Fair (or, everyone just chill the f*** out)

Posted by auniverseaway on April 3, 2012 11:28 pm 32

To preface this; I will say that I have used a Treo 650, moved to Blackberry 7290, back to a Treo 700p (when they supported active sync), then to iPhone, iPhone 3G, Droid OG, HTC HD7, HTC Trophy, and I am now waiting on the arrival of my Lumia 900 that I pre-ordered on March 30th. My daily drivers are a MBP 13" C2D, Touchpad on ICS, and a HTC Trophy on Verizon.

Josh's review is, by far, the best review you could ask for.

To paraphrase, Josh's review was: Great hardware, underwhelming screen and camera, and software that hasn't kept up with the times despite a promising start.

Scrolling Performance

As a design focused developer I know how difficult it is to get great performance on ListBoxes. Most apps, even with the Mango update, still aren't making it happen. They're settling for good enough. Rowi, the flagship Twitter client, didn't get updated until today. We're lucky Josh had a pre-release version to test. He would have been much harder on performance with scrolling. Carbon, The official Twitter client (built by MS), MoTweets all have TERRIBLE perf on WP7.5. The only other contender is Birdsong, but it can't even get push notifications right (although, scrolling has always been great). Android solved the problem of scrolling with 4.0 and that is decades ago in the world of smartphones. MS thought devs would update and refactor to make scrolling better, but they really haven't.

Overall Responsiveness (NOT COUNTING LISTS)

This is probably the only place I disagree with the review. Windows Phone, spec for spec will run circles around Android in responsiveness. I've used most modern Android phones and nothing compares to my lowly HTC Trophy. Pinch to zoom on photos, web pages, etc. As stated above, the achielese heel of WP is list scrolling.

Games

When launched, Windows Phone had more exclusive and better games than Android. Period. As time has gone on, game shops have rested on their laurels and haven't ported any compelling games recently. MS can dole out the cash all they want at launch, but today, devs develop for iOS first, take OpenGL code to Android and then decide what to do next. You don't have Angry Birds Space or Draw Something available on WP. This is fact. As much as MS doesn't want to believe this, DirectX is great, but no OpenGL on your mobile device is going to kill you. Hopefully Apollo will fix this.

Ecosystem

Maybe you (or I) don't care about Words with friends, Pandora, or Instagram, but most do. Windows Phone is the third choice in developers minds and nothing has changed in the last two years. Windows Phone supports should be happy that the goodwill of Microsoft and it's IDE has placed it above RIM in the eye of developers.

It's a bit disappointing Josh didn't mention free turn-by-turn directions (not available on iOS), or Nokia Music. But it is what it is. The broad majority of people want to play the games their friends are playing and participate in the social experiences their friends are experiencing.

Screen

There is no denying it any more. 1280x800 is the new spec to beat. I personally don't like it, but it's there. To this day, you can't get anything below 4.5 to clock in at 1280px, but The Verge keeps harping on the same drum. I don't blame them. Speaking of drums, and I hate saying this, but... Apollo is going to bring a similar spec. You've heard it before, but it's bound to happen. I'd kill for a One X screen in the form factor of the NL900... guess what? It doesn't exist. Don't even get me started on AMOLED. It's a pile and I'm glad The Verge are starting to wake up to that. Long live LCD, SLCD, and IPS.

Conclusion

I chose (and still choose) Windows Phone because of fluidity, live tiles, decent (not always great) specs, enterprise support, decent ecosystem, and choice. You have the consistency of iOS, but with the hardware choice of Android and no fragmentation.

Don't let a review throw a dick in your spokes. It's just a phone.

BTW, The Verge Create Forum Post UI is balls.