Let’s Focus on Windows

Many of my loyal readers have read my reviews of several different cell phones and probably said the following to themselves: “Man—that guy is really cool,” “I wish I had his job,” “When I move out of my mom’s basement I’m going to get a cell phone!” To those readers I say, “Thank you!” Reviewing technology is tireless work. It’s always changing and the second you print something the next new thing is right around the corner, and just when you think you have a comprehensive review some upstart, no-name company comes out with something else new and cool that deserves recognition. Take Microsoft, for example. Microsoft came out with Windows Phone 7 just in time to miss my review of the other operating systems in my super cool article on Smartphones. And you might ask yourself, why then does he not review it? Well, Chip (can I call you Chip?) here is your review of Windows Phone 7 on the Samsung Focus for AT&T.

Windows Phone 7

Navigation

Microsoft has seemingly ripped a page right out of Apple’s playbook with Windows Phone 7 (WP7) by giving the consumer what they want right from the main screen. When you turn the phone on and swipe the lockscreen up, you are greeted with a “Start Menu” of different animated tiles. These tiles give you a glimpse of different information, such as how many calls you missed, how many emails are waiting in your Gmail account, and the date and time of your next colonic appointment. These tiles represent “hubs” of information and it is this hub system that is the basis for the phone’s organization.

Drag your finger up and watch as the beautifully responsive screen slides up and down with ease. A little arrow pointing right tells me that I should consider looking over my right shoulder, but instead I touch and drag the display left to reveal the next page on the right (so that is what that right arrow was pointing to!). On this page WP7 lists all of my apps that either came pre-installed or that have been downloaded – more on this soon.

The Start Screen or Home Screen really helps to make this phone as simple as possible. Want to move something around on your home screen? Just hold your finger over a tile until you “pick it up” and then drag it to its new home on the screen. Swiping back to my applications list, I press and hold the camera icon and wait for a pop-up menu to appear which says, “Pin to start.” I press this option and watch as the phone places the camera icon at the bottom of the start screen. Easy!

There are three buttons on the face of the phone to navigate around. A back arrow on the left which will take you back one screen, a Windows logo which will always take you back to Start, and an eyeglass symbol used for searches. I found that even when I used the Start button to go back to the Start screen, the back arrow would still take me back to whichever screen I was previously on. If I continue to press the back arrow, WP7 will continue to move back one screen until it navigates all the way to the beginning.

Another cool way to navigate the phone is by using a voice command. This thing is so sweet that your inner laziness will be much appeased. Simply press and hold the Start button until a pop-up window appears. Then say, “Open” or “Find” followed by the query and the phone will find it. For kicks, I asked, “What can I say?” and the phone opened command options. Totally rad! So I ask, “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” thinking to myself, “Ha!  Find this, punk!” After thinking for all of three seconds, the phone repeated in a robotic female voice the exact phrase, verbatim. Clearly, Microsoft has been wise enough to put some serious voice recognition technology into their mobile operating system and is reminiscent of the sync software that comes pre-installed in some vehicles.

Accounts

To get things moving on the phone, I set up a Windows Live account. Like Google’s Android, this account will identify your device with various services such as Microsoft Zune and Microsoft Marketplace. I set up my account but since I don’t use a Hotmail email I chose to set up my Gmail account to download and synchronize my contacts, calendar, and email. I swipe to settings, choose “Email and Accounts” and, lookie-here, there is an option for Google right there in the list. Not only is this option already available, but Facebook, Yahoo!, and Outlook for Exchange and Web are also available. I choose Google and enter my email and password and without a moment’s hesitation my WP7 phone begins syncing all my information. Totally awesome, free, and best of all—EASY.

Integration

While I’m at it, I set up my Facebook account. WP7 assumes that I have friends in my contact list that are also on Facebook and asks me if I want to download my entire contact list from Facebook, or just grab the content from Facebook of people who are already on my phone. Again—totally awesome! I press the People tile and watch as the phone beautifully transitions screens and pulls up my contacts. At the top of the list is myself as presented by my Facebook profile picture. Under my picture is a list of all my contacts sorted, as I selected, by first name. Each letter of the alphabet has a contact that heads the list. The cool thing about this is that I press the letter “a” and the alphabet pops up with letters grayed out that do not have contacts (I haven’t met Quentin Tarantino, but he’ll be the first Q to highlight that letter in the list). I can only press letters that have contacts beginning with that letter. This lets me quickly jump to my “v” list so that I can send my friend Vadim a text and tell him his Android phone is old and outdated.

After sending that text, I notice that his Facebook status located next to his profile picture says, “Your mom goes to college.” I then page over to the right and see the various youtube.com videos he has posted. All of the news from Facebook updated as well. I even have the option to post a comment on his wall. The integration is so, well, integrated, that when I page over from the main list of People I get the latest Facebook updates all in a neat list. And just for added style points, the WP7 People Tile will randomly select and display the profile pictures of people in your People hub.

Graphics

After playing around with this phone for a little while one cannot help but love the graphics of WP7. Pages smoothly transition from one to the next. If you enter into a menu option that has more than one page, you will notice that the heading for that menu will leak over the side and onto the next page. When you page over, the heading slides with it. Graphically, WP7 is absolutely stunning. I already mentioned some neat things that WP7 does with People and the screen transitions, but by far the coolest thing is rotating the screen with the soft-keyboard on the display. Things slide and duck, weave and bob all without missing a beat.

Music and Apps

WP7 uses Zune as the hub for music and Windows Marketplace for the hub for applications. Let’s start with Zune.

When you press the music tile from the start menu, the player will bring up a menu for music, videos, podcasts, the built-in radio, and marketplace. Any music you have synced through your Zune desktop software will be available by selecting the music option. This presents a list of artists, albums, and playlists to choose from. The player itself is not quite as intuitive as I would like it. It took a while to figure out that to bring up the shuffle and repeat options I had to tap on the album cover. But having said that, the player itself works very well. You can increase the music volume using the volume rocker on the side of the phone, even when the phone is off! If only all things were willing to get rocking when turned off… Sigh.

The marketplace is ever expanding and it would be unfair to compare the App Store from Apple or the Android Market to the Microsoft Marketplace in sheer number of available applications. Having said that, there are some wonderful apps that are available to WP7 and Microsoft is committed to bringing first and third-party applications to the Marketplace. For example, Netflix is available on the Focus. But unlike the iPhone, this version of Netflix does not require WiFi to stream movies. Of course, the user experience improves with a faster connection because the movie will buffer faster, but playback quality was incredible! The app, like your home connection, will begin playing the movie with a lower quality picture until a higher resolution is buffered. Then it automatically switches to the higher resolution.

For all of those craving fruit, “Fruit Ninja” is available in the Marketplace. Also available are “Need for Speed” and “Assassin’s Creed”. These games are absolutely awesome. And when you sync your X-Box Live account, the phone will log you in so that your friends can see you get pwn’d while on the go!  Neat-o!

Input

I already covered the search by voice ability, but I have to spend a minute on the keyboard. This soft-keyboard is perhaps the best stock experience for any phone. Rotating the phone and pressing a text-input box brings up the full qwerty keyboard. The keys I aim for are usually the ones that get pressed. Like any soft keyboard, mistakes can and do happen. But the operating system’s intuitive correction system is my favorite so far. And what really seals the deal for this keyboard is the fact that you can place the cursor virtually anywhere you want in a text field. Let me give an example:

Say you typed in a huge three message text of smack-talk to your L.A. friends bragging about how the Dodgers won’t win a World Series in their lifetime. And then you notice that instead of typing “Duck the Fodgers,” you wrote “Buck the Rogers.” With other phones you would struggle to get the little cursor right in front of the “u” and “g,” leading to a frustrating battle between the finger sensitive screen and the accuracy of a needle. WP7 makes up for this by giving you a cursor that you can drop anywhere. Simply hold your finger on the screen and in two seconds a green cursor pops up. Holding down your finger, swipe and drag the cursor where you want and let go. Voila! Ill-conceived poop-talking is no match for the brilliance of Windows Phone 7’s text cursor.

Samsung Focus

Hardware

Probably the most beautiful display on the market, the Samsung Super AMOLED display takes full advantage of the slick graphics in the Windows Phone 7 experience. The AMOLED display enables you to read your phone in bright light and sunlight more clearly than any other display on the market. Additionally, Samsung protects its display with a banana-toting, scratch resisting, badass super material called Gorilla Glass. If you want to see the most hardcore test of this kind of material, do a Google search for “Dell Streak Torture Test” and enjoy the show. I don’t suggest you try a torture test on your new screen, however. Just because this glass is designed to handle more stress than your average cell phone doesn’t mean you should drop it off a ladder or anything. But I feel confident in leaving off an optional screen protector on my own device. Your mileage may vary.

The processor is a 1ghz gem and I found that the phone was very responsive. Swiping my finger along the screen produced no lag at all. Playing a movie while downloading apps and mail did not slow the phone down.

I was also happy with the quality of the pictures that the phone took and adding a flash was a nice touch. From the slopes of Heavenly, I was able to capture some beautiful pictures of Lake Tahoe.

Final results

Windows Phone 7 is an excellent alternative to iPhone and Android for anyone looking to get into the Smartphone market or who is already using an iPhone or Android and wants a solid alternative. There are some updates that Microsoft is rolling out that allow for cut-and-paste as well as a faster app experience. If I had to gripe, I would say that the lack of hot-swappable memory cards is a drag. But this is just nitpicking. Most people commit a memory card to one phone, anyway. Be sure that if you do get a card that you are using a card approved by Microsoft.

Why you want one:

That display is so gorgeous you’ll be staring at it all day long.

Why your girlfriend won’t let you have one:

She’ll get jealous of that stupid display.

Why you should get one for your mom:

This phone is very easy to use and yet it is extremely powerful. Plus, she will be glad you still remember her, and call her every day, right?

The Samsung Focus. Image courtesy of microsoftfeed.com

Edward Burns has worked in wireless retail sales for nine years, including seven years in management.  He left wireless to get his English degree at U.C. Berkeley, but still loves to keep up with the happenings of wireless equipment.  He is a gadget freak, builds his own computers, and is an early adopter of new technologies.