why i love windows phone 7

By sohum | Published April 17, 2012

The internet, in general, hates Windows Phone so I decided to write a quick post to explain why I’m completely smitten by the platform. For background purposes, the Nokia Lumia 900 is my fourth smartphone after a BlackBerry Curve 8310, the iPhone 3GS and, most recently, the HTC HD7S. I’ve been using the Windows Phone platform since about July 2011 (the HD7S) and there’s no looking back, for me. Let’s go into details.

It’s Freaking Beautiful

The UI is absolutely stunning. Yes, the screen resolution doesn’t allow for “retina display” and WP manufacturers have not entered the ongoing pixel arms race, but the actual presentation of the operating system is beautiful. Metro is easily my favorite user experience on any piece of software I’ve used. The large tiles are bold and bright and the sharp edges gives them definition. Compare this with the grid of tiny icons that iOS/stock Android presents you (along with a number-based notification system) and the difference is massive if you allow yourself to believe in it. Of course, iOS and Android are making strides with an improved notification system and widgets, respectively, but I’m a fan of the WP presentation. It’s sexy and utilitarian. If I want to check the weather, I just need to unlock the phone and the live tile tells me the current weather and the next two days. If I want to see if anyone has posted anything on my Facebook or tweeted anything at me, once again, the live tile grabs all this information.

Everything is integrated

When I was using an iPhone, I had:

And it goes on. I use my phone primarily to keep track of my social networks, to text my friends, to listen to music and occasionally make a call or two. All the above things I mentioned are integrated into the core Windows Phone operating system. When I first set up my phone, I logged into my Windows Live and Facebook accounts. This grabbed all my contacts and even matched them up with the relevant Facebook accounts. I did install the third-party Facebook app but I hardly use it (also, it is extremely buggy).

The Windows Phone search button (a dedicated touch button that can be pressed at any time) allows you to not only search for text but to scan a barcode or QR code or even listen to music. Yup, the Shazam feature is automatically built in. Pandora still needs a third-party app (wpFandora does an excellent job) but more importantly, all my music is tracked through the Music & Videos hub. This means that if I heard a song on Pandora and then listened to other stuff on my phone, I can easily find the track in my music history as if it were being played from the same source.

I cancelled my Spotify subscription in favor of the Microsoft Zune Pass, which is the same price. The advantages? I don’t have to use iTunes again, ever. I can’t put into words how huge this advantage is for me. I absolutely detest iTunes. Zune is a more than worthy replacement and is about 1,452,530 sexier than iTunes. You know how OS X has been building up all these “full screen, immersive apps” the last few months? Well Zune has been doing that since… well, a long time. Another positive of Zune Pass is that it is essentially iTunes, Spotify, Spotify Mobile and Pandora rolled into one. I can listen to any song on Zune through subscription, and I can download it to my phone and play it offline. Of course, if I haven’t downloaded a song, I can look it up and play it from the marketplace section on the phone and even download it and save it to a playlist. Without having to buy it. Without having to download Spotify. The Pandora equivalent is “Smart DJ”. You can search for any artist and click “Smart DJ” and it will start playing related songs. Sure, their algorithm is probably not as good as Pandora’s, but you can get started with it immediately.

The hardware and software are unique… “different”

I find it most hilarious that I’m using Microsoft software and being “different”. It seems like only yesterday when Apple was forcing “think different” down everyone’s throats. For those not in the know, Nokia is using the slogan “beautifully different” to drive Lumia sales. And it’s ironic, but Microsoft’s product offering here is really unique and different. The iPhone is now the go-to smartphone for most users and the marketing advantage that Apple had with Macs of having “something cooler than yours” has not carried forward to their phone product line. Everyone has an iPhone. Except those people who have Android, which, in my opinion, basically means that you want (/need) to tinker with your OS to customize it to your needs or you are just to cheap to buy an iPhone. Or you hate the fact that Apple makes minor improvements to their product every year and then sells it as if it’s the greatest new thing. Android buyers have the latest technology available at a low price now, instead of next year. Alas, it comes at the cost of a fragmented marketplace that is struggling to deal with all the different versions of the operating system on their hardware, now.

Windows Phone has a minuscule market share and one that Microsoft, I think, should increase only enough to become the Mac of the smartphone market. The Lumia 900 is a fine hero device because it’s not just Android hardware with the WP software on it, but a device built from scratch to match the sexiness of the WP7 operating system. Of course, MS has historically operated on volume so they are trying to give the device away for free to try and get it in people’s hands. I suppose this works, but at some point I think MS should try to make Windows Phone a luxury device, rather than the Dell of smartphones.

And finally, the negatives…

Of coures, there are several negatives with the platform. The two that have been brought up the most are (1) “there are no apps” and (2) “this is last year’s hardware”. Yes, the app offering is fractional compared to the iTunes App Store and the Google Marketplace (or whatever its name is, right now). And the bigger problem, in my opinion, is that most big-name developers don’t even consider developing for WP. Which is mindblowing to me, as a developer, because Microsoft’s developer suite (Visual Studio) is heads and shoulders above iOS’ (XCode or Mono Touch) or Android’s (Eclipse or whatever Java editor you choose to use). .NET technology has been around for ages and most developers already know how to code in it. One would expect there to be a lot more Windows Phone developers, but I guess they are driven by market needs.

But going back to the crux of the issue, yes, there is an app problem. Any Windows Phone user who tries to tell you otherwise is just lying to himself or herself. I want to play Draw Something on my Lumia. I want to be with the “in” crowd of whatever game ends up being the next viral craze. This is a work in progress and it’s only going to change if there is a sufficient shift in market share for Windows Phone. All that said, the apps for WP are legitimate in themselves. There are several really nice apps that take advantage of the Metro UX and understand Microsoft’s vision with the operating system.

The second negative is, in my opinion, mostly just FUD. Yes, current generation Windows Phones are babies compared to the technical specifications of Android. Isn’t there an Android phone out there which is going to be quad-core? And really, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “why the hell do you need four cores on your phone?” It sounds like either the developer SDK is not efficient or that the developers are dumb. Windows Phone works like a dream with a single core. Everything is snappy and I have encountered little to no lag. That said, I do think that a few of the software requirements/implementations could use improvement. For example, I’d like to have higher resolution graphics and better camera software. I’m hoping Apollo will change some of this. And if Apollo does include dual-core support, I can’t imagine how awesome the platform would be. If WP’s performance is already comparable with iOS/Android with a fraction of the cores, a multi-core experience is only going to be better (especially given that MS has software pedigree in developing successful multi-core operating systems).

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Alright, I’m gonna step off my soap box, now, since this was a fair bit longer than I expected. Keep in mind that these conclusions are drawn based off of my Lumia 900. A few of my opinions would be very different if I had been writing this article whilst using the HD7S, which is essentially just an Android phone with the Microsoft OS on it.

Feel free to comment with your opinion! I completely understand that my love of the MS offering is highly subjective. As with taste in music and preference for beer styles, I respect the fact that people like different things.

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generally speaking

By sohum | Published February 15, 2012

I always get into a reflective mood around my birthday. More than the start of a new year, I think this is a better time to make resolutions and set goals, because it gives me a better idea of how I grew over one discrete year of existence. The reflective mood probably also has to do with the fact that my birthday is just 3 days before Valentine’s day and since I am invariably single during this time, I am in a particularly vitriolic state of mind.

So, year 25 of my life was, in general, a positive experience. I grew a lot and it was not only in circumference and weight (actually, I think I shrunk it both those departments). More importantly, I feel like I finally settled down in my job and my life and developed a friend circle that I can both depend on and have fun with. Mentally, I stopped taking myself so seriously and made an effort to be more extroverted, though there are still eons of room for improvement in that department.

There were just as many negatives, however. For one, I was pretty financially irresponsible. I fear that I am becoming the quintessential American consumer—purchasing all sorts of crap that I do not need and allowing it to pile-up in the various crevices of my apartment. I spent unspeakable amounts of money on dining and entertainment with friends. My only real investment in my financial future was irregular contributions to my savings account and consistent purchasing of employee stock. I did not maintain a personal budget and thus was prone to making bad consumer decisions. My attempt to rectify this has been to actually plan a budget for 2012 and tracking it week-to-week. Even if I do not stick exactly to my budget, at least I will have a smaller feedback cycle for when I am fucking up.

The second, and infinitely more frustrating, part of the last year of my life was the dearth of romance. Not that romance has been an integral part of many of the years of my life, or at least, successful and reciprocated romance, but I did make a conscious decision to make more of an effort. After having spent the majority of my college career being infatuated with a girl who was not only not interested, but ended up being not that great of a friend, I was more than ready to move on. Living with roommates for my first year of employment delayed this process since I didn’t have to feel the entire brunt of loneliness. Once I moved into a one bedroom, however, I realized that my social life was entirely in my own hands.

Now, the only problem was that I had to put myself into situations where I could actually meet women, since that would appear to be the required prerequisite to finding a woman who I was attracted to and who reflected that attraction. Unfortunately, my only existing avenues for such adventure were (a) the workplace and (b) the bar scene. This was not ideal since workplace romances are always tricky situations and I am always distrustful of the bar scene, telling myself it is because I don’t want to find some random at a bar (conveniently ignoring the fact that I am myself some random at a bar).

Neither of these situations really panned out. My workplace advances were pathetically rejected, leaving an expectedly awkward dangling friendship that took a while to repair. The bar scene prospects never panned out, probably because evidently all Austin bars are full of dudes and the ones that have girls seem to have ones that need to perennially run off to the restroom. Girls, you should get at least a little more creative with your rejection!

Around the time I was predicting, nay, expecting failure on both these fronts, I went ahead and created an account on OkCupid. The biggest step going into this was lying to myself that I was not as interesting enough in real life as I was on some website. It was probably after spending a couple of months sending 20-25 messages and receiving a response or two that I realized that, incredibly, I was more boring online than I was in real life. The ego blows continued. I have since concluded that the one thing OkCupid has going for it is that it is free. Unfortunately, since it is free, I feel like many of the girls on the site aren’t taking it seriously. And, talking with the one friend that I did make from that website (who is an extremely awesome platonic friend that I can now talk to about virtually anything), they are getting bombarded by hundreds of Neanderthal-writing-comprehension messages a day. These two theories combined, I am able to still sleep at night.

So where does this leave me in my current stage of life? Well, my problem in the earlier years of my life was the fear of rejection. For this reason, I would always take the time to get to know someone well before attempting to initiate a romantic connection. While I still do not believe this process is doomed, it has not panned out thus far. My continued rejection, both in real life and in the form of ignored messages on OkCupid signal that, unfortunately, rejection appears to be the norm. That kinda sucks, because I’m used to #winning and just being really awesome, generally speaking.

One of my close female friends from Rice suggested that I partake in more young professional activities. While I’m not exactly sure as to what this entails, I do realize that going out to a bar is not the most effective way to find someone interesting. For one, you usually can’t even hear what they are saying. I guess I will finally stop deleting the millions of emails I get every day from MeetUp and actually start attending some events. I’m also planning to volunteer (more?), especially at dog shelters. And I’m actually going to get a dog, after thinking about it for a year and a half. As a tweet from the @brotips_hq account put it best: “be the person your dog thinks you are”. Well, I don’t have a dog, so I’m going to rescue one and then hopefully enjoy some unconditional love. That’s my selfish reading of it, anyways.

Thank for reading! Feel free to leave comments but don’t expect responses. J

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