Considering a move to a WP7 from BB

[Ntropy99]

I used to have a WinMo 5 phone. I really liked the phone for all of the stuff it could do, but the phone call quality was crappy. So I bought a BB, the storm 1, and have had it for the last 2.5 years. It works, but it isn't new anymore. I have been waiting for the next touchscreen BB on Verizon since last August, but who knows when it will come out. I have read the reviews for WP7 and have played with the Trophy in the Vz store, but it isn't real world. My other interest in the trophy is that I love Zune! I had the 30 and now have the HD, why these didn't catch on is beyond me. Ok, so here are my questions: 1) I have read that it doesn't multi-task - so can I read email while on a call switching back and forth?, 2) is 16 Gb's enough? 3) when typing an email, how difficult is it to put the cursor on the spot you want to edit (kinda of digging the idea of having the touchpad for the pointer when the new touchscreen BB comes out, if ever), and 4) is it a good enough phone for the next 2 years.
Thanks.

 

[jimski]

1) Yes you can. Multitasking has more to do with running a third party app, like a music app, in the background while reading email for example. Works fine with built in apps, like Zune though. Mango update will bring multitasking forthird party apps.
2) Guess that's up to you. Ots really about 14.6GB usable, but I have a bunch of photos, videos and music on my phone and still have 6.5GB free. With ZunePass and the ability to stream any music, anytime, you don't need to load everything on your phone. With Mango, SkyDrive, and it's 25GB of storage will be better integrated with the phone which will be a plus.
3) Not perfect, but manageable. Actually before c&p it was a little easier. Hold on the screen till you see a cursor above your finger. Drag to the proper position. The Microsoft keyboard does a very good job of guessing your misspelled words so I don't use it often.
4) That's another one up to you. New hardware this Fall will not be all that different. I would say probably, especially based on your past history.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[Ntropy99]

And now part 2 (although I did have 4 original questions): What will I miss about my blackberry when I switch?

 

[aximtreo]

Hopefully not much. It will take you a while to ge acclimated to WP but I think you will not miss BB at all.

If possible, keep the BB when you get the WP7 phone just to have a direct comparison on how to accomplish the things you have done on the BB.

 

[Duvi]

possibly multitasking until mango comes out... you can technically get multitasking with the apps that come on the phone like: Zune, Mail app, messaging. You can hit the back key to get back to them if you didn't already hit back to exit out of the app.

bbm/im apps. until mango, not sure any "good" im apps will be out.

battery life. that's the trade-off for larger screens and a device you'll use more

 

[zreddog]

Notification LED when you get a new message & battery pulls.

I switched last week from a storm 1 and love the Trophy. I know if/when BB releases an updated touchscreen I will be curious, but I dont see leaving at this point. really easy to learn and adapt to.

Chris

 

[JudgeHolden]

And now part 2 (although I did have 4 original questions): What will I miss about my blackberry when I switch?

A lot. A whole lot. If you search posts by me you'll see me make a few posts mentioning things I despise about this phone. Despise. Stupid non-sensical things that would cost next to nothing to add but for some reason weren't.

As mentioned, the LED indicator is huge (why do we have an LED that doesn't do message indication?) as is push. Not having push, or at least a push option that doesn't destroy battery life, destroys me.

Not having a convenience button is also frustrating.

Not being able to define the snooze on calendar alarms, or open a calendar appointment when the alarm goes off to push it back, is nearly a deal-breaker.

No-touch buttons are way too easily skimmed over while doing something important.

Speakerphone volume isn't as loud as it should be, and there are too many screen touches required to get to it.

Ending a call isn't as easy as it should be, and there are too many screen touches required for it.

No sound profiles. Bogus. Putting the ringer on vibrate doesn't automatically mute games, either.

The settings menu is nearly empty and some of the ones you'd most expect to see in programs just aren't there.

SMS doesn't give you the check signifying delivery, only an SMS delivery confirmation which is treated like a new text and will set off your notifications just as soon as the phone gets back in your pocket. And, for some reason, most of my Verizon contacts will send me a callback number even though it didn't show on my BB. Infuriating to see it below every single post, especially when someone is already in my contact list.

As for your HDD question, quite honestly I do not trust the battery life of the device enough to have it replace my dedicated mp3 player, but I will say that about every single phone out there. I've never once gotten off a plane with a dead iPod, despite spending much of my time on them watching old Simpsons seasons, and if I did I wouldn't much care. I've gotten off two planes with a dead Trophy from gaming, which is a bad habit I'm developing.



So should you switch?
If you type much, yes. Oh god yes. I remember how much I dreaded typing on my Storm and how much I still do on my work Bold. Type something like, I dunno, 'tyoe' and it will pop up a few autocorrect options, none of which are real words. When you finally space away and then click back it will give you real words and you can select 'type.' WP7? Will correct on the fly. Odds are you won't even notice your typo. It's been rare for me to look back and see a sentence that is incorrect. Quite frankly I'm far quicker on this than either the Storm or the Bold, which says a lot. Yes, I'd be quicker on the Bold if it had the same autocorrect software, but it doesn't.
Another nice feature is the ability to pin contacts to the main screen, making for two-touch dialing.
The abundance of games is excellent if you're an airport dweller.
The ability to link contacts, or quickly add information from an email to an existing contact is brilliantly nice and fixes what I considered a dumb whole in BBOS.



If Microsoft does some basic things which may or may not be in Mango (fixing Push to be less of a battery hog, allowing sound profiles, LED notifications and allowing a decent custom snooze - seriously whoever hardcoded that needs to be fired and never allowed to code again) it'll be an amazing OS. Right now it's a very quick and snappy one with some giant holes that are unfathomable as you can't necessarily even blame time constraints for many. Also, more buttons, jerks. Just one more on the side would be nice, and real buttons over these stupid-but-pretty touch buttons.
I don't regret the switch, but there are too many things that make me scratch my head and wonder how Microsoft can be so stupid.

 

[JudgeHolden]

One last one (for now):

A few weeks after you switch to WP7 you'll be on the golf course getting laughed at by two friends with iPhones (in general get used to being laughed at by people with iPhones, even if they have no clue why it's so funny other than "Microsoft, lol!") You'll just look at them like they're idiots and ask them to tell you what the weather is. A few clicks later they'll have it. You'll then whip out your Trophy and show the Weather Channel Live Tile. They'll be somewhat impressed until they realize it shows that it's 65 degrees and the moon is out when it's actually 85 and sunny. Stupid Live Tile stopped updating an hour ago.

Then your fourth, the guy with the Storm 2 who had been the last person you used BBM with, will take his phone out and show his Weatherbug app perfectly updating his icon to show the proper temperature. Groaning, you'll recall that you had the same app about 2 or 3 Storms ago and suddenly scramble to remember what is so cool about Live Tiles that the Storm couldn't do.

 

[JudgeHolden]

Oops, posted my second comment in the wrong thread:
Elaborating a bit:

The lack of options startles me. Fewer than even all the dumbphones I had. For instance, the messaging client has zero options. Zero! And it forces you to hit an oddly placed send button rather than enter to send. Just give me the option, Microsoft. I'm sure that, if asked, they'd point out that Apple gives few options and they're super successful. Yeah, but who is your target audience? The people that love the iPhone and its limited offerings will never, ever leave for a Microsoft product, but millions will if the product is significantly better. You don't get significantly better by following the same road and by limiting abilities.

Another weird missing option is the ability to add contacts from facebook and put them into your contact list. When you click to link contacts it'll show all your facebook contacts (though oddly I found one missing), but it won't let you browse that list to add other than linking without going into settings and forcing it to show your 500+ facebook friends, adding that friend, then going into settings and forcing it to remove all that friend spam from your contact list.

Browing the internet on this thing is a breeze, too. Eat it, RIM, this is how it should be.




I don't regret leaving BB. I more or less hated my experience with it from the start. It did so many little things well but overall was a spiteful experience to type on - by the end I was spouting one word replies full of typos because fighting the phone was killing me. WP7 does so many little things in a completely asinine, nonsensical, flat-out bad way but does the big things well. Yes, ending calls shouldn't be so hard. Yes, I'd like a mute button. Yes, I'd like a giant speaker phone button on the default call screen rather than a little one in a menu. But the day to day operations and the typing are so much of a leap forward over BB that I'm ok with all this.

 

[Umm Yeah]

I am transitioning from a BlackBerry myself but I'm still in my two week window and I'm not sure I'm staying right now. I LOVE the Trophy and I REALLY want to be able to keep it but I do miss some things about my BlackBerry Tour.

I used my BB as an MP3 player in the car via Bluetooth. While I am able to do that with my WP7, for some reason it doesn't allow me to search for a particular song on my phone. While I'm playing from a playlist, when I click on the search function within the playlist, it pulls up songs, albums, artists with that keyword that are for sale but nothing from my phone. I'm hoping Mango will fix that but my BB did that out of the box and BBs aren't known as a media devices. I do like that the WP7 will remember where you left off in a podcast. My BB never did that. Also, for some reason, when I use my WP7 to stream via Bluetooth in the car, the car won't display the Artist, Album, and Song info but the same songs are displayed when I used my BB.

Another thing I miss from my BB are sound profiles. I was able to set up a "Phone Only" sound profile on my BB that muted everything except phone calls - no vibe, no LED notification. I then coupled that with BB's bedside mode so that after a certain hour,if my BB was in its charging cradle, it would shift into Phone Only mode, the clock would be displayed but dimmed, the keyboard backlighting would be turned off, and it would remain so until the designated hour I set to resume the Normal sound profile. My WP7 has no sound profiles and no bedside mode. I have downloaded a clock app that can be dimmed but I have to manually change my ringtones and sounds every evening and morning. I would like to think Mango would fix this but I doubt it's on their radar screen to be honest.

Also, having an LED but not having it function as a new message notifier is truly baffling but I feel like Microsoft HAS to know this and will fix it in Mango. And it appears that the volume control on my WP7 is universal, meaning that if I turn up the volume so I can hear the phone ringing, it turns up the volume on calls and when playing music. VERY odd but again, I'm hoping for Mango to fix this.

Here's the real deal killer for me. I use Google Calendars for work and home. I have a Personal calendar, Work calendar, my wife's calendar, a Family calendar, as well as four calendars for work. On my BB, I can use Google Sync to select which calendars to sync to my phone wirelessly and, while it puts ALL of the Google calendars in one BB calendar and will only allow me to sync entries made on my BB to my Personal Google calendar, I have accepted that. My WP7 will ONLY sync my Personal calendar on Google. I do not expect Mango to fix this and I don't expect Google to go out of its way to accommodate WP7 any time soon. I live and die by my calendar so this is HUGE for me.

All that said, I do LOVE the look and feel of the WP7 OS and I think after Mango, many, but not all, of my issues will go away. I just don't know if I want to risk it now, or, return my WP7 and go back to my BB and see what the Fall brings with Mango, iPhone 5, and possibly a new touchscreen BB (maybe?). Right now, I'm reluctantly leaning towards returning it now and waiting for Fall.

 

[Ntropy99]

Funny, and thanks. I ordered and got my Trophy on Monday. I miss the BB button. I never realized how much I used it. The end call thing really does stand out as well, although who uses a smart phone for calls (LOL's). The sound control is problematic. The OS is simple, but doesn't seem intelligent for some reason that I can't put my finger on. I DON'T like that my contacts are tied to my live account and not to just the phone. I DON'T like the alarm feature. I would like to customize the color of the tiles and not have all one color. OK, and Bing Search doesn't need to come up every time I come near the phone.

I do like how easy the email is to read in an untruncated way. I have chalked up the things I am not happy with to being on a different OS for 2.5 years and not used to this one yet. Those who got a Storm in the first 6 months should remember how unfinished that OS was for that phone. After the major update, the Storm for me was great. I can be patient to see how much this updates in Oct. But hopefully, some important fixes can be incremental until then. I do like having a phone with better hardware. This phone connects with my car bluetooth where my BB never consistently did . But I do want the "BB" button functionality back for options and multitasking management.

Thanks for everyone's replies.

 

[JudgeHolden]

Funny, and thanks. I ordered and got my Trophy on Monday. I miss the BB button. I never realized how much I used it. The end call thing really does stand out as well, although who uses a smart phone for calls (LOL's). The sound control is problematic. The OS is simple, but doesn't seem intelligent for some reason that I can't put my finger on. I DON'T like that my contacts are tied to my live account and not to just the phone. I DON'T like the alarm feature. I would like to customize the color of the tiles and not have all one color. OK, and Bing Search doesn't need to come up every time I come near the phone.

Yeah, I'd kill for the BB button. I keep hitting the Windows button hoping it will bring up a menu. Some apps/screens will bring up a menu if you touch them for a few seconds, some won't, and there doesn't seem to be any consistency across that. With BB you just always knew the BB button would give you options.

Your live account complaint amuses me, too. I had two live accounts left over from over a decade ago, so I created a new one using the gmail account I use now - same email address for both. Fine, right? Not exactly, as now my calendar alarms send an email to my gmail account. Since my gmail account is set to synch every 15 minutes to somewhat presever battery I'll get an alarm and then, between 30 seconds and 15 minutes later, another reminder that is essentially spam in my inbox, both on the phone and in gmail.

And yes, Bing Search. I didn't need a dedicated button, and I'd like it to have been mechanical if it had to be there. The ONLY time I've used the search button is in the app store, yet that seems to also search the Zune store so I get far too many music albums to make it at all useful. I hit that stupid button any time I'm playing a game that is at all frantic. I can guarantee at least one it per Geodefense session.


I really, really wish Microsoft had followed BB a bit more closely than Apple. You're right in saying that this OS is very usable but also very dumb. Also wish someone from Microsoft would read some of our complaints in this thread for whatever follows Mango.