Tiles'n'hubs = icons'n'apps
Apps can be added to the Start screen, moved around within it or dropped from the list. An right-facing arrow on the right of the Start screen takes you to a list of apps installed on the smartphone. Press and hold any one to get a pop-up menu from which you can uninstall third-party apps, or pin them to the Start menu. Microsoft apps can't be deleted, but I was able to remove one of the Orange-installed tools.
Click and hold an app in Start and you can then remove it from the screen or move it. It works like iOS but without the 'wobble'.
Not just for consumers: Office and Exchange are well supported
The fact is, of course, that WinPho 7's tiles are app icons, just ones that can operate not merely as app identifier but as one of the app's data display mechanisms. The hubs are apps with clever, big, widescreen UIs, but apps nonetheless. If an app doesn't present information in its tile, you're just as far away from the data as you are with an iOS or Android program.
The question is, do punters want a variety of similar but different UIs that reflect the data or services they are viewing, or do they want to keep apps separate? iOS' fast app load times - improved further with iOS 4's multitasking - mean that you're actually never that far from the data and services that matter to you.
WinPho 7 claims to bring these closer to you, but you can still be a tap and a swipe or two away. Hubs may cleverly personalise themselves for you - primarily by using your own snaps as wallpaper - but the OS' animated graphics are no less gimmicky for all that. You still need to go into the Settings zone to connect to a Wi-Fi network. Messages appear as IM-style conversations. Big tiles mean you only get eight per screen, so you'll be swiping down to other 'pages' as much as you do on the iPhone or an Android device - you just go up and down instead of side to side.
So WinPho 7 doesn't reinvent the smartphone OS so much as re-skin it.
An app with a big, wide UI that's larger than the phone's screen - but still an app
I'm sure both Android and iOS will learn from the WinPho 7 - iOS desperately needs a better notifications system, for example - but there's nothing here that will have Google or Apple worrying. But if they think Microsoft would never be able to rise above Windows Mobile 6, they're wrong.
WinPho 7 comes into a crowded market, and it's certainly not going to dominate. But it might just help prevent one of the other operating systems gaining the foothold that Microsoft's other OS, Windows, gained in the personal computing space. And if it does so, that's all to the good, I think.
The irony that that might be a Microsoft product that blocked a monopoly will be lost on no one. ®
Hands on with Windows Phone 7
COMMENTS
Not impressed
This is leaving me cold- I look at my current home setup of a Vista machine that disconnects from the internet if you plug an external hard drive in (including a windows phone), an activesync that successfully synchs roughly half the time, a wrongheaded MS "my phone" account which claims to back up your contacts, photos, docs etc but is limited to 200mb (how big's my memory card?!) which wants me to manually delete 60 pages of photographs if I wish to use it, several years of lazy failure to innovate, an entirely useless customer service/help function in which I do not believe I have ever found a solution to my computing problem, a loss of the auto-type function on the handwriting recognition in 6.1, an XP machine that I moved out then back into a room and now can't see my router, a new HP printer that Vista can't see but XP can, pretending Windows 7 was more than just an SP that MS owed to their customers, limited ability to customise Winphone 7 and I have to conclude that I simply don't believe they're capable of delivering a working, integrated system.
After seven years of buying a new PDA every year, I'm off to Android which, to judge by my girlfriend's phone, is stable,innovative and you can write your own apps with a sort of WYSIWYG application. I don't irrationally hate MS and quietly fix my computing problems, but can't pretend I trust them to deliver.
Perhaps after all that it's things like the fact they've placed Twitter and Facebook at the heart of the phone that fills me with trepidation. Bearing in mind how quickly they caught on it just shows that MS have learnt nothing about adapting for the future, so much as being late to the party when it comes to embracing (or badly aping) the innovations of others.
Confusing
I don't think the people who have designed this interface have heard of the design phrase 'hierarchy of information'.
So...
Microsoft have re-invented widgets and given them a new name?
Oh for god's sake!
People. Try before you diss. It's not that hard and it preserves your integrity. Sheesh!
Absolutely not.
The vague comparisons drawn here between Palm's WebOS and WP7 are at least partially incorrect and entirely misleading.
When I first turned on my Pre there was not one HINT of any social networking tools as none are bundled with the device. With WP7 it's so heavily in-grained into the phone that they may as well relabel it 'Interfacebook Explorer 8'.
Palm devices can support any or no social networking and the substantial amount of support for different services shows true dedication to user's needs (in my case I want NO social networking, and that's what I get!) Not to mention that this improves dramatically with each update and with the continuing improvement of features such as Synergy.
Microsoft are supporting Twitter and Facebook because they've essentially asked themselves which two social-networking tools are most popular and settled for an 'OK that'll do' attitude that basically pays lip-service to social-networking on the whole without actually providing people with what they want.
