WP 7.5 - Core functionality missing.

Posted by theepiphany on April 16, 2012 03:21 pm 61

I love my Lumia 900 - and always have loved WP7. The only thing stopping me from using it in the past was the lack of beautiful hardware available for the operating system. Thus - Lumia 900.

After using it for over a week, here's my take on some serious drawbacks (from an iUser perspective):

• Marketplace (duh). I don't use many apps - but the few I do use aren't available. (Web banking, app to control my car starter/alarm, NAVIGON Canada, etc.). It's weird since everyone says WP7 is stupid easy to develop for.
• Some sort of notification queue. I'd love to have a pulldown similar to that in Android (preferably) or iOS. Was waiting forever for iOS to get one similar to Android just to end up switching to WP7.
• Click-to-call. I wish there was data detection baked into the OS. I like to just click a number in the browser to call, or touch and hold to create a contact, etc. You can't even copy/paste the number into the phone app.
• Wallpaper. I would like to customize it at least a bit more, though I love the live-tile look so this isn't that big of a gripe for me.

Overall I love my experience with Windows Phone. As a long time iOS user (still am, multiple macs and iPads - though my primary is a gaming pc) and Android lover (I have a Galaxy Nexus, GS II, GS II LTE) finally using a Windows Phone long term just confirms what I've always told people who hate on Windows Phone 7: You havn't used it long enough to make that criticism.
I think it is second to iOS in terms of functionality (pre-jailbreak, pre-root) - but it isn't too far behind and I love that MS is trying to do something different.