One of the huge benefits is the MS Live ID syncing for your contacts. MS doesn't sell the info and it fluidly links everything between phone and the Live account. The new Outlook.com setup is very similar to how things work on WP7.5 and likely in WP8. So the experience is consistent and the grey mail setup is unparalleled.
I personally love the fluid syncing of Skydrive. All of my Excel, Word, PPT, and OneNote stuff is on my PC but also synced with SkyDrive and accessible via MS Office on WP7.5. I have my entire documents directory available via Skydrive. I also love the Skydrive sharing feature. I can take a doc from Skydrive via my WP and share it via email.
The People Hub is also useful even if you don't do the social networking. Someone listed in your contact list will have a full history of communication presented to you - phone calls, emails, and text messages; as long as those things have not been deleted. It goes way beyond a threaded message.
The podcast functionality is built into the music player. You can easily subscribe or individually download. Management is easy too, allowing you to determine how many podcasts you want to sync automatically, if any.
And the music is terrific. I'm a Zune Pass user (old school - have the $15 a month plan where I get to keep 10 songs a month permanently and download or stream from a library of millions), so music is a cinch.
Some people have already mentioned the scanner (found under the search button), but there's more there. Local Scout has been mentioned, but the phone also has a built in musical listening program that communicates with Bing. With Zune Pass (soon to be Xbox Music Pass), it is pretty seamless. Hear a song you like and let the phone listen - and it often picks it up just fine even in somewhat noisy places like restaurants. It will tell me the name of the song and artist, give me the album, and give me a direct link to download via MS - and with Zune Pass I can grab the song as part of my subscription usually. Or, if I don't wish to download over my cell network, the phone stores a list of the songs it has detected so I can easily go back and download later when I'm on wifi.
The barcode scanner is fantastic when you're out shopping. Scan a product barcode and you'll be given reviews of it and, even better, you will often have local prices come up so you may find a nearby store with a cheaper price thanks to its integration with Local Scout.
Also coming with WP8 is voice command for apps. WP has had app launching via voice since the beginning, but now developers can build in voice commands. So, if Amazon builds it this way, I will be able to say "open Kindle 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" from the start screen and the Kindle app will open to that book - and, like Kindle is everywhere else, it will open to the last place I was in it.
The Live Tiles are also very handy on weather apps, news apps, for messaging, and for email. As others have said, WP8 will let you set the size to emphasize what is important to you. Make email a BIG tile and you'll see flashes of your email messages in the tile. Same for txt messages. This allows you to set priorities instead of having to open up each app to see what you've got.
I think Windows Phone shines best doing the most basic tasks. It's easy to use and email, txting, phone calls, etc work pretty fluidly. Your most important stuff gets pinned to the Start screen and everything else is easy to find alphabetically in the app list - no need to remember which screen its on. The "find" function also works very well.
Another aspect is the consistent design with pretty much every app. They are not very button or icon centric. Instead they all have a left-right menu system that you can easily flick through. It's hard to describe, but I find it pretty ingenius in daily use and very intuitive.
I personally love the fluid syncing of Skydrive. All of my Excel, Word, PPT, and OneNote stuff is on my PC but also synced with SkyDrive and accessible via MS Office on WP7.5. I have my entire documents directory available via Skydrive. I also love the Skydrive sharing feature. I can take a doc from Skydrive via my WP and share it via email.
The People Hub is also useful even if you don't do the social networking. Someone listed in your contact list will have a full history of communication presented to you - phone calls, emails, and text messages; as long as those things have not been deleted. It goes way beyond a threaded message.
The podcast functionality is built into the music player. You can easily subscribe or individually download. Management is easy too, allowing you to determine how many podcasts you want to sync automatically, if any.
And the music is terrific. I'm a Zune Pass user (old school - have the $15 a month plan where I get to keep 10 songs a month permanently and download or stream from a library of millions), so music is a cinch.
Some people have already mentioned the scanner (found under the search button), but there's more there. Local Scout has been mentioned, but the phone also has a built in musical listening program that communicates with Bing. With Zune Pass (soon to be Xbox Music Pass), it is pretty seamless. Hear a song you like and let the phone listen - and it often picks it up just fine even in somewhat noisy places like restaurants. It will tell me the name of the song and artist, give me the album, and give me a direct link to download via MS - and with Zune Pass I can grab the song as part of my subscription usually. Or, if I don't wish to download over my cell network, the phone stores a list of the songs it has detected so I can easily go back and download later when I'm on wifi.
The barcode scanner is fantastic when you're out shopping. Scan a product barcode and you'll be given reviews of it and, even better, you will often have local prices come up so you may find a nearby store with a cheaper price thanks to its integration with Local Scout.
Also coming with WP8 is voice command for apps. WP has had app launching via voice since the beginning, but now developers can build in voice commands. So, if Amazon builds it this way, I will be able to say "open Kindle 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" from the start screen and the Kindle app will open to that book - and, like Kindle is everywhere else, it will open to the last place I was in it.
The Live Tiles are also very handy on weather apps, news apps, for messaging, and for email. As others have said, WP8 will let you set the size to emphasize what is important to you. Make email a BIG tile and you'll see flashes of your email messages in the tile. Same for txt messages. This allows you to set priorities instead of having to open up each app to see what you've got.
I think Windows Phone shines best doing the most basic tasks. It's easy to use and email, txting, phone calls, etc work pretty fluidly. Your most important stuff gets pinned to the Start screen and everything else is easy to find alphabetically in the app list - no need to remember which screen its on. The "find" function also works very well.
Another aspect is the consistent design with pretty much every app. They are not very button or icon centric. Instead they all have a left-right menu system that you can easily flick through. It's hard to describe, but I find it pretty ingenius in daily use and very intuitive.
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