Tag: Windows Phone

Much to do about Mango

I’ve published in this blog previously annoyances I’ve had with Windows Phone 7. However, I continue to see Windows Phone 7 as a good (although currently weak) alternative in the mobile space. As such I continue to keep an eye on upcoming developments, of which I have been recently reading about the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7 known as Mango.

 

The following article:

 

http://www.winrumors.com/windows-phone-mango-overview-outlook-phone-calendar-video/

 

Is a worthwhile read about what new features are coming. The article contains two videos which cover these additions quite nicely and are well worth a minutes to view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5g7tHxwmQ

 

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFl4la6LdU

 

However by far the video that interests me the most is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/user/winrumors#p/a/u/1/4liR0XntUFA

 

Why? Because it cover the Outlook and phone features which is what I need more as a business user. I also like the new calendar features which makes a big difference to using the phone. If you are a business user of Windows Phone 7 I’d suggest you watch this last video.

 

Overall it seems to me that Microsoft has taken on board the feedback it has received so far and will deliver a very worthwhile update to the platform. This certainly give me a lot more faith in platform going forward with two important caveats, that being that this update will be available soon and work on my existing device. My understanding is that the Mango update will be out in September and will work on existing devices. I’ll be keeping my finger crossed but am very happy to see the Windows Phone 7 platform advancing

Evernote for Windows 7 Phone

One of the best cloud based apps that I know and use is Evernote. It is a bit like Microsoft OneNote in that it allows your to keep notes and then have those notes sync’ed across a number of different devices.

Personally, I initially used Evernote to sync study information between my different Windows PC’s initially. However I soon graduated to using it on every device, including the web and iPad. One handy application of Evernote was when I wanted to take a screen capture of a customer’s machine I could do so directly using the web based version of Evernote. Once that was done I knew that when I returned to my office that screen shot would be synced with my desktop. Very, very handy.

The one place that Evernote was missing from was Windows Phone 7 (which I adopted recently). This made me wonder whether the Windows Phone 7 platform had a future simply because an app like Evernote is everywhere else. However, have no fear, Evernote for Windows Phone 7 is now available from the marketplace and like on all other platforms is free.

If you have never looked at Evernote then I strongly recommend you do as it is truly a great example of a cloud based application and besides that I have found that it can really improve your productivity.

Windows Phone 7 annoyances


I upgraded from my Windows Mobile 6.0 device a while back to Windows Phone 7 in order to give it a try. My major reason for the upgrade was for the native SharePoint integration, however I also wanted to compare what Microsoft had developed to other mobile platforms.

Overall, I must admit that it has been a very frustrating experience for a number of reasons, some of which include:

– Swiping up to do things unbalances the phone in my hand. Many times I have swiped up and the phone has shot out of my hand. This was especially true when I started using it. It also find that I have to swipe up generally more than once to get it to work.

– There is no numerical percentage charge displayed. The only indication of charge is a graphic that shows a battery. Now suppose when I look at the charge before I leave the office and see that it has some charge left. That all goes south when I next look at the phone and find that the remaining charge has now disappeared because it was right on the border before I left the office. If there, however, was a numerical percentage charge amount I would know exactly when I was below say 10% and needed a charge.

– Windows Phone 7 doesn’t allow the device to be used as an external storage device. This means I can’t simply attached the Windows Phone 7 to my PC and drag and drop files. I could do this with Windows Mobile 6.0 but not the latest version. What the? C’mon Microsoft, just about every portable device supports the ability to copy files directly to and from the device, but not Windows Phone 7!

– Many of the ‘tiles’ on the front screen could have much less white space. If you have space why don’t you make the information displayed as large as possible? Honestly, bigger text and less white space would be much easier to read.

– These same tiles only seem to support high contrast background colours with white text. It would much better if the background was darker than the text to make reading easier. Why can’t I select the colour of the tiles I want rather than being restricted to only the colours provided?

– There just aren’t enough decent apps. I understand why this is so but in today’s app driven world there needs to be so many more apps than there are.

There are plenty of other really annoying things about Windows Phone 7. Perhaps, I haven’t found all the options (and if someone can tell me what I’m doing wrong I’d love to hear) but I figure if I haven’t found them by now I ain’t going to and what hope would a normal user have?

There are also some good things about Windows Phone 7 but I’ll cover that in a separate post.

Office365 and Windows Phone 7 video

Here’s a nice video covering some of the integration features of Office365 and Windows Phone 7.

Mobile SharePoint 2010

One of the great features that will be available in Windows Phone 7 will be direct integration into SharePoint 2010 and the use of Mobile Office 2010. If you are a big user of SharePoint this is probably a very good reason to give the new Windows Phone 7 a close look.

 

Until I get that chance probably the best idea of what the experience will be like can be seen in the following video.

 

Why the Droid is cool

Now why can’t they market Windows 7 phones like this? Here’s a swag of video’s on the Motorola Driod but I reckon this one is the best:

Microsoft My Phone

Here’s something new from Microsoft:

 

Microsoft® My Phone mirrors information between your phone and your online account. This enables you to:

•    Backup and restore your phone’s information to a password-protected web site
•    Access and update your contacts and appointments from your web account
•    View and download photos to share with family and friends

 

Try it out (You’ll need a Windows Mobile device)

 

I found that if you are already using ActiveSync to Exchange server then you can’t sync your emails, calendar and contacts to My Phone but you can do other stuff like text messages, photos, documents, etc (just watch the data transfer charges). My Phone also currently give you 200MB free space into which you can store your information.

 

I think My Phone is really handy, especially for those who don’t sync to Exchange server but it would be nice if you could sync to Windows Live or SkyDrive wouldn’t it? But hey, it’s only beta software so maybe in future versions?