I recently purchased the HTC Trophy that was launched on Verizon on May 26th. There are an abundance of in-depth reviews of Windows Phone 7 on the net (largely positive), so I won't go in depth here. I did, however, want to mention some of the big features that attracted me to the platform and why I ultimately decided to take the plunge on the underdog.
I tend to follow the innovation, not the brand. I owned an iMac for many years when XP was getting long in the tooth and Vista was not fully baked. I owned an iPod for a long time before the allure of the Zune subscription service pulled me away (unlimited downloads, $15/month), and I discovered that the Zune HD platform was a solid and viable alternative to the iPod. I jumped on Android at launch because of it's customizable interface, deeper feature set than the competition, and Google services integration. Then, I learned what Microsoft was trying to do with the WP7 platform, and I signed up.
The first thing you notice about the WP7 interface is how clean and responsive it is. Microsoft is trying to move away from using the OS as a bucket for storing links to applications, and the simple screen-after-screen of square icons that is so popular on Android and iOS. Arguably, they are presenting tiles in vertical scroll rather than a horizontal scroll, but there is more going on behind the scenes with the use of WP7 "hubs."
The vision here, though not yet fully realized, is that the user shouldn't have to click and launch multiple apps to view all of their "Pictures." With iOS and Android, you could launch the native pictures app, the Facebook app, a Flickr app, a Picassaweb app, etc, and have to keep track of where everything is located in the meantime. WP7 has a single "Pictures" hub that currently collects local photos, Windows Live/SkyDrive, and Facebook photos in one place. The idea is innovative and user friendly - IF the app developers play ball by integrating with the hub and not simply releasing their own branded app for release in the WP7 app store. It's not clear to me how third-parties would be incented to do this, but I definitely support the idea. (credit Paul Thurrot for the Flickr example: they recently released a WP7 app that does not integrate with the native Pictures hub).
Another, and probably better, example is the "People" hub. When clicked, the first thing you see is a Facebook status feed, and the contact list is fully integrated across your Facebook and Google accounts (as is the way on other platforms). What Microsoft is planning to do here is interesting, and something I've always wanted: full interoperability across social networking messaging services. If I get a Facebook message, I want to be able to do a one-click reply via text messaging or GMail. Also, as part of the Mango update, they are going to fully integrate Twitter feeds inline, which I'm sure will be a information presentation/design challenge.
I could go in to the many other pros (full Office integration, the best on-screen keyboard ever), and the few cons (no native Google Maps app) but overall I feel MS is at least trying something new, and since the mobile market is quickly settling in to a two-player world, I want to support anyone who is trying true innovation. I would recommend this platform to nearly anyone, especially by the end of the year when the app store is a bit more populated and Mango brings several more key features.
