Over the last few days I had a radical idea that turned into a sort of a plan. Or, I should say, my colleague Brandon had a radical idea and I pilfered it. He mentioned that he was getting an HTC HD7S Windows Phone 7 device.
I’ve been thinking for months now that the iPhone 5 is the first iPhone ever that (thus far) has not got me excited. Thinking that this might be the first one I don’t rush out to get on launch day, and that I might even have a look at / spend some time with a device on another mobile platform.
Anyway, last night I bought an HTC HD7S at my local AT&T store. Got it at a decent upgrade cost as my iPhone 4 is upgrade eligible ($99). This is my first non-iPhone smartphone in four years.
For those who haven’t heard about the HD7S, some of its notable features are a 1GHz processor, 16GB of internal storage, a 5Megapixel camera with autofocus and video, and a 4.3 inch WVGA super LCD display. It’s considered one of, or the, top of the line Windows Phone 7 device for AT&T.
I should note here that buying the HD7S is not me saying ‘I’m done with iPhone’ or iOS or Apple, or even anything in that neighborhood. It’s partly a recognition that lately my iPad 2 is by far and away my most used device, and my iPhone had become more and more like ‘just a phone’.
It’s been a long while since I used a Windows Mobile device. In mobile tech years, which feel very much like dog years, it’s been an eternity. So of course it feels like one heck of a sea change to suddenly have the HD7S in my pocket and by my side.
I’ve spent less than a day with the device, but I have a few very early impressions to share already – and will doubtless have more soon. Here’s some of my very first impressions, thoughts, and notes on using a Windows Phone 7 device for 12 hours or so, in no particular order:
— I found it a little lame that straight out of the box the phone had just about zero charge. It took around 2.5 hours plugged into a wall charger to get it a full charge. A small detail, but one that sticks out because I’ve never seen an iPhone not close to or at full charge out of the box.
— I was surprised to learn that there’s a Mac App Store app that lets you sync music, photos, video, and podcasts from the Mac to a Windows Phone 7 device. It’s called Windows Phone 7 Connector and it’s a free app in the Mac App Store.
The AT&T store rep and the Quickstart booklet that comes with the HD7S both mentioned having to use the Zune software to sync, which I was dreading – as I’ve used it before back in the olden days when I owned the original Zune (insert your favorite 5 Zune owners in the whole world joke here).
The Windows Phone 7 Connector software sent my MacBook Pro into a massive panic attack, or nearly killed it or something, the first time it was launched and I connected the HD7S via USB. The app itself froze up and decided to take OS X Lion with it. I couldn’t Command-tab to another app or even bring up a Force Quit dialog. When I was eventually able to get some small response out of the MBP, Activity Monitor showed the app using between 45 to 183 (!) percent of CPU time. Marvelous.
I disconnected the HD7S, closed a few running apps, and tried again and things worked far better. Windows Phone 7 Connector is clearly a big resource hog though.
Anyway, it was great to be able to sync some music and photos over to the HD7S. It’s only a 16GB device, so I didn’t overdo it just yet – just threw some recent favorite playlists and photos onto it for now.
At the AT&T store they had already transferred my contacts over from my iPhone 4 to the new device, which was quite handy.
— I knew apps would be a big issue with a Windows Phone device, and started looking at that a little last night. I found and installed official apps for Evernote, Twitter, and Facebook – and a decent looking 3rd party Dropbox app. I cannot find a Skype app so far, not even a 3rd party one.
— Battery life seems decidedly unimpressive so far. I used the device for maybe 1.5 hours last night – mainly poking around settings, making adjustments to the start screen, and installing a few apps. This morning I did a little more of the same, took a few test pics, and took it to the gym and played the music app for an hour. I’ve done very little web browsing, had WiFi on but 3G and BT etc off, not played any videos – and it’s at around 25%. I’m just very rough guessing it here – but that says to me it is not going to last through a typical day of heavy usage. The iPhone 4 with similar use would be closer to 75% battery I’d say – again just my quick, rough estimate.
I’ve got a lot more thoughts on my early experience with a Windows Phone 7 device – and I’ll share some more soon.
If any of you are recent or current Windows Phone 7 users and you have any tips or app recommendations, please fire away with them in the comments. Or if any of you are curious about Windows Phone 7 devices and have any questions / things you want to know about, throw those in the comments too and I’ll do my best to find answers.
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TAGS: Windows Phone 7
