A few questions from a current iPhone user looking to switch to WP7

[mobster011]

I love what I see I the Titan and want to make the jump to WP7 but have a few questions...

1. What is the best manner to sync contacts, calendars and files on a Windows phone with both my PC and iPad? On iPhone I used MobileMe and now they've introduced iCloud.
2. What is used to manage songs? Is it as user friendly as iTunes?


Finally, some for those who currently own a Windows phone but previously had an iPhone...

1. What do you like better about WP7 over iOS?
2. What do you miss about iOS that WP7 doesn't do as well or doesn't do at all?

Thanks for any help!

 

[MannLou]

As a former iPhone guy I feel I can answer a few of of these.

To synch, I use my work Exchange account. I can always export the contacts and import them into my live account if ever needed.

Zune is the iTunes-like tool. I personally think it's better and with a monthly Zune pass for $10/month it's a better deal because I can download a much as I like and see if like the music before buying in permanently.

I think overall speed and look of the OS makes it a winner for me. Everyone is always impressed at he fast I can go back to a previous app or screen. I've seen a lot of folks look back at their iPhones and seem to wonder when things will change for them.

Only thing I miss might be a notification center. I've worked around that by having the apps I have running in the background on my main screen.

Overall I'm very happy I switched and am looking forward to Windows 8 and the proliferation of tablets. Should be interesting.

Sent from my kick-*** TITAN using Board Express

 

[boneycat]

I do miss visual voice mail though...

 

[WPGenius]

With every phone, they have their likes/dislikes, but youll be satisfied overall with WP7.

Zune- Is alot better than iTunes to me, its quick, fluid, straight to the point, and with the Zune Pass, you CANT GO WRONG!

Microsoft Exchange might be the best route as far as syncing goes, its very stable, at least on my phone it is. I have my college email synced right through with no issues at all.

What made me jump ship to WP7 was the simplicity. It JUST Works!!!!

 

[baseballbert]

Came over from ios, here's what I thought:

Missed
Apps, there were two I used for business that aren't on WP. I especially missed getting sports scores notifications.

Hardware, the iPhone (until the Lumia 800) was a killer device to give up.

Ecosystem, cases/docks/accessories

Facebook is a lot better.

iTunes has more variety at the moment in terms of podcasts, TV shows, movies



WP Win
OS
- email better
- keyboard better
- managing contacts easier, and much faster to get in touch with them.
- set up was a breeze
- much easier to sync
- Office, LOVE editing docs on the phone
- Skydrive rocks
- social integration is superior to both Android and iOS.
- LOVE pinning things on home screen, especially pictures.

If Nokia puts out a killer 900 model, this thing should begin to pick up a lot more steam. It's getting great reviews in both media and users, it just needs to continue to evolve.

It's an awesome os, you will not regret your decision. It's kind of nice not having the same phone as everyone else.

 

[mobster011]

As a former iPhone guy I feel I can answer a few of of these.

To synch, I use my work Exchange account. I can always export the contacts and import them into my live account if ever needed.

Zune is the iTunes-like tool. I personally think it's better and with a monthly Zune pass for $10/month it's a better deal because I can download a much as I like and see if like the music before buying in permanently.

I think overall speed and look of the OS makes it a winner for me. Everyone is always impressed at he fast I can go back to a previous app or screen. I've seen a lot of folks look back at their iPhones and seem to wonder when things will change for them.

Only thing I miss might be a notification center. I've worked around that by having the apps I have running in the background on my main screen.

Overall I'm very happy I switched and am looking forward to Windows 8 and the proliferation of tablets. Should be interesting.

Sent from my kick-*** TITAN using Board Express

Is Exchange a free service?

Does the phone provide any notifications? Like appointments and reminders set in my calendar?

I do miss visual voice mail though...

What is visual voice mail? Like FaceTime?

 

[Kahuna Cowboy]

You can add your contacts to Hotmail or Gmail too and import them.

I have a 4S and a Titan, the Titan is just joy to operate and look at. After awhile you will hate looking at iOS. It's so static and 5 years ago. But I do miss the app selection and lower prices overall for apps.

A lot of stuff will be familiar, Zune is like iTunes, Skydrive like iCloud and photo stream, but you have more control than Apple affords you. I do still wish TellMe was more like Siri with. Being able to tell the phone to set an alarm, set a timer, etc... But it will come.

 

[Forgewizard]

Does the phone provide any notifications? Like appointments and reminders set in my calendar?

Yes! as well as text messages, voice mal counts, any subscribed forum notices sent to email, yu can pin individual email accounts to the screen, or combine them all as one linked account. I keep them separate and get notices for each one as well as a running count on each pinned tile.

These counts are visible on the lock screen too!

 

[Duvi]

I do miss visual voice mail though...

Use YouMail ... it's a better replacement IMO.

 

[Rhody#WP]

Use YouMail ... it's a better replacement IMO.

Is it? Don't you have to pay for call forwarding and then pay for the minutes to YouMail?

 

[power5]

I used google to get my contacts from my PC to the internet mail service. Export from win7 contacts. Then I went to gmail and imported my contacts from that file. Then I went to my live account and imported my contacts over from gmail. For some reason you can not import contacts into hotmail like you can to gmail. That is why the extra step was needed.

Does the phone provide any notifications? Like appointments and reminders set in my calendar?

Your agenda for the day will show up on your calendar live tile.


What is visual voice mail? Like FaceTime?

VVM is the ability to see a voice mail in a list. On ATT there is no VVM for wp7 so you have to do the old school method of calling voicemail and going through all the audio steps to listen to your new mail. Then pressing 7 to delete or some other number to listen again. Very annoying to me and one of my biggest gripes with ATT more than wp7.

Read my responses in bold. ^^^

You can add your contacts to Hotmail or Gmail too and import them.

I have a 4S and a Titan, the Titan is just joy to operate and look at. After awhile you will hate looking at iOS. It's so static and 5 years ago. But I do miss the app selection and lower prices overall for apps.

A lot of stuff will be familiar, Zune is like iTunes, Skydrive like iCloud and photo stream, but you have more control than Apple affords you. I do still wish TellMe was more like Siri with. Being able to tell the phone to set an alarm, set a timer, etc... But it will come.

There is no timer so TellMe will never be able to do that.

Is it? Don't you have to pay for call forwarding and then pay for the minutes to YouMail?

I have not put in any CC info and have gotten voice mails with magik mail app. It uses your youmail account.



What I like better about wp7 is that its fresh and different. I am not a power user so I never wanted android too much. No more pages and folders full of icons. Not really anything that wp7 does better than iOS, but it does it differently and I like the way it does most.

I miss a few things. My bank has no app so I have to use mobile web which is terrible, but thats my banks fault. So far a replacement for airvideo media streaming has not been successful for me. I miss that phone calls that I miss do not say where they are from. They give the phone number but do not link the area code to a city. I also miss how easy it was to find a city for weather with the supplied app. HTC hub sucks. My tile has the area I am in. But when I try to add that area as a city it will not connect. So it knows where I am and what the weather is, but will not let me add it for when i am not in this area. Does not make much sense.

I do not miss iOS much. VVM is one of the biggest things though.

 

[nomoore]

Does the phone provide any notifications? Like appointments and reminders set in my calendar?

What is visual voice mail? Like FaceTime?

Yes you get notifications. They put a notification at the top of your screen that you can touch to go to that app. But there is no message center to go to to see all the notifications you missed. You only get to see the latest one. However you can pin most apps with a notification as tiles on your home screen and then the tiles will notify you.

Visual Voice Mail puts all of your voice mail messages in a list where you can choose which one you want to listen to. If you want something like FaceTime then try Tango. It is available on Android and iPhone too.

 

[BostonSammy]

You didn't say whether you have a mac or PC... There is no Zune software for mac, but there is an iTunes connector app.

I have a PC with both iTunes and Zune. It syncs all my music perfectly.

 

[mike311]

i believe that win7 has visual voice mail, however the carriers have yet to enable it.

 

[mobster011]

One thing that bothers me with the iPhone is that when I delete an email from the Mail app, it sometimes doesn't get deleted from the server, and it shows back up on my phone.

Can someone explain why this happens? Will I have the same problem with WP7? Is there any way to ensure a deleted email from my phone gets deleted from the server entirely and doesn't reappear either on my phone or on online?

 

[power5]

I have had intermittent email problems like that with my iPhone too. Not sure what causes it because I had my POP accounts set to delete from server when my mobile app deletes them. So any time it syncs it should delete the server emails to match what is on the phone. Not sure where the disconnect is, but my guess is the email server.

 

[Matthew Mazzenga]

Use YouMail ... it's a better replacement IMO.

My only real problem with YouMail is that, while my voicemails only show up there, my missed calls show up in both the YouMail tile AND my phone tile. So I have two different places I have to clear missed calls from. When I'm at work, I have to miss a lot of calls. When I have the opportunity to check voicemails and return calls, I often have a lot of missed calls, and now I have to delete them all twice....and YouMail doesn't have a "clear all" option like the phone app does, so I have to clear them all one at a time.

I just wish AT&T would enable VVM. If for no other reason than the fact that I already have a phone app/tile on my phone from where I can access my voicemails (just not visually). I shouldn't have to have a whole separate app just for VVM.

 

[Verkunder]

My only real problem with YouMail is that, while my voicemails only show up there, my missed calls show up in both the YouMail tile AND my phone tile. So I have two different places I have to clear missed calls from. When I'm at work, I have to miss a lot of calls. When I have the opportunity to check voicemails and return calls, I often have a lot of missed calls, and now I have to delete them all twice....and YouMail doesn't have a "clear all" option like the phone app does, so I have to clear them all one at a time.

I just wish AT&T would enable VVM. If for no other reason than the fact that I already have a phone app/tile on my phone from where I can access my voicemails (just not visually). I shouldn't have to have a whole separate app just for VVM.

Just remove the Phone tile. Unless you're inputting numbers (read: non-contacts) then I don't see the reason to keep it there.

 

[J4rrod]

Like others said, Exchange to sync contacts. And if you think iTunes is user-friendly, you'll be blown away by Zune.

And yes you get notifications at the top of the screen, and at that point you can tap it to go into the app or swipe it away. Very unobtrusive.

 

[Matthew Mazzenga]

Unless you're inputting numbers

I do. Often.