for it until there is a market. Though they will get a fair few .NET developers who haven't done any Android or Objective-C iPhone stuff.
Yes and no. I have to admit I hoped for the ability to install any app you like (like in former versions of WinMo). Sadly that is no longer the case.
Silverlight/XNA development is fully OK for me, but it seems a tad restricted. Especially without the ability to run Silverlight in the browser, something which really, really surprised me when I heard it (at least that's what I got told on the Windows Phone 7 developer session).
The 2D UI is a big risk considering the competition. iPhone 1.0 had a nice 3D feel to it. The WP7 OS seems very responsive and snappy. But the lack of wow factor might be because of the 2D UI and monochrome color scheme. It lacks depth and looks plain.
Even though the graphic elements are strictly 2D, the interaction can have a depth component that's not obvious in screenshots. 2D layers can be animated in 3D space, and distorted to break the flatness.
The Engadget review mentions that the WP7 UI makes efficient use of a parallax effect where overlapping layers scroll at a different pace. That's a good example of a "2.5D" depth effect.
And with "do this for me now" use cases, quite common for phones (such as "did someone just tell me something relevant in that message I just got" or "what was that building number again?" while walking down a street thinking about some larger goal), I find visual clarity all the more appealing. So "plain" might be just what the use cases call for. Several icons or buttons all made to be 3-d and pretty with candy-round edges and bright colors, each wanting to impress me with slickness or compete to stick in my memory better are just more distraction from that one shape or word my visual cortex is primed by the task to find.
What makes you think the color can't be changed? There are some other pictures of it being pink -- which makes me think the color is customizeable by the user.
there are various color options for fonts/tiles/etc (green, orange, cyan, pink, red i believe and maybe 1 more) but the background is either black or white.
1. Most important: On a device with a small screen pixels should be precious. It worries me that many of the built in apps use a significant and unchanging amount of the screen to tell you what app you are in. I don't know if it will really impact usability, maybe there is enough screen real estate to go around, but it seems wasteful. Perhaps the fact that many of the different app's UIs (especially the list UI and the list of tiles UI) look very very similar makes it necessary for you to have a 1/5 screen reminder that you are in the photos app and not the marketplace?
2. The multiple message selection is the best example of this, but there are others: many of the possible interactions with on screen elements are completely hidden and non-obvious. It would be difficult to discover that you can manage multiple messages by tapping on the far left hand side of a message. Contrast this with the iPhone, where you tap edit or whatever, and the message management UI comes on screen. It reminds me a little of the Anti-Mac interface (http://www.useit.com/papers/anti-mac.html) in that it is actually faster (you don't have to go and hit a button that takes up space on the screen in order to start moving messages around) but at the price of discoverability. Are there other examples of Windows Phone 7 being designed for expert/informed users?