I have had a change to briefly try out the Windows Phone 7 in real life use (i.e. with personal stuff fully set up in the phone).
The Metro style in Windows Phone 7, especially when coupled with the upcoming user interface of the
Windows on desktop, is a pretty sleek package, promising to free normal users from the clutters and overall mess of the user interfaces in the old PC era.
Removing all that cruft of button gradients, background graphics and shadow effects also helps in making the Metro experience fast and responsive. Visual delight is focused on the few transitions and animations, used consistently across the whole platform.
Getting the basics right
On the apps side, there are some things that are really done well, which are particularly good news for people, who getting introduced to the touchscreen phones. Making phone calls, sending messages and calendar all work very nicely. In fact, of the dominant players (like iPhone and Android), I think the Windows Phone tackles the basic use the best, as it focuses on few key tiles as the shortcuts to the basic functionality of a phone. Using the multitude of apps is relegated to the second level.
Beyond the basic functionality, the social integration on the phone is done well, including the automatic merging of contacts for various services like Facebook and Twitter. The Messages app supports sending Facebook instant messages in addition to SMS. Messages to single person gets all merged in just one conversation. Pretty handy and simple.
Nokia's take on Windows Phone 7
The device tested was Nokia's
Lumia 800. Perhaps as a parallel to Android skins, many have been expecting for Nokia to create its unique experience on top of Windows Phone 7. Instead of a skin, Nokia has so far focused on providing Nokia-only apps and content to its Lumia devices. Considering how difficult it has been for Android vendors to update their own skins in existing devices to latest Android OS (even a year or more since major OS version launch), I feel Nokia has chosen more agile, complementary and fruitful path to follow.
Nevertheless, there are possibilities to improve the Windows Phone experience with design heritage that Nokia has collected over time, particularly in
Nokia N9. The Nokia N9 was the first Nokia phone to truly take advantage of gestures in the core navigation of the device, which was further emphasized in the physical form of the device. The form was eventually inherited by Lumia 800 as well, but not the gestures.
Without breaking the existing user interface, Windows phones could easily introduce gestures as shortcuts, like in N9, to go around the device. This is likely to happen anyway, considering Windows 8 on tablets and desktop already plan to rely heavily on gestures. Why not be able to go back to home screen(s) from an app by swiping down from the top, on a Windows phone?
(1) Additionally, switching between apps by swiping from the side, would be nicely consistent with the upcoming desktop world.
Nokia could also introduce it's own take on the homescreen, while not creating it's own "skin". Of the three home screens, two would be almost the same as currently - the tiles view and the app launcher. The third home screen would be the task switcher view, like N9. Although the 3rd is somewhat optional. If the horizontal edge swipe would allow good access to recently used apps, then separate task switcher view is just unnecessarily duplicating that functionality. However, thanks to metro style, the "thumbnails" of the apps in task switcher view are much more identifiable and attractive than on "full chrome" UIs such as N9.
This home screen approach would allow removing the awkward and disjointed forward/backward arrows from the home views, which also have forced the tiles and the launcher list to be appallingly de-centered. Simple horizontal swipes would allow balanced aesthetics to the most used views of the device, as well as enabling to use the standard status bar across all views of the devices.
N9 Home screens (events, app grid, task switcher)
Windows Phone 7 with N9-like home screens (tiles, app launcher, task switcher)
Young platform
The Windows Phone 7 is a young platform still, it was
launched just 1,5 years ago. As is expected, there are things that would benefit from the maturity that comes with age.
While
Panorama is a very nice concept as a user interface template, it is currently almost the only choice available to designers. Hence, apps tend to look bit too much alike. Even more than that, panoramas emphasize showing snippets of previews in listings, while making direct access to the full listing of the content (beyond the top 5) a bit of a drill down effort. Some apps unfortunately have not been able to avoid this pitfall, like the MS Marketplace -app and Nokia's App Highlights.
When inside applications, one is often confused with
multiple search buttons – one is a hardware key taking to Bing, other is residing on the app toolbar, doing app specific search. Just clean this and use only HW search key to do app specific search, m'kay?
Any app which is
primarily a text content oriented app fits pretty nicely in the Metro style – the panoramas, big fonts and all. However, on the visually oriented side, the standard UI elements seem to just scratch the possibilities. Are there any really mind-blowing visual reading apps like
Flipboard on iPhone/iPad? Haven't found any. iPhone has a good share of user interface innovation happening, going beyond the standard UI, like the
Clear app. Windows Phone apps are currently taking the initial first baby steps.
The
over-the-air updates do not seem to be able to handle all the updates that come to the device.
The
Marketplace app showcases way too many undesirable apps in search results. Particularly the trinket-like apps and x-rated apps are very often appearing in places where they shouldn't. There are some really good and relevant apps in the marketplace, but currently they are somewhat hidden in trash. Also, the typical app price in Marketplace is 2€ or more, whereas same or equivalent app is 0.79€ on iPhone. Unnecessarily pricey, I'd say.
When device is fully set up with personal accounts, the
battery life seems to be less than iPhone and N9, lasting just a day when on light usage. A pity considering Windows Phone is kind of supposed to be a simplification, design-wise, from those phones.
(1) No, it does not make sense to close or exit an app when swiping down. Device should handle multitasking (& closing of apps) automatically (like iPhone does). Apps should just hide themselves and users should be able to return to the state they were in last time they used the app, via application launcher or task switcher.
