
Leaving Windows Phone 7 to Return to Android - oayandosu
http://robpaveza.net/leaving-windows-phone-to-return-to-android
======
kogir
He clearly used Android first. WP7 tries to put everything right in front of
you, and reserve menus and tap-and-hold for rarely used operations (like
delete). Not to say there aren't problems with Windows Phone 7 right now, but:

> On the call history screen, if I tap-and-hold a phone number, Windows Phone
> gives me: Delete

However, if instead you tap the number itself (and don't hold), you get the
full contact (should it match, with call, text, FB comment, email, etc), or
Call Number and Text Number

> In the text messages list, the context-sensitive menu doesn’t give me an
> option to call the person with whom I’m messaging.

But if instead you tap their name or number at the top of the screen, it gives
you their contact (from which you can call, text, FB comment, email, etc) or
if it's just a number, call and text.

Gmail support is through exchange at m.google.com, not IMAP. It does uses
folders, but archiving email is a simple as deleting it in the WP7 UI. Google
keeps a copy in All Messages, just removes it from the tag or inbox.

I've used 4 different models from three manufacturers (Samsung, LG, HTC), and
can say that the audio and touch screen issues must be device specific. I use
a Focus as my primary phone, and have carried other WP7 phones for weeks at a
time -- I've had no problems.

As a developer, and as a user, you can do a _lot_ more with Android. I still
use my Nexus One quite a bit. But WP7 is a solid first offering, and while
there's a lot missing, what they did they did very well.

~~~
mariusmg
Related to the hardware buttons complaint...that's maybe relevant for HTC
phones. LG, for instance, has REAL buttons not those touch sensitive crap and
you really can't press those by mistake.

~~~
contextfree
afaik all the consensus "good" Windows phones (HD7, Focus, Venue Pro) have
touch buttons, though. They don't _totally_ ruin the experience, but it's
really annoying that they'd do something so dumb as to squander much of the
advantage of having a hardware button to begin with. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

------
sad_hacker
Best thing about WP7 (for me) are the tools that they provide to developers.
Visual Studio (Phone) compared to Eclipse for Android is so much better. The
IDE itself and also debugging. Using eclipse after is like doing a brain
surgery through arse. I use and develop for Android, but once I tried WP7
tools I got very jealous.

~~~
contextfree
What is the deployment and debugging experience like on Android or iOS? I was
impressed with the Visual Studio integration when I played with WP7
development a bit - you can just hit F5 and your app starts up on the phone in
debug mode in, like, two seconds, and you can then step through it in Visual
Studio, set breakpoints, hover over variables to see their values, and even
evaluate expressions in the immediate window.

I was vaguely expecting some cumbersome deployment process, but it feels no
heavier than running something on the PC. But I've never developed for other
mobile platforms, so maybe this is just standard?

~~~
metageek
That's about how it is on Android. Maybe more than 2 seconds, though. 3? 5?
Something like that.

~~~
sad_hacker
With WM 3 seconds? It takes only to boot up 3-4 minutes. Emulator is painfully
slow. Whole internet is full of complaints about it...

~~~
contextfree
Debugging on the actual device is a much, much better experience than
debugging on the emulator.

~~~
sad_hacker
I agree. I'm doing it myself also, otherwise it would be impossible to develop
for android. But you need to test your application on different screen sizes,
dpi etc. Or you can buy loads of different phones to test on them all.

------
viggity
I don't know how WP7 is going to turn out in the consumer space, but once MS
releases a deployment mechanism for the enterprise, I think it'll really take
off. There are so many .net developers out there working a corporate job that
WP7 become the obvious choice for when you need to outfit your 10,000
insurance claim adjustors with a phone.

I'd love to see it take off in the consumer space because it has such great
tooling, but I don't think it'll have the same market share as iOS or Android.

------
portmanteaufu
"HTTP is an abstraction of Berkeley Sockets."

Wait, what? HTTP is a protocol that can run on Berkeley sockets, certainly.

~~~
astrodust
People still call them "Berkley sockets"? Isn't that akin to calling your
"Von-Neumann Machine" something like "Turing complete"?

------
awarzzkktsyfj
> If I call a local number by only using its seven-digit number, WP7 never,
> ever figured out to map it to the relevant contact. My old Motorola RAZR
> phones did that.

What part of the country still allows 7 digit dialing?

~~~
metageek
I suppose a cellphone might recognize a 7-digit number and prepend the phone's
own area code. A landline can't do that, of course.

