Microsoft’s Windows 7 makes rival for iPhone
The company has a hit with its new Kinect controller for the Xbox 360, which I reviewed last week, and now it’s done it again with the just-released Windows 7 phone. Forever lagging the Apple and Android mobile platforms, Microsoft has finally succeeded in creating a credible alternative to the iPhone.
The Samsung Focus, the first phone to use the new Microsoft platform, is a triumphant victory secured from the ashes of the Windows mobile past. The phone is slim, light and elegant. The screen is a marvel to behold, and the square-tile interface is the easiest I’ve ever navigated.
Gone are the tiny menus of previous Windows phones, which have been replaced with an intuitive scrolling interface whose tiles get you around without have to open up applications.
The Focus boasts a 4-inch AMOLED 480-by-800-pixel screen that is among the sharpest I’ve ever tested.
Click on the browser tile and up comes the Web on AT&T’s built-in Wi-Fi. within seconds you’re pinching and zooming Web content that reads as well as on your laptop.
But this is first and foremost a phone and, on that score, the Focus excels. Calls are crisp and clear, with only one dropped call among the dozens I made with the device. you get a nice readable call history list to see who you’ve been talking to all day.
This smartphone is snappy, with its 1 gigahertz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and in addition to Wi-Fi, you get GPS, Bluetooth and a 5-megapixel rear camera.
The Focus costs $199 with a two-year AT&T contract that includes a number of the company’s useful apps such as the Navigator GPS app. And a charge lasts a whole day of average use, so I just plugged it in every night before going to bed.
How fast is the Focus?
Well, open up the Bing map app, type in or speak an address into the phone and in an instant you’ll be looking down at a detailed satellite map – you see your street, your house or any place you want to spy on. I even saw the new patio and retaining wall my niece’s husband added to his back yard.
The phone uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine to great effect. you can type or speak your queries and the results pop right up. And the Focus can include your location to gear the results to your address.
Not only is Bing search in the mix here, but also the Zune Marketplace. In fact, the Windows 7 mobile interface reminds me a lot of the underappreciated Zune HD media player. The Focus gives you easy access to Zune’s streaming music, as well as downloads of songs, shows and music videos. It’s well worth getting the $15 monthly Zune pass for unlimited streaming and you get to keep 10 downloads a month. The phone comes with 8 GB of internal storage, enough to hold a lot of songs, and you can also add up to 32GB more with a MicroSD card.
Like the Zune, music and video are great on the Focus. I did a YouTube search and played Van Halen’s “Right Now” music video and also checked out some of Eddie’s lead guitar clips.
The Focus also excels as a social network experience. Click on the People tile and enter your G-mail or Facebook credentials and soon all your contacts start to appear. I was getting status updates from my Facebook friends that I could comment on – no need to get to my computer.
Speaking of typing, I often like a real phone keyboard, but the Focus’ virtual keyboard is making me a convert. I typed away making very few mistakes on e-mails or Facebook comments. And as for e-mails, the Focus does a great job, allowing you to synch up to Outlook or Microsoft Exchange.
I had a few quibbles. While the Focus comes with Microsoft Office Mobile, you can’t yet cut and paste into documents. And the rear camera takes kind of blurry pictures compared to other phones I’ve tested. I put it side by side with several other smartphones, and while the Focus photos had better true-to-life-colors, they but just weren’t that crisp.
Microsoft’s Windows 7 makes rival for iPhone