Holy moly that's a lot of info. Thanks guys. I was just really upset and really wanted to keep it and I figured if anyone could snap me out of my brief period of loathing it would be you guys.
I'm setting up all the info to sync back to my phone and installing Zune and all that good stuff.
Hopefully I'll grow to love it like you guys!
Mengels,
First, sorry for some of the other posts in this forum. Completely uncalled for and just plain rude.
Second, let me say this- there's nothing wrong with liking iOS or Android more than WP7. There are advantages to all of the systems out there and not everything is going to fit everyone's desires, preferences, and needs.
Third, I wasn't so sure about the tiles when I moved from my iPhone either. If Apple had done tiles and I'd been using that paradigm for years I'm sure I'd be just as reluctant about the current "grids of icons" that are popular now. I'll say this, however- I've had a WP7 for over a year now and I can't imagine going back. The tiles, once they feel "natural" after a couple of weeks, are outstanding. Here's a few things you absolutely must do to understand them, however:
Get some live tiles and arrange them as you like. Here are some great choices: Weather Channel, My Stocks, Livescape, Wonder Reader, BBC Mobile, Fox News (yeah, I know, but their live tile is cool), Arkwords. Watch them update and it's really awesome.
Fourth, understand that there are shortcomings in WP7 (notifications anyone?) but some excellent advantages that the other ecosystems just don't do at all. Here are some:
Facebook calendar. Super awesome. Set up a FB event or just get invited to one and it will automatically appear on your calendar and you can click into it to see the related wall, guest list, respond join/decline.
Info. It's all about information in WP7. You can click all kinds of things to move around in the info world. Like in the Message hub, you can click someone's name to get straight to their contact info. From there, you can swipe to see their recent social network updates, then swipe to see all their publicly available albums. Another swipe shows you all the interaction history you have with that contact. You don't get that in iOS or Android.
Integration. Download OpenTable. Then use Bing to search a local restaurant. Swipe over to "Local" in results, then hit reserve a table. Boom, pure integration with apps. You can do the same thing with products and launch Ebay/Amazon. You can do the same thing with pictures and launch any registered picture modification app. It's called AppConnect and it connects data with tasks. The other 2 systems are just app platforms.
Pinning. I love pinning. At the bottom of my start screen I have a tile that doesn't do anything called "To-Do" (download sticky tiles if you want to do this). I have a Onenote notebook with a page called "To-Do" that I pin in that section. One click launches my things to do. It syncs automatically with my computer. With the web. With my gf's computer. Etc. Onenote is powerful and great on this phone.
Try pinning a place. For example, I wanted to go to a restaurant called "Tantra," and I wanted to remember that- so I bing searched it, pulled it up on a map, tapped the location marker "Tanta" and pinned it. Now there's a reminder and a little map on my start screen under my "To-Do" section. Click it and you are right back to the map and can start directions, get reservations, check reviews... you get the idea. (In related news, if you reserve a table through OpenTable, you can pin that reservation and it'll flip over reminding you when it is. Cool).
Fifth: Weakneses. WP7 does have them. We typically get apps later than the rest. To be fair, the Marketplace has an equivalent for... almost all the major apps currently on iOS / Android. Some of them aren't as good, but I'd say some are better- OpenTable is the example I've been using, so that's a good example- the pinning is better. Zune is better than Pandora/Spotify. Office is better than the random lousy office apps on either iOS or Android. Games... not as many, but getting better. (Try The Harvest, it's cool). Oh, and at least WP7 has a well developed trial system for their marketplace. Got so tired of buying an app that just sucked and just having to eat it. Anyway, back to the point- notifications also could be better, and I expect we'll see that in WP8. Very frustrating hearing a "beep" and going to the phone a few min later and having no idea what generated the notification.
Six: Cloud
I know Google is the techy fanboi cloud god, but try live. Hotmail is quite good now, and the Office suites are fantastic. But really, I'd want you to try Skydrive. Go to Photos, make an Album, and upload 30-40 photos. Then go to your phone. Open Pictures, and then push albums. Your cloud hosted album is right there, seamlessly on your phone. You can view/manipulate it just as if it were local. It's simple, it's elegant, and it just works.
Anyway, hope this helps a little. I currently have all three phones, mostly for work development and testing, so I could use any of them. I use WP7 because I like the way you do things on it, the stability, and the integration. I find that I miss 1 or 2 apps, but that's it. (WWF- not the best scrabble clone, but the most popular.)
Feel free to ask questions if you like.
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