Former Palm Pre user - 3rd day w/ the Arrive - some thoughts

[mtmt88]

Hi all,
I am (was) a long time webOS loyalist. However, with my Pre literally falling apart and no prospects of any new webOS devices, I jumped to the HTC Arrive on the day I became eligible for my Sprint update (after doing a lot of research and consideration).
So far, some thoughts and questions:
The Arrive arrived out of the box with windows 7.0, but after plugging it in the PC, Zune automatically recognized the need to update to Mango. It all ran very smoothly, although I was surprised it took quite long, almost 40 min.
After that, I further set up the phone in ways that rely on tricks and tips I learned from this and other websites: setting up multiple Google calendars, enabling Facebook chat, updating FB status using voice commands.
I think thus I got the phone to run sufficiently as desired. I like Windows Mango, kudos to Microsoft for outdoing Apple in sleekness and overall aesthetics. I despise Android, although my wife loves her HTC Evo, I think this is so much better. However, I really miss the intuitiveness of webOS and the ability to truly multitask - even Microsoft officially only markets Mango with "quick app switch".
dislike: WP only allows 1 mobile number for each contact. Some suggested the "work around" of designating additional mobile numbers as "work", "work2", etc. That'll work for new contacts but when I'm porting over existing contacts from Google, contacts who have multiple mobiles will only have 1 number synced; the rest will disappear. So far I have not seen any fixes for this.
Sprint only allows 160 characters for each SMS on the Arrive. Someone on YouTube suggested there's no limit when sending MMS. So I've been including in all my long texts a small jpeg and that solved the 160 problem.
Live Tiles are cool, but not all apps that claim this feature really work well as advertised. Hopefully they're working to make themselves Mango compatible.
When on the internet, the address bar stays on bottom of screen and takes up valuable real estate. How can I remove that?
Will spend more time and report back.

 

[foosball]

I say this to every former webOS user and you'll be no exception- don't try to remake Windows Phone into the image of webOS or you risk not enjoying Windows Phone for what it offers.

Not that we got that out of the way, yeah the card view in WP7 is only a shell of what webOS could do but you'll find the speed and flow of WP7 is so much faster that it's not as much of an issue.

As far as the browser functionality is concerned IE itself works very well but whoever was in charge of user experience on the IE mobile team at MS should be fired immediately. They definitely decided to shortchange users by making IE as much of a pain in the arse to use as possible. You can't remove the address bar, you can't search the web page, you can't use tabs without going back into settings...its a total fuster-cluck which MS should hate itself for releasing.

In any event I highly recommend trying 2 other browsers in the marketplace:

- SurfCube
- Metro Browser

Have fun.

 

[Forgewizard]

Surf cube rocks!

As a former Web OS user myself, you'll find WP 7 an easy OS to learn and you won't have to "Dr." your phone. Maybe with Web OS dissolving someone at MS can usurp some of the handier aspects of Web OS like universal search/just type although voice search on WP is really nifty.

I do really hope MS will come to their senses and allow a way to set individual alert tones and ringtones and separate volume levels for various alerts. Other than these two things WP7 surpasses Web OS in performance and snappiness as well as no freezes. My HTC Arrive has much better build quality than my Palm pre.
I, for one feel like I've leapt forward and will be able to enjoy a future with this pocket technology.