Poll: HD7 and WP7 Pros and Cons. Share your thoughts and vote.

My HD7

Me and MY HD7 it's a love hate relationship I guess.

A bit of history:
I've owned the HD1 (****ing loved it), The HD2 (was an okay device) Now the HD7 (still testing it). I'm a smartphone FANATIC! I have devices ranging from the Nexus One, to the Blue Angel (favorite phone of all time), to the EVO, G1, MOTO Backflip, Touch Pro1 and 2, even the XDA Flame, and Palm Pre, you name it. So I don't really have a biased to any particular device.

The HD7:

The physical design is AMAZING (though I think it could use more metal on the back, but it still feels way better than the plastic clad EVO). The screen appears to be floating as it's not touching the upper and lower bezel. The kickstand is sturdy.

The camera button is hard to press on the second stage (not the focus stage), if you attempt to use one hand it will probably shake enough of ruin your shot (and I have big hands, I can palm a basket ball). two hand use should be fine

The camera flash is great. It does a good job with adjusting the brightness of the light.

The battery life is absolutely pathetic, worse than than any device I ever owned.

The Audio from the built in speaker is CRAP! Even with HTC sound enhancer. I'ts actually the worst sounding phone I every owned, but it's bearable.

The Audio pushed out through the headphones is AMAZING!

The vibrator. I know who ever's reading this is like WTF? But I've always hated the way the vibrator feels on HTC device. I think it's an important feature on devices nowadays especially with tactile feedback emulations. With that said: On my EVO it's horrible it makes an annoying noise and it only vibrates the lower portion of the phone. But the vibrator on this device is awesome. It feels really natural and vibrates the whole phone. Almost better than the one on the Samsung devices.

The LCD display is actually decent. I don't know what everyone complains about, the device would have cost nearly twice as much with a 4.3 inch SAMOLED like everyone wants, no one has a 4.3 inch AMOLED or SAMOLED so give it a rest people! The display could be brighter in my opinion though.

The sound quality for phone call is the best I had so far, but put it on speaker phone and it's the worst I've heard.

Pocket IE is very fast faster than the Android 2.2 default browser. But the render is kind of weird as they seem to not have have anti aliasing on text when completely zoomed out so it looks horrible sometimes. Over all the browser is good.


Windows 7 in a nutshell

I love it and hate it.

I love: the messaging app, the overall interface, the idea for hubs, the xbox live integration, the live tiles, the lock screen, the Email Hub (beautifu and extremely functional), the picture and video Hub (beautiful and functional) the entire OS is extremely responsive and cohesive.

I hate: Some hubs won't load (and requires a soft reset) less than 5% of the time, Some apps have the tendency to crash (more time than I'm comfortable with) bot 3rd party and built in apps, I hate that the video recorder will not retain settings.

And I ABSOLUTELY HATE when searching for apps you get music result as well; example: if you search in Market Place for "Notes" you'll get some applications like "Voice Notes" and "Light Notes" but you'll also have albums and play lists mixed in like "Notes from the Past" and "Best of the 70s - Play list" WTF!! at the very least they could have grouped them by type "Albums" "Applications" "Play List". Instead they mix them all up randomly so you'll have to search an entire list of music albums so you won't potentially miss a very good app all the way at the bottom. W T F !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I give the device a 7/10




-Frankie

Here's my opinion, for what it's worth... I've owned the HD7 since it was first released in the UK last year. I've stuck with it and I've gone through all the upgrades they released, including Mango. I've owned many different phones before, including Windows Mobile and Android devices, so I feel that I can actually provide some sort of personal comparisson between those.

Here's my background: I'm a geek. I like to have as many options as possible and I hate being locked into an operating system or an application that pretends that I am an idiot and cannot be trusted to modify any settings. Here's what I think is good and what I (personally) think doesn't work for me:


Bad Points:
=========

1. The Mango GUI is 'OK', but that's about it. It actually p!sses me off that Microsoft locks me into a single GUI and don't let me customize the icons. It's patronising. However, in Windows 8, the Mango GUI works a treat. So it's horses for corses I think... (remember, my personal opinion, not gospel!)
   
2. The GUI is drab and boring. SMS messaging is boring and uninspiring with the square, plain colour boxes... common! You can do better than this!
   
3. I understand why Microsoft decided to go with the USP (unique selling point) of the 'Hub' concept, where all contacts and messages are grouped together. Call me an old fart, but I actually prefer the 'old' way of keeping stuff separate as I am not very active on Facebook or Twitter. If I want to see what's going on, on Facebook, I'll go into the dedicated app. I understand that there are probably many more people who think differently to me, but I would at least like to have *THE CHOICE* to turn the feature off!
   
4. Did I mention lack of choice yet? Configuration on the device is very restricted, to the point that the phone treats me like a retarded child. Are you sure you want to disable predictive texting, so that you can use foreign words in your text messages? No, didn't think so, so I won't give you the option..... Common Microsoft! I could disable predictive texting in my Nokia phone 15 years ago, but all of the sudden, it is no longer considered 'necessary'.... muppets.
   
5. The Calendar is pretty crap for any real-world professional use. If I go into month overview everything is SOOOO small I can't see anything. Even in Landscape mode. The Agenda view is annoying and it's difficult to find anything without looking for a while (when you have lots of appointments in the diary). Why on earth did Microsoft not follow it's own implementation and adopted the Outlook Calendar features???!!!! To add to this, because the colours and layout of the OS are soooo drab, it makes it even harder to find anything in the calendar.
   
6. Outlook is crap. It really is. Once again, everything is almost monochrome and drab, where nothing stands out and it makes it harder to read messages. It's just all sooo boring. Life's not worth living when I open my outlook. Hohum...... It's OK for reading messages, but it's not great for forwarding or editing messages. It's actually a huge pain to forward something and then edit what you forward. Microsoft assumes that you do not want to edit the message you're forwarding.... patronising once again anyone?!
   
7. IE9 is OK, but I am still waiting for the feature from Android where pages are re-sized automatically when zooming in, so that all text fits to the page. If I zoom in in IE9 I have to scroll left/right to read a web page. Not good enough....
   
8. Painfully few system settings when compared to Android. Once again, Microsoft assumes we're all brain-dead idiots who only want to make phonecalls and drool onto the screen....
   
9. HTC specific issue: The camera is shockingly sh!t. It's slow, the macro function isn't great because I can't get as close a focus as on my G1 for example and the videos are pointless. The photos have very little dynamic range, they're under-saturated, over-contrasty, which kills the little dynamic range the camera has got. And the pixel level details are bad too. I only use this camera when I have nothing else to hand that can take photos. My G1 was *way* better. Not good enough HTC!
   
10. That damn search button on the right hand side of the phone. It's soooooo sensitive and it is soooo easy to accidentally hit it, it's almost unreal. Why did they do this? And why can I not change the default search provider to Google? Bing sucks!
    
11. Bing Maps were shockingly awful until the Mango update. So much so that I had to download Gmaps. Once again, just not good enough Microsoft, and something I consider to be pure lazyness, as they have a good Browser based Bing maps. Why could they not port that??!!
    
12. Custom ringtones anyone? Hello? Now possible in Mango via a hack, but why am I not allowed to load my own MP3's out of the box?? Patronising, once again?!
    
13. Marketplace used to be shocking at the beginning until the first update was released. Searching for an app would bring up a million 'songs' by random artists, that decided to name their song 'google maps' or 'wifi tool' or 'calendar' to get the top hits on the marketplace. Please. That is just shocking....
    

Good Points:
==========

• The OS is fast and snappy. No hesitation, no delays (usually)
  
• Browser is fast and snappy
  
• Battery life has improved with Mango out of the box (without using battery saver)
  
• Better browser on Mango
  
• Two-tone colour scheme for messages in Mango, which now makes it easier to read conversations. Nothing to write home about though. Just goes to show how sh!te the original layout was that I am mentioning this!! =O
  
• I like the way Mango now groups all pictures together into a hub. I know I complained about the hub above, but it actually makes sense for pictures (only).
  

Sorry about the rant. But this phone has been p!ssing me off since I bought it and I've still got a few months left on the contract, so I have to let off some steam here. My next phone will be an Android device again. Can't wait to go back! My partner has my old HTC Desire with Android 2.2 and it's *WAY* better in functionality than this phone....!


Mich

About HD7 and WP7, quick review.

Positive HTC HD7:
. The device is awesome, fast, slim, the 4.3” high resolution screen is really epic and it feels really good when holding it in your hands. It makes you wanna have sex with it.
. The device materials quality is over my expectations
. Auto focus and dual LED flash working great
. Gsensor, proximity, and ambient light Sensor fast and reliable

Negative HTC HD7:
. Internal storage: 8 GB (Europe), I just hope we can upgrate it soon
. Battery drains a lot. it seems that battery manufacters are not keeping the pace. I recommend to disable all automatic updates and dont use 3G.

Positive Microsoft WP7:
. Really a clean OS fast and very responsive.
. The Hubs and animated tiles layout is very simple and fun to use.
. Social integration is a awesome feature and well worked by Microsoft (but it may be a little confusing for newbs.
. The boot sequence is the faster I ever seen.

Negative Microsoft WP7:
. Marketplace and Zune not available for all regions (you need to create a windows live account in a Region like UK for example).
. Lack of Customization

Bottom line:
WP7 is a kind of fresh air in the mobile world, a different approach with easy-to-use interface focused in integration of features and social network. Its fast, clean, intuitive, full of people-centric features with memory management like no other OS. Overall is has unbeatable perfomance.

Metro UI it is not just a app launcher, it has live tiles and not that sea of the same old and boring icons. The touch responsiveness is awesome and the short transitions between applications is the best experience I ever had.

The WP7 keyboard is clean , the mail experience is solid, IE9 is fast, the Office integration make WP7 impossible to ignore for serious business users, terrific Zune and Xbox Live integration with beautiful and useful user interface. All of these features are as simple and clean as the rest of the OS.

A kid can use it, a grown up can use it, a elderly can use it.

WP7 its still a work in progress and yes there is a lot of features missing but since it is just one year old, you can wait and live without it. The most important is that what we have now does not break, crash or lag. It works perfectly and smooth. Bottom line, you love it or you hate it.

In my case, I Love Windows Phone.

EDIT:
My Rate so far: 8.5/10


Thats all.
dot

Complete Bs by Microsoft

Its a lemon operasting system there is nothing I like about it I hope MS goes out of Business..

After two weeks Im going to return my phone. I cant really pinpoint one thing why I dont like it, but I miss using Android. I know Ive gotten beat up about this before but If you have a cell phone number listed in the home field of the contact, they arent searchable in "Messaging" . I understand how everyone feels about that but my argument is the person is listed in the contacts so the information is there, but it wont even display the persons name when searched. Fixable but "to me" annoying. I also dont like that the tiles on the home screen are basically all the same color. For me It makes glancing at the screen difficult to quickly search the tile Im looking for.
Battery life is terrible and makes the phone unusable for media if you are also relying on it all day long for other stuff.
Volume is way to low.
Not having LED notifications for SMS and Email is just insane. All day long I have to turn the phone on and off to see if I missed something. Just stupid.
Its beautiful and runs great but there just isnt a reason to switch to it if you have used any other modern smartphone.
Just my two cents.