As I mentioned last month, I took the plunge into Windows Phone 7 on the AT&T network. For me, this is the first smartphone I’ve owned on my personal cellular account. I’ve had two other smartphones in the past; a Samsung Windows Mobile device on Verizon about 8 years ago and an iPhone 3G on the AT&T network for the last two years; but I’ve never had to track my usage or pay for those, as they were provided by my employers at the time. With the iPhone, at least (I’m not sure about the Samsung device), the data plan was unlimited, so there was nothing to track.
However, with my new Windows Phone handset, I selected the lower-tier data plan on AT&T’s network (200 megabytes of data for $15/month).
One of the huge downsides of being an early adopter is the lack of features you generally get in the beginning. For me, the humongous difference between the number of iPhone apps currently available and the number of Windows Phone 7 apps available isn’t that big of a problem, but there are a few apps I really miss. Following is a brief list of those apps. Please feel free to add more in the comments if you have any thoughts on the matter.
As you are no doubt aware, a major update for the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system was released by Apple last week. The first day it was released, I downloaded the large update file (almost 300 megabytes) and attempted to install it overnight on my iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, when I woke up in the morning, I was confronted with an iTunes error indicating that the backup was not completed successfully.
Later that evening, I tried again. I started trying to update around 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening, and finally cancelled the process around 11 p.m., having made very little progress in the backup process.
I tried a few more times over the next few days, and kept experiencing a similar problem. At one point, Windows decided to restart itself in the middle of the backup process because Windows updates had been installed.
Finally, overnight last night, I modified my Windows power settings, making sure that my computer would not go to sleep for at least four hours (just in case that was the issue) and attempted the update one more time.
Having used my HTC Surround Windows Phone 7 handset for a few months, now, I’ve come up with a few items to add to a user experience wishlist. If you have any other serious suggestions (i.e. not “make it an iPhone” or something like that), I’d be glad to hear them.
