My WP7 review

archer75

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When I got this phone I immediately updated it to mango. So i've never used a windows phone without mango and can't comment on what it used to be like. My wife owns an iPhone 4. I have an iPod touch and an iPad. I also had a Motorola Atrix up until last week when I sold it. So my review is based on my experiences with the above. I got this phone last week and have been using it extensively since then. It hasn't left my hand unless i've been sleeping.
I also primarily use an iMac. I do have a win 7 desktop, laptop, couple of HTPC's and a WHS2011 machine. I own an xbox but rarely touch it. I have no brand loyalty. I buy what I feel is best at that moment and I have no issues about jumping platforms.

The phone is a Samsung Focus

Hardware:
I wish it had a notification LED on the front like android phones do.

Battery life is not as good as iphone 4 or my motorola atrix. I can usually get a day out of it with my usage. But I was getting two days with those other phones.

Not a fan of speaker placement directly on the back as when you lay the phone down it muffles it. On my atrix the speaker was right where the back began to curve up so when you laid the phone down it would bounce audio off the surface which made it sound better, louder.

I wish the screen on/off button was on the top. I'm always accidentally hitting it. I suppose i'll get used to it in time.

Screen needs a higher resolution. I can see the pixels. However the contrast of the SAMOLED screen is just amazing. Breathtaking really.

Camera is ok. Better than my atrix, not as good as my wife's iphone4 in terms of image quality with stock settings. However the amount of manual control you have on the camera is second to none. There are settings for the camera that I have on my DSLR! Love it!

Voice quality is good. My atrix may have been a touch better but not enough to declare it a winner.

I don't like how when I turn the screen off, wifi turns off shortly after. So all notifications have to come in over 3g. On both android and iOS I can turn off 3g data when i'm in a place with wifi and still get my notifications. I found that on android turning 3g off and leaving wifi was better on battery life than the opposite. I spend most of my time in two places, home and work, and I have wifi at both. Most businesses I visit also have free wifi. So I really don't need 3g data that much.

I do use 3g for streaming slacker radio when driving. Typically I plug the phone in while i'm sitting in my driveway and then off I go. The phone still picks up my wifi in the driveway but when I leave it has to switch to 3g. On my atrix this switching was seamless and I never missed a beat in the music. On WP7 when I leave wifi range I lose all data and it takes about 5 minutes to get the app switched over to 3g. Probably an app issue and not a phone issue but it's annoying.



Software:

Based on handset specs it's clear to me that WP7 is the best optimized mobile OS on the planet. For the specs it has it runs incredibly smooth. And at times when it's less than smooth it seems to be isolated to select 3rd party apps.

My biggest gripe is with software, most of it 3rd party. There are some missing apps that I would like to have. I have contacted some of the developers(words with friends, pokerist) who tell me WP7 apps will be available in a few months. I still need to get ahold of dish and i'm waiting for a response from Tivo.

Need more theme customization. Granted all we can change is color but why not be able to pick shades of color?

The mail app needs a dark background option.

Need to fix turn by turn so we don't have to tap for the next direction. But we all know this.

Would be nice to be able to download files in the browser and save them to dropbox or skydive. I used both iOS and android to download files, drop them in dropbox and then my desktop at home monitors that folder and can start downloads from it. It was handy.

Not as many free apps, pay for apps are more expensive on average than android/ios

Would be nice to have a favorites list so I don't have to search through all the contacts and can quickly call the people I do regularly. -EDIT- I found that I can create groups and assign people to it. Helpful for reaching them quickly and keeping up on their specific social updates should I want to.

Love the xbox live integration. I'm not a big console gamer at all but I still like that my achievements carry over.

Most people view the live tiles as just huge icons. And I can't blame them. 3/4 of my live tiles aren't live at all. And some of the ones that are, are only live enough to be a novelty and not beneficial.

Many apps I use are still not updated for mango. Some could benefit from running in the background and push notifications. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

I really wish the messenger app had gtalk built in. I don't know a single person that uses live messenger but everyone I chat with is on gtalk. So having that would allow me to eliminate another app.

I wish microsoft had their own google voice app. The API's are there, they just need to develop it. There are several 3rd party apps but none are perfect. When I had my android phone I spent a lot of time in the android community doing research and I found that many people who had android phones said their number one reason for android was the level of google voice integration. Having this on WP7 would net a few converts.

I'd also like them to separate out Facebook and twitter in the people tile. It just gets to be a huge mess for me to go through all that content. Sure, I can use separate apps and usually do.
EDIT - from J4rrod - under What's New, you'll see that it says "all accounts," tap that and from there you'll have the option to select what feeds you want displayed.

On the calendar, in the month view it shows very tiny, unreadable text for a days events. I'd rather they just appropriately color coded the dates to quickly draw your attention instead of super small unreadable text letting me know I have an event on that day.

Landscape mode doesn't work for everything.

IE9 doesn't word wrap everything. Most stuff. But i'm still finding pages I have to scroll side to side just to read a paragraph. Word wrap on android worked great on everything.

I love the lock screen! Better than android even when using the popular widget locker customizing app.

I like having the choice of default apps on android. It lets me choose which app to use depending on the file/website and the apps tend to be more aware of other apps you have installed and lets you choose which to use. For example, the camera app I downloaded let me share to multiple social sites. When I install the google+ app it also then had an entry that let me share with that.

The reasons I switched from android despite the fact that my phone was fast and stable and had tons of apps is it also felt a bit disjointed. Not as cohesive as iOS or WP7. Layers upon layers. Felt like a bit of a mess. And although it worked well for me I wanted to try something new.
I also like having a desktop app to manage my content and sync with. Primarily for podcasts. Android lacked this and podcast management was frustrating. Now I do prefer iTunes to zune(zune is organized poorly IMO) but it does work fine. The WP7 for mac allows me to continue to use iTunes for my content management and I can still use zune in windows if I so choose. So i'm happy with my options.

The reason I ddn't switch to an iPhone despite having a iPod touch/ipad and my wife having a iphone4 was primarily cost. I wasn't eligible for an upgrade and I got this focus for free with the funds from selling my atrix. I would have had to pay far more for an iPhone. I also mostly like the GUI on WP7. I like the dark background. It's easier on my eyes and pleasing to look at. ios5 finally brings the iPhone up to a level with WP7 and android in several of the remaining areas. And I think ice cream sandwich and jellybean will be game changing updates for android by unifying the tablets and smartphones as well as letting google push updates directly to the users and not have to wait on carriers.
And as we all are, i'm very interested to see what comes in Tango and Apollo and if the current batch of phones will get those updates.

So to summarize, WP7 is a good mobile OS and it can only improve with time. I do feel faster on this phone. Just my activities, getting info, brining up apps, is faster for me in WP7. I have most of the apps I want/need or have started using an alternative. However there are still a few i'd like.
I think with aggressive marketing(sounds like it's gearing up) there is no reason it's marketshare couldn't match apples for mobile phones. If you live and breath microsoft services(mail, messenger, xbox, zune, office) then it's a no brainer. I don't. I use a mix of microsoft, google and apple but WP7 is still pretty close to having it all. I will be keeping this phone till i'm next eligible for an upgrade in early 2013 and will re-evaluate where things are then.
But overall, quite happy with the phone.

I will add to this as I come across new things.
 
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J4rrod

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I have to disagree with you heavily on the live tiles comment. A look at my Start screen gives the this information: missed calls, voicemail, facebook/twitter contacts (which is a novelty mostly), my twitter/fb notification (and in some cases descriptions of the notifications), my girlfriend's latest twitter/fb activity, how many text messages I have, *my closest friends recent activity, the current weather for my location, what's coming up on my calendar, how many app updates are pending, a screenshot of the top 5 storiesi n USA Today, how many unready FMLs I have, how many apps are currently in the Marketplace (App Flow), whether my alarm is set to on and off and what time the alarm is going to sound next, the featured movie on Flixster, the Urban Dictionary WOTD, how many of WPCentral's articles I haven't read and the title of the latest one, how many videos I haven't watched that my YouTube subscriptions have uploaded, my last played song on Zune, how many Torchbear notifications I have, and whether my WiFi is on or off. I did have an item on eBay I was bidding on pinned and I was constantly up to date on whether I was winning the item, or if I was outbid, or if it was ending soon.

As for the favorite contacts issues, there's *groups. I have my 5 closest friends in a group (and I have that grouped pinned to see their latest social network activity). This is much better than favorites.

I'm not sure what you mean by your issues with fb/twitter in the people tile. If you mean what I think you mean, you could alleviate this issue by going to Settings > flick right to applications > people.

Your hardware issues I can't address because you never said which phone you were using.
 

Coffee

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good post. there's a few things you'll figure out after you've used it for awhile (use 'groups' in contacts for your favorites,i have 'family' group, a 'work' group), but overall a good first impressions.
 

archer75

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I have to disagree with you heavily on the live tiles comment. A look at my Start screen gives the this information: missed calls, voicemail, facebook/twitter contacts (which is a novelty mostly), my twitter/fb notification (and in some cases descriptions of the notifications), my girlfriend's latest twitter/fb activity, how many text messages I have, *my closest friends recent activity, the current weather for my location, what's coming up on my calendar, how many app updates are pending, a screenshot of the top 5 storiesi n USA Today, how many unready FMLs I have, how many apps are currently in the Marketplace (App Flow), whether my alarm is set to on and off and what time the alarm is going to sound next, the featured movie on Flixster, the Urban Dictionary WOTD, how many of WPCentral's articles I haven't read and the title of the latest one, how many videos I haven't watched that my YouTube subscriptions have uploaded, my last played song on Zune, how many Torchbear notifications I have, and whether my WiFi is on or off. I did have an item on eBay I was bidding on pinned and I was constantly up to date on whether I was winning the item, or if I was outbid, or if it was ending soon.

As for the favorite contacts issues, there's *groups. I have my 5 closest friends in a group (and I have that grouped pinned to see their latest social network activity). This is much better than favorites.

I'm not sure what you mean by your issues with fb/twitter in the people tile. If you mean what I think you mean, you could alleviate this issue by going to Settings > flick right to applications > people.

Your hardware issues I can't address because you never said which phone you were using.

The live tile comment applies to the tiles that I use. Not all the tiles out there. I actually prefer the microsoft weather app but the live tile doesn't update. Accuweather wasn't updating for me either. Twitter and facebook live tiles weren't updating at all for me. Flixster isn't updating on mine either.

My issue with the people tile is it combines news from facebook and twitter in to one flow. I have so much going on with both that having it all together makes it somewhat more challenging to sort through.

I'll have to look into groups. I don't much care about their social updates but having them grouped together would be beneficial.
 
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Coffee

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I just use groups to get to a subset of people faster, not to group message or anything, although that does come in handy for family.
 

Pronk

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Really good review. I have a different phone, but similar situation (I use a Mac, have an iPad and have used Android too) and you've more or less summed up what I think.
 

J4rrod

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The live tile comment applies to the tiles that I use. Not all the tiles out there. I actually prefer the microsoft weather app but the live tile doesn't update. Accuweather wasn't updating for me either. Twitter and facebook live tiles weren't updating at all for me.

My issue with the people tile is it combines news from facebook and twitter in to one flow. I have so much going on with both that having it all together makes it somewhat more challenging to sort through.

I'll have to look into groups. I don't much care about their social updates but having them grouped together would be beneficial.

Well, I use Rowi and its Live Tile updates like a charm as does the Facebook apps; however, when I was talking about notifications, I was talking about the Me tile. Since Mango you can get all your notifications to the Me tile, which updates to let you know that you have things. I disabled the Live Tile in Rowi and Facebook since this.

About your People issue, that's easy - under What's New, you'll see that it says "all accounts," tap that and from there you'll have the option to select what feeds you want displayed.
 

archer75

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About your People issue, that's easy - under What's New, you'll see that it says "all accounts," tap that and from there you'll have the option to select what feeds you want displayed.

Perfect! Thank you! I'm also checking out Rowi too. Looks good.

Now only if the "check in" on the me tile could apply to foursquare....
 

narrow-minded

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The live tile comment applies to the tiles that I use. Not all the tiles out there. I actually prefer the microsoft weather app but the live tile doesn't update. Accuweather wasn't updating for me either.

Weather Channel's app just updated for Mango, and the live tile is pretty cool. It shows the current conditions/temp and it flips over to show you a radar map of your local area. Pretty sweet. The app itself has gotten a lot faster too.
 

theman60099

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When I got this phone I immediately updated it to mango. So i've never used a windows phone without mango and can't comment on what it used to be like. My wife owns an iPhone 4. I have an iPod touch and an iPad. I also had a Motorola Atrix up until last week when I sold it. So my review is based on my experiences with the above. I got this phone last week and have been using it extensively since then. It hasn't left my hand unless i've been sleeping.
I also primarily use an iMac. I do have a win 7 desktop, laptop, couple of HTPC's and a WHS2011 machine. I own an xbox but rarely touch it. I have no brand loyalty. I buy what I feel is best at that moment and I have no issues about jumping platforms.

The phone is a Samsung Focus

Hardware:
I wish it had a notification LED on the front like android phones do.

Battery life is decent. Not bad, not great.

Not a fan of speaker placement directly on the back as when you lay the phone down it muffles it. On my atrix the speaker was right where the back began to curve up so when you laid the phone down it would bounce audio off the surface which made it sound better, louder.

I wish the screen on/off button was on the top. I'm always accidentally hitting it. I suppose i'll get used to it in time.

Screen needs a higher resolution. I can see the pixels. However the contrast of the SAMOLED screen is just amazing. Breathtaking really.

Camera is ok. Better than my atrix, not as good as my wife's iphone4 in terms of image quality with stock settings. However the amount of manual control you have on the camera is second to none. There are settings for the camera that I have on my DSLR! Love it!

Voice quality is good. My atrix may have been a touch better but not enough to declare it a winner.

I don't like how when I turn the screen off, wifi turns off shortly after. So all notifications have to come in over 3g. On both android and iOS I can turn off 3g data when i'm in a place with wifi and still get my notifications. I found that on android turning 3g off and leaving wifi was better on battery life than the opposite. I spend most of my time in two places, home and work, and I have wifi at both. Most businesses I visit also have free wifi. So I really don't need 3g data that much.

I do use 3g for streaming slacker radio when driving. Typically I plug the phone in while i'm sitting in my driveway and then off I go. The phone still picks up my wifi in the driveway but when I leave it has to switch to 3g. On my atrix this switching was seamless and I never missed a beat in the music. On WP7 when I leave wifi range I lose all data and it takes about 5 minutes to get the app switched over to 3g. Probably an app issue and not a phone issue but it's annoying.



Software:

Based on handset specs it's clear to me that WP7 is the best optimized mobile OS on the planet. For the specs it has it runs incredibly smooth. And at times when it's less than smooth it seems to be isolated to select 3rd party apps.

My biggest gripe is with software, most of it 3rd party. There are some missing apps that I would like to have. I have contacted some of the developers(words with friends, pokerist) who tell me WP7 apps will be available in a few months. I still need to get ahold of dish and i'm waiting for a response from Tivo.

Need more theme customization. Granted all we can change is color but why not be able to pick shades of color?

The mail app needs a dark background option.

Need to fix turn by turn so we don't have to tap for the next direction. But we all know this.

Would be nice to be able to download files in the browser and save them to dropbox or skydive. I used both iOS and android to download files, drop them in dropbox and then my desktop at home monitors that folder and can start downloads from it. It was handy.

Not as many free apps, pay for apps are more expensive on average than android/ios

Would be nice to have a favorites list so I don't have to search through all the contacts and can quickly call the people I do regularly. -EDIT- I found that I can create groups and assign people to it. Helpful for reaching them quickly and keeping up on their specific social updates should I want to.

Love the xbox live integration. I'm not a big console gamer at all but I still like that my achievements carry over.

Most people view the live tiles as just huge icons. And I can't blame them. 3/4 of my live tiles aren't live at all. And some of the ones that are, are only live enough to be a novelty and not beneficial.

Many apps I use are still not updated for mango. Some could benefit from running in the background and push notifications. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

I really wish the messenger app had gtalk built in. I don't know a single person that uses live messenger but everyone I chat with is on gtalk. So having that would allow me to eliminate another app.

I wish microsoft had their own google voice app. The API's are there, they just need to develop it. There are several 3rd party apps but none are perfect. When I had my android phone I spent a lot of time in the android community doing research and I found that many people who had android phones said their number one reason for android was the level of google voice integration. Having this on WP7 would net a few converts.

I'd also like them to separate out Facebook and twitter in the people tile. It just gets to be a huge mess for me to go through all that content. Sure, I can use separate apps and usually do.
EDIT - from J4rrod - under What's New, you'll see that it says "all accounts," tap that and from there you'll have the option to select what feeds you want displayed.

On the calendar, in the month view it shows very tiny, unreadable text for a days events. I'd rather they just appropriately color coded the dates to quickly draw your attention instead of super small unreadable text letting me know I have an event on that day.

IE9 doesn't word wrap everything. Most stuff. But i'm still finding pages I have to scroll side to side just to read a paragraph. Word wrap on android worked great on everything.

I love the lock screen! Better than android even when using the popular widget locker customizing app.

I like having the choice of default apps on android. It lets me choose which app to use depending on the file/website and the apps tend to be more aware of other apps you have installed and lets you choose which to use. For example, the camera app I downloaded let me share to multiple social sites. When I install the google+ app it also then had an entry that let me share with that.

The reasons I switched from android despite the fact that my phone was fast and stable and had tons of apps is it also felt a bit disjointed. Not as cohesive as iOS or WP7. Layers upon layers. Felt like a bit of a mess. And although it worked well for me I wanted to try something new.
I also like having a desktop app to manage my content and sync with. Primarily for podcasts. Android lacked this and podcast management was frustrating. Now I do prefer iTunes to zune(zune is organized poorly IMO) but it does work fine. The WP7 for mac allows me to continue to use iTunes for my content management and I can still use zune in windows if I so choose. So i'm happy with my options.

The reason I ddn't switch to an iPhone despite having a iPod touch/ipad and my wife having a iphone4 was primarily cost. I wasn't eligible for an upgrade and I got this focus for free with the funds from selling my atrix. I would have had to pay far more for an iPhone. I also mostly like the GUI on WP7. I like the dark background. It's easier on my eyes and pleasing to look at. ios5 finally brings the iPhone up to a level with WP7 and android in several of the remaining areas. And I think ice cream sandwich and jellybean will be game changing updates for android by unifying the tablets and smartphones as well as letting google push updates directly to the users and not have to wait on carriers.
And as we all are, i'm very interested to see what comes in Tango and Apollo and if the current batch of phones will get those updates.

So to summarize, WP7 is a good mobile OS and it can only improve with time. I do feel faster on this phone. Just my activities, getting info, brining up apps, is faster for me in WP7. I have most of the apps I want/need or have started using an alternative. However there are still a few i'd like.
I think with aggressive marketing(sounds like it's gearing up) there is no reason it's marketshare couldn't match apples for mobile phones. If you live and breath microsoft services(mail, messenger, xbox, zune, office) then it's a no brainer. I don't. I use a mix of microsoft, google and apple but WP7 is still pretty close to having it all. I will be keeping this phone till i'm next eligible for an upgrade in early 2013 and will re-evaluate where things are then.
But overall, quite happy with the phone.

I will add to this as I come across new things.

I disagree on ur view of the live tiles too but j4rrod pretty much handled it. and u can save files downloaded on IE to SkyDrive, after an office file opens u just hit save. and I definitely disagree on the iTunes being better than Zune thing. iTunes always has to run in the background as well as other programs (bonjour,QuickTime) uninstall one of those programs and see what happens to ur beloved iTunes.
 

archer75

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I disagree on ur view of the live tiles too but j4rrod pretty much handled it. and u can save files downloaded on IE to SkyDrive, after an office file opens u just hit save. and I definitely disagree on the iTunes being better than Zune thing. iTunes always has to run in the background as well as other programs (bonjour,QuickTime) uninstall one of those programs and see what happens to ur beloved iTunes.

The live tiles are my experience based upon my usage. You can't disagree with my experience because if you used the same apps I use you'd also see most of the tiles aren't live. If I used the tiles that J4rrod used then most of them would be live. All depends on what you use. Clearly the phone, email, photo, people and messaging tiles are live. Most of the tiles for my apps are not.

You can install itunes, not install quicktime and kill the background startup items for itunes and it runs fine. Been running it like that for years. But even if that were not the case it wouldn't bother me. I just prefer itunes. Personal preference.

I'm not referring to saving documents from IE but rather other files. So that's still a no go. Also, is it possible to mount skydrive as a folder on a PC or Mac? I use dropbox now because it can be mounted as a folder which fits my needs best.
 
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J4rrod

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The live tiles are my experience based upon my usage. You can't disagree with my experience because if you used the same apps I use you'd also see most of the tiles aren't live. If I used the tiles that J4rrod used then most of them would be live. All depends on what you use. Clearly the phone, email, photo, people and messaging tiles are live. Most of the tiles for my apps are not.

You can install itunes, not install quicktime and kill the background startup items for itunes and it runs fine. Been running it like that for years. But even if that were not the case it wouldn't bother me. I just prefer itunes. Personal preference.

I'm not referring to saving documents from IE but rather other files. So that's still a no go. Also, is it possible to mount skydrive as a folder on a PC or Mac?

I'm sure you can make it a folder, but I'm not sure. I recommend doing what I do, use IE9 (or at least download it) and Pin SkyDrive in the Win7 taskbar.
 

theman60099

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The live tiles are my experience based upon my usage. You can't disagree with my experience because if you used the same apps I use you'd also see most of the tiles aren't live. If I used the tiles that J4rrod used then most of them would be live. All depends on what you use. Clearly the phone, email, photo, people and messaging tiles are live. Most of the tiles for my apps are not.

You can install itunes, not install quicktime and kill the background startup items for itunes and it runs fine. Been running it like that for years. But even if that were not the case it wouldn't bother me. I just prefer itunes. Personal preference.

I'm not referring to saving documents from IE but rather other files. So that's still a no go. Also, is it possible to mount skydrive as a folder on a PC or Mac?

I have a few apps that don't have live tiles either but I don't make up a general statement saying they aren't live. if u uninstall bonjour or QuickTime iTunes will not start I should know because I've done it before. not to mention that iTunes is also too clunky, unorganized and takes up too much RAM, Zune however is smooth,sleek,and takes much less resources.
 
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archer75

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I have a few apps that don't have live tiles either but I don't make up a general statement saying they aren't live. if u uninstall bonjour or QuickTime iTunes will not start I should know because I've down it before. not to mention that iTunes is also too clunky, unorganized and takes up too much RAM, Zune however is smooth,sleek,and takes much less resources.

It's not a general statement. Most of my live tiles are not live. This is MY experience with the phone. Your experience may differ.

And itunes works fine without quicktime or bonjour. Again, i've run it that way for years. I have it on my desktop PC right now and it works fine. Clearly you had something else going on with your system.

To me it's very organized. If anything zune feels sloppy and unorganzied. But like I said before, it's personal preference. Both work. I just prefer one over the other. It's fine if you like zune, I really don't have any issue with you doing things the way you like.
I have both itunes and zune installed on 3 different computers in my home so i'm familiar with both.

The zune app on the phone is pretty damn nice though.
 
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Coffee

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Zune software on the PC is not small nor sleek and is a mofo on your CPU, check your resources sometime (if you run in mini-player it's much better). I love Zune but it's not exactly winamp.
 

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