Why Windows Phone 7 Sucks!
Written by Rob Nichols on March 21, 2011 · Filed under Software
Back in October, I got myself a Samsung Omnia 7 running Windows Phone 7. The latest and apparently greatest mobile operating system to arrive out of Microsoft. Now here’s the thing: back in October/November-time, I put together a full review of the platform, and all in all it stacked up pretty well for a newcomer.
However, since then the platform has been entirely stagnant, with only one attempt at a software update and that didn’t quite go to plan. But that’s not all, there is so much wrong with the platform it’s hard to know where to start, and it’s been boiling up inside me now for so long, it’s time to get it off my chest.
<rant>
For starters, as I’ve already mentioned, there has only been talk of any software updates, and that, in the words of Peter Griffin, really grinds my gears. Considering it’s a newbie on the mobile front, you would have thought that Microsoft would be going all out to iron out any early bugs. But no, instead the focus seems to have shifted somewhat to tying up deals with Nokia regarding future hardware. Hardware is all well and good, but if the software’s crap, there’s little point. Just ask Nokia.
But there are also little issues which at first I thought would be eradicated over time. For starters, the quality of the majority of the apps on the Marketplace is atrocious. And what’s more, the Marketplace is atrocious. Just the other day I hammered gently on the Marketplace tile to see what’s new, only to find the ‘new’ section of the Marketplace had been littered with apps which were only available in Chinese!
The names were in Chinese, so I didn’t even know if I would have liked them had they been in English. Now, I know that Microsoft has deliberately steered away from the Apple-style restrictions on app-submissions, and I know that there has been a blatant ploy to get as many apps in there as quickly as possible, but come on guys, have some dignity. There are apps in there called ‘I am rich’, costing customers well in excess of £300, for what I assume is nothing. Surely this sort of nonsense should be outlawed by whoever, if there actually is anyone, monitoring the app submissions.
On top of that, I can only assume that the sales figures of Windows Phones have been somewhat diminutive, as Microsoft remains coy on the subject. This ambiguity has probably been the root of my next issue. The complete and utter lack of ‘official’ apps. When you look at iOS you have apps for Evernote, Dropbox and all manner of wonderful applications coming direct from the manufacturer.
On Windows Phone however, there are, in a couple of instances, some clients made by a third party for Dropbox and a few others, but as for Evernote, there’s nothing. Dropbox and Evernote are just two I use regularly on other platforms which is why they are the examples here, but there are lots more I can assure you.
Similarly, something that leaves me with a great sense of anger burning in the pit of my stomach is Microsoft’s half-hearted effort at producing a YouTube application. Now, YouTube has become an integral part of the web, with many millions of users on a daily basis. So you would have thought it be a necessary inclusion. Microsoft obviously thought it possible to get away with what can only be described as sheer laziness, or incompetence. The app itself is truly appalling, and at first I thought it had been crafted by an ham-fisted moron, rather than a multi-billion dollar company primarily skilled in software development.
Microsoft even went as far as integrating YouTube videos into the Music & Video Zune suite, but simply made a mess of it. The app itself is actually just an embedded browser displaying the mobile site, and obviously this provides a ‘watch video’ link, which then takes you back to the video player. Shocking. If you’re sent a link, for example, you have to open it up, and manually change the URL from www.youtube.com/….. to m.youtube.com/…. It is criminal for such an ambitious operating system to allow this shit to be a key part of the web experience you get on the platform.
On a slightly less angry note, something else has been bothering me. As much as I like the concept of the Metro UI, I can’t help but feel it has been quite poorly implemented on Windows Phone. The titles, for example, are outrageously big, to the point that they dominate each and every screen leaving little room for content. This is OK, for something such as a weather app, but when your reading the news on a screen that is essentially reduced to roughly a 2.5″ diagonal, it makes you wonder why you splashed out for a phone with such a capacious display in the first place.
And whilst we’re I’m talking ranting about news on Windows Phone 7, there’s also the small matter of news feed applications. There are hundreds (not literally). And all of them are shit! For one reason or another, they just don’t cut it when compared with what’s on offer on iOS or Android. In fact, I’ve been driven to using the web, which is all well and good, but Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to put IE6 on there, make it slow, and to be honest I’d rather use an app after using iOS for a while and becoming accustomed to an almost perfectly high standard.
Going back to the UI for a moment, there’s yet another thing punching me repeatedly between the eyes. And that’s the ‘live tiles’ concept. And really, it’s nothing more than a concept because as far as I can tell, Microsoft has completely disallowed its usage on third-party apps. Now I know that’s not the case, as there are a few which do offer live tiles, but when I say ‘few’, I mean ‘few’. I could probably count them on one hand, the good ones at least. That’s poor, and I am unsure why. If there are any Windows Phone developers reading this, I’m curious, how difficult is it to make a live tile? At the moment the whole ‘Glance and Go’ in reality is more like ‘Glance, Press, Wait, Crash, Throw’.
Anyway, these things are all pretty trivial in truth, the most important part of this little satire of mine is Microsoft’s apparent lack of enthusiasm regarding integration of its services. When you look at Android and iOS, Windows Phone 7 is in many respects a happy medium. One area where this is not acceptable, though, is with software integration. Apple does it perfectly, with Mac OS X and iOS apps almost perfectly in-sync. Google does it, too, with its batch of software, so why doesn’t Microsoft see fit to throw some SkyDrive in there? OK, so Xbox Live is in there, but it offers no synchronisation at all with your Xbox 360, as none of the games are the same. It’ll be interesting to see how Sony go about converging the gaming experience on the PS3 and the NGP handheld console. Hopefully better than Microsoft, as Windows Phone 7 gaming is no more than a handful of indie titles with half a billion dollars worth of branding attached to it.
Of course, there are a lot of positives to be taken from version 1.0 of Windows Phone 7, and it is a promising platform, Microsoft just needs to address some pretty terrible flaws and fix some outrageous bugs. The biggest problem, though, is Windows is just not ‘cool’. Sorry Microsoft, but Apple just does ‘cool’ a million times better.
</rant>
I have a HD7 and all i experience with the handset is crashing, freezing, turning itself off and just an overall pants user experience. I was also sold the phone on O2 claimed that it was a popular smartphone which could rival my iPhone4 – which it definitely cannot!
I have complained to my vendor (O2) numerous times and all they want to do is send the phone away for repair and i am really starting to loose my hope in any Microsoft platform.
Windows Phone 7 – rubbish platform…. has the potential to be good but not anytime soon!!
Not sure how a grid of icons is “cool”
Well done, that title certainly managed to get a comment out of me!
First off the software updates – Slow yes but the delays seems to put the carriers at fault, not Microsoft. No one really knows what delaying things but numerous working builds of NoDo are currently out there so it’s obviously not a software issue. I just wish Microsoft would be more open with when stuff is happening and why things are getting delayed.
Secondly the marketplace: There are plenty of good apps out there, and more are being added by the day. Of course there are plenty of useless ones, I find your mention of the £300 one ridiculous. If you really want someone to asses whether or not an app is suitable for you go blindly follow Apple’s opinion. The Windows Phone 7 marketplace isn’t open in any means and certainly prevents malicious code from being spread, but I’m pleased that Microsoft feel that its users may be able to think for themselves before buying an app.
Regarding the new apps all being Chinese, I’ve noticed this myself a few times. Thing is at that time they are the new apps, so what if they’re Chinese. I’m sure all the Chinese users are peeved that they’re normally in English. I agree filters for language etc would be great, I believe the NoDo update goes somewhere to fixing a few of these problems (although it more relates to apps vs songs etc I think) but if I’m given an option that says it shows all new apps I want to see them, not a subset.
Official app support is a pain, things are slowly becoming better, it’s not like they won’t come, things just aren’t instant…something you should have realised before buying into a brad new platform.
The YouTube thing is something I do agree with you on, although you should be aware that there are now a couple of apps out there which do a very good job. I agree that these shouldn’t be necessary however, native or official app support should be (and will hopefully become) much better. I do however like the music hub support of previously watched youtube videos.
Mentioning the UI the simple response is if you don’t like it don’t buy it. You were either woefully un-informed when you bought the device (which is worrying if you write for a tech site) or have bought apps which implement the metro UI system badly. Either way I believe the Metro UI and apps which have implemented it well is great and is one of the big reasons why I bought the phone. Why on earth did you if you don’t like it?
Newsreaders – I’m still playing with them, have probably settled on WonderReader, the only feature it’s missing is offline caching as far as I’m aware which I’m perfectly happy about. Is this really you only reason for reverting to the web?
Live tiles – Third party apps aren’t allowed the same access to the phone tiles as native Microsoft ones so yes they are limited, something I do find pretty annoying. The problem is that in order for the app to update it itself it would have to run in the background, something I’m sure your aware can’t be done (at least until Mango is released). The work around instead is to have the apps have information pushed to them from the web. It’s this which has caused developers to not implement the tiles, I’m not sure about the specifics but you have to run a specific type of server adding a large cost for both server and bandwidth to have a live tile. I’m with you in agreeing that that system is not good, I really hope that with the release of Mango the potential for the live tile will be unlocked.
The Xbox, Windows etc true integration thing is something else which is going to require patience. It’s not like the promised you anything you can’t do on the phone. There have however been demos shown, such as the one where someone uses his phone to throw balls at someone playing Kinect. Hopefully this kind of stuff will be hurried out of the door as it would be a huge advantage for the platform.
Needless to say I’m sure everything will come with time. You’ve bought a device based on a system which hasn’t been given the opportunity to mature yet. Need I remind you that iPhone didn’t even have an app store when it was released. And with regards to what’s cool or not if you really buy technology because you think it’s considered cool by your peers I’m unlikely to ever be interested in your opinion, I can just ask the 12 year old that lives next door.
@Ben
Wow. Before I begin this reply, I’d like to let you know that I will soon be doing a ‘why windows phone 7 rules’ article to balance it out. Be sure to check it out, you might prefer that one.
Also, the reason that a lot of these things infuriate me so much, is that I genuinely do like the platform. I feel it has a lot of potential and as you say, if many of these problems are ironed out and new features are added, such as multitasking, it will become an extremely competitive mobile OS.
There are a couple of things I feel you’ve missed my point on, though, or perhaps my anger has slightly exaggerated what I’m trying to say. For instance, the Metro UI is fantastic. I love it. Probably my favourite when compared to iOS and Android, but it needs tweaking. The titles within apps are huge and it dominates the screen, which can be offputting in certain applications.
Thanks for the heads up about the live tiles, didn’t know that so it’s good to know that it might improve with the Mango update. I look forward to it immensely as its the live tiles which went some way to selling Windows Phone 7 to me.
For a platform in its infancy, it is certainly better than expected, and I admit that I knew the apps wouldn’t arrive instantaneously, but I would have thought there would be more. I feel that considering I’m forking out over £30 a month for a contract purely to get a decent data allowance, WP7 doesn’t allow me to utilise it properly right now.
With regards to news readers, I found that NewsRoom was the best, although it doesn’t automatically update which stinks.
And lastly when we’re talking about cool, of course it’s not the deciding factor for me personally, but for a huge chunk of the market it is, which is why BlackBerry’s are selling so fast right now. I prefer my gadgets to just make me more productive, which WP7 does a little right now, but not as much as other platforms, though I expect this will improve. Could have been better off using Zune or Xbox branding, but we’ll see.
Thanks for the comment, though, opinions are much appreciated, but I’d like to let you know that a lot of testing and deliberation went into my latest phone choice. Was sorely tempted by an Android device, namely the Desire HD, but thought that I’d go for Windows Phone because it is new and I love being a part of the first iteration and will certainly enjoy seeing the platform grow.
Glad to see you evidently don’t think in the same way that this article portrays, maybe you should have mentioned you were doing the pro article as well, that was lost on me!
Seems like we agree on most points at any rate, re there not being some of the apps that you want that’s another of the reasons that I got into the platform. Get on the developer band wagon and take advantage of some of the gaps!
Thanks for your response, has restored my faith in your writing, I normally agree with what you have to say!
That starts to grind my gears, here’s a few more:
No ActiveSync support
No Outlook task or notes app
No windows live messenger
Microsoft have an official free app for messenger on the iPhone but not on WP7!
Windows phone 7 is great. I have HTC trophy and I love it coz its quick and responsive. The marketplace is growing. The apps are good quality. And how about android with multiple screens. Why do we need 7 screens for? Why can’t we have one that does all the job, with live sexy tiles.. With mango upgrade coming so we will have tile apps, can android or IOS do that…nope.
Yes, the Marketplace is atrocious. What is M$ playing at? They’re not even trying to be competitive – even with Mango.