The gHacks Windows Phone Review – Part 4

So far in this review series I’ve covered the main OS, the handset I’ve been provided with by Microsoft and the main apps.  But what’s a Windows Phone like to live with on a day to day basis?  This after all is the most important factor to any consumer when deciding whether to buy one or not.

I’ve had the phone now for about five days and I’m very comfortable with it.  It’s simplicity itself to use even though I am rather annoyed that I had to get used to its onscreen keyboard, rather than it having a keyboard that would work the way I wanted to.  In some apps you can rotate the screen which makes the keys slightly larger, but not in all and certainly not in third-party apps such as Facebook or Twitter.

On battery life, which I would imagine if the very first question most of you would ask, you should be prepared to charge it overnight and every day.  On a day of general usage I’m left with a little under 50% battery life at the end of the evening.  This is with a little light web browsing, a few calls and some MP3 music playing.  In part this is the fault of the handset-size.  As the handsets get smaller and thinner, and battery technology doesn’t keep pace, its inevitable this would happen.  I’m used to charging my phone every night anyway but this could be a problem for people who travel a lot.

I do have some criticisms of the OS, none of which are major as they’re all Version 1 issues.  Some are significant though.  There’s still no way to import Internet favourites to the phone and Office on the phone won’t allow you to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents stored on Microsoft’s Office Live service (for some reason only OneNote is supported here).

You can read the full version of this review at Windows7News.

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Author: Mike Halsey MVP, Monday November 8, 2010 -
Tags:review, windows phone